John Stuart Mill: Champion of Utilitarianism & Liberty
John Stuart Mill: Champion of Utilitarianism and Liberty
John Stuart Mill was a 19th-century English philosopher who was instrumental in the development of the moral theory of Utilitarianism and a political theory whose goal was to maximize the personal liberty of all citizens. He was able to inspire a number of social reforms in England. Mill’s political theory disregarded social contract theory, which had obsessed the previous century’s political thinkers, in favor of a theory that used his moral imperatives as its basis. His theory serves as the alternative to Marxism.
Mill’s Utilitarianism: Higher and Lower Pleasures
He believed that all other ideas of good were extrinsic and simply were in the service of gaining pleasure. Pleasure itself was the one idea of the good that could lead nowhere else. One of the obvious problems with this view is that many people get pleasure from things that are harmful to other people, and there are many people who get pleasure from things that do not benefit themselves and could even be harmful to themselves. Mill attempted to address this problem. He separates the two into “higher” and “lower” pleasures. The distinction between the two is that the pleasure derived from the higher pleasures is always greater than that derived from the lower. Mill claims that it is our moral imperative to make decisions that benefit the greater good, and Utilitarianism makes the claim that the moral good is “the greatest good to the greatest number of people.”
Objections to Utilitarianism
The most common objection to this moral theory is that it is impossible to know with any certainty what consequences one’s actions will lead to (see Kant). This extends to the idea that because this theory does not protect the intrinsic value of each human being the way Kant’s theory does, it can lead to cases where an individual’s rights are violated in service of the greater good. He states that moral action should not be judged on the individual case but more along the lines of a “rule of thumb”. What he means by this is that if a certain action can be generally determined to lead to good consequences, then that is the action that should be taken unless there is an obvious difference that is known with certainty that this time it will lead to different consequences.
Mill’s Advocacy for Individual Freedom
Mill claims the ideal society is one where the individual has economic and personal freedom from the state apparatus, and he bases the claim for individual freedom on the fact that it will lead to the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. In this way, we can avoid the tyranny of the majority that opponents of democracy often fear.
The Harm Principle and Limits on Rights
It is important to note that while Mill believed strongly in the right to free speech and expression and in the “harm principle”, which states that individuals should have complete freedom to the point where their actions harm others, he did not believe in the idea of inalienable rights. Mill thought that if giving citizens a certain freedom would lead to more harm than good to society as a whole, then that right should be rejected. He believed in the freedom of people to live the way they chose. These were all based on the idea that being tolerant of others and respecting the freedom of others would maximize the happiness of society.