Key Texts · Philosophical work · essay

Utilitarianism

by John Stuart Mill · 1863 · English

Mill's short, spirited defence of the view that morality rests on one principle: actions are right so far as they promote happiness, and wrong so far as they produce its reverse. It is the most influential statement of utilitarian ethics.

At a glance

Mill wrote Utilitarianism to explain and defend the moral theory he had inherited from Jeremy Bentham and his own father, James Mill, while answering the objections that had made it unpopular. The result is both a statement of the theory and a reply to its critics.

Key arguments

• The greatest happiness principle. Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse — where happiness means pleasure and the absence of pain.
• Higher and lower pleasures. Against the charge that utilitarianism is a "doctrine worthy only of swine," Mill argues pleasures differ in quality, not just quantity: it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.
• Impartiality. Each person's happiness counts equally; the standard is the greatest total happiness, not the agent's own.
• A "proof" of the principle. Mill argues that the only evidence that something is desirable is that people actually desire it — and that happiness is what, in the end, everyone desires.

Key terms

This work is the home of utilitarianism and a leading form of consequentialism.

Context

Mill wrote in Victorian Britain amid vigorous debate about morality, religion, and social reform. Utilitarianism had powerful practical influence — it drove campaigns for legal, penal, and political reform — but was widely criticised as crude or godless. Mill's essay aims to show that, properly understood, it is neither.

Author

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was a British philosopher, economist, and reformer, and a leading liberal thinker. As well as Utilitarianism he wrote the landmark defence of freedom On Liberty. Read more on the Mill page.

Summary

After noting how little progress ethics has made in settling its first principle, Mill states and clarifies the greatest happiness principle, and defends it against the objection that it is a base doctrine by distinguishing higher from lower pleasures. He answers a series of further objections — that happiness is unattainable, that the theory is too demanding, that it leaves no time to calculate consequences — and offers his famous "proof" that happiness is the one thing desirable as an end. A long final chapter argues that justice, far from conflicting with utility, is best understood as naming the most important and strongly protected of the things that promote the general good.

Central argument

There is a single ultimate standard of right and wrong: the tendency of an action to promote happiness — pleasure and the absence of pain — counting everyone's happiness impartially. Rival moral rules and intuitions, Mill holds, are best understood as reliable guides to what generally promotes happiness, not as independent first principles. Morality, in short, has one foundation, and that foundation is the general welfare.

From the original text

The passage below, from Chapter 2, states the greatest happiness principle in Mill's own words. The text is in the public domain.

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.

… the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded [is] namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things … are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.

John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1863), Chapter 2 (public domain). Read the full text at Project Gutenberg.

Criticisms & debates

Utilitarianism has drawn powerful objections. Critics argue it can justify grave wrongs against a few whenever this maximises overall happiness — sacrificing an innocent person to please a crowd. Others attack Mill's "proof" as confusing what is desired with what is desirable, and question whether pleasures of different quality can really be compared on one scale. Deontologists such as Kant reject the whole consequence-based approach; see the debate on how to decide right from wrong.

Legacy

Utilitarianism remains one of the dominant frameworks in moral and political philosophy, and the default language of much public-policy and welfare economics. Mill's refinements — quality of pleasures, the link between justice and utility — continue to shape how consequentialists answer their critics.

Study guide

1. Is Mill right that some pleasures are higher than others — and can anyone who has not experienced both really judge?
2. Does counting everyone's happiness equally make utilitarianism admirably fair, or dangerously willing to sacrifice individuals?
3. Is 'people desire happiness' good evidence that happiness is what we ought to pursue?

How to cite

Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. 1863. Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11224.