Mill's Utilitarianism

According to John Stuart Mill, little progress has been made toward developing a set of standards by which to judge moral right and wrong. He argues that in order to know what morality dictates, it is necessary to know by what standard human actions should be judged. Because our moral beliefs have undergone very few alterations over the course of history (we still have some of the same morals as the ancient Greeks) it seems as though there exist some standards that serve as a foundation of morality. Mill argues that this standard is the “greatest happiness principle.” He uses utilitarianism to note the influence and shaping of moral doctrines. In this essay, I will be arguing against Mill and his utilitarianism. I believe that the principles
He describes how to differentiate between higher and lower-quality pleasures. A pleasure is consider higher quality if people would pick it over a different pleasure even if this pleasure is accompanied by discomfort. He argues that if given total access to all kinds of pleasure, people would still prefer those pleasures that appeal to their higher faculties. He also argues that people’s achievement of certain goals (like virtuous living) should be counted as part of their level of
Take Gandhi for example. He was extremely self-disciplined and renounced many things that we would consider pleasurable today. Mill doesn’t deny that martyrs exist who give up their happiness. He argues that martyrs sacrifice their happiness for some greater result--the happiness of other people. They sacrifice so that others will not have to make similar sacrifices. This willingness to sacrifice one’s happiness is, according to Mill, the highest virtue. He also claims that maintaining such an attitude of willingness to sacrifice one’s own happiness is actually the best chance of gaining happiness because it will lead a person to be tranquil about his life. It is important to note that Mill is not arguing to promoting one’s individual happiness over others’ happiness. The utilitarian standard for judging an act is the happiness of all people, not of one particular person. Law and education help instill generosity and make sure that one doesn’t value his own happiness over the happiness of others. However, this also doesn’t mean that people’s motives must only be to serve the greater good. According to Mill, utilitarianism is not concerned with the motives behind an action, like with Kant; the morality of an action depends on the goodness of its result