Utilitarianism (book)

Utilitarianism is a book written by English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill, considered to be a classic exposition and defense of utilitarianism in ethics. It was originally published in 1861 as a series of three separate articles in Fraser's Magazine before it was collected and reprinted as a single work in 1863. The essay explains utilitarianism to its readers and addresses the numerous criticism against the theory during Mill's lifetime. It was heavily criticized upon publication; however, since then, Utilitarianism gained significant popularity and has been considered "the most influential philosophical articulation of a liberal humanistic morality that was produced in the nineteenth century."

Summary

Mill took many elements of his version of utilitarianism from Jeremy Bentham, the great nineteenth-century legal reformer and the propounder of utilitarianism, who along with William Paley were the two most influential English utilitarians prior to Mill. Like Bentham, Mill believed that happiness (or pleasure, which both Bentham and Mill equated with happiness) was the only thing humans do and should desire for its own sake. Since happiness is the only intrinsic good, and since more happiness is preferable to less, the goal of the ethical life is to maximize happiness. This is what Bentham and Mill call "the principle of utility" or "the greatest-happiness principle." Both Bentham and Mill thus endorse "classical" or "hedonistic" forms of utilitarianism.

Although Mill agreed with Bentham about many of the foundational principles of ethics, he also had some major disagreements. In particular, Mill tried to develop a more refined form of utilitarianism that would harmonize better with ordinary morality and highlight the importance in the ethical life of intellectual pleasures, self-development, high ideals of character, and conventional moral rules.

Chapter 1

In Chapter 1, titled "General Remarks," Mill notes that there has been little progress in ethics.