Utilitarianism and Other Essays [Paperback]

John Stuart Mill (Author), Jeremy Bentham (Author), Alan Ryan (Editor, Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 4, 1987

One of the most important nineteenth-century schools of thought, Utilitarianism propounds the view that the value or rightness of an action rests in how well it promotes the welfare of those affected by it, aiming for 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was the movement's founder, as much a social reformer as a philosopher. His greatest interpreter, John Stuart Mill (1806-73), set out to humanize Bentham's pragmatic Utilitarianism by balancing the claims of reason and the imagination, individuality and social well-being in essays such as 'Bentham', 'Coleridge' and, above all, Utilitarianism. The works by Bentham and Mill collected in this volume show the creation and development of a system of ethics that has had an enduring influence on moral philosophy and legislative policy.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Stuart Mill (1806 - 73) formed the Utilitarian Society which met to read and discuss essays. His works include On LIberty and Principles of Political Economy. Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832) set out to theorize a simple and equitable legal system. The law of utility, for which is best remembered, states that the goodness of a law can be measured in accordance with the measure in which it subserves the happiness of hte individual. Alan Ryan is Warden of New College, Oxford and is currently on sabbatical in Stanford. His other books include Property and Political Theory and Bertrand Russell: A Political Life.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (August 4, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140432728
• ISBN-13: 978-0140432725
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #142,775 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Utilitarian philosophy explained, December 12, 2007

By 

Michael A Neulander "Political Philosophy" (VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Utilitarianism and Other Essays (Paperback)

I read this book for a graduate Mill seminar in Philosophy. Recommended reading for anyone interested in philosophy, political science, and history.

John Stuart Mill, 1806-73, worked for the East India Co. helped run Colonial India from England. Minister of Parliament 1865-68 he served one term.

Mill develops a theory of morality in Utilitarianism. He argues against the group of people who think that morality is intuitive. Intuitionists think that God put morality in us, thus, morality is a priori. Moral rules or principles were programmed in us, we can see these rules, they are binding, however they do acknowledge that on a case by case basis we still need to use them to reason out the ultimate answer for a particular case.

Mill also believes that there are a set of moral principles that we ought to be thinking about. Intuitionists today think that case by case we can reason out what is right or wrong. However, they would be suspicious that of believing there were general moral principles. Intuitionists say it is not up to us to investigate what is right or wrong. Mill would disagree. Mill doesn't like Intuitionists theory because they can't prove their view; and they can't explain why "lying is wrong" as an example. In addition, they do not provide a list of these innate morals we are suppose to have, and they do not have a hierarchy for them to resolve the conflict between two morals when they arise.

Background on essay, written in 1861 came out in 3 magazine articles, pretty scanty which sometimes drives one crazy trying to deduce what Mill is saying. A lot of interpretation is necessary.

Chapter 2: The second paragraph is official statement of the theory.

"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."

Happiness=pleasure and freedom from pain. This makes him a Hedonist philosophically.


Higher Pleasures Doctrine- Jeremy Bentham says how valuable pleasure was based on 2 dimensions that we evaluate our experience of pleasure by, intensity and duration. Bentham says this determines quantity in pleasure. Bentham said this determined how much a given experience adds to a person's happiness.

Mill adds a third value to evaluate pleasure by and that's its quality, how good it is. Many don't understand Mill's idea that pleasure has value and quality. Most people think that Mill is really talking about quantity, or they don't believe one can be a hedonist, that pleasure is the only thing that has value, and yet think that there is something more to judging how valuable an experience is than the intensity and the duration of the pleasure it contains. So, they say that one of two things must be going on here. Of course, some people are sure it is one thing, and some are sure it is another. Either what Mill is talking about when you get right down to it is quantity in pleasure and different experiences, or all the different things he says about quality can be somehow resolved into quantity. So that really what is going on is that when Mill talks about a pleasure being of a higher quality that just means that there is a lot more pleasure there that the quantity is much greater. Or, Mill is giving up on hedonism at this point and he is admitting that some things are valuable aside from pleasure. So, when he says an experience like reading a good book or something like that is more valuable than an experience of some kind of animalistic pleasure, that really what he is saying is this experience is more valuable for reasons that go beyond the amount of pleasure involved. In addition to how much pleasure is involved there is also that maybe the experience is more beautiful or more noble or something like that and this gives it additional value. So something other than the amount of pleasure involved gives it additional value. Mill can be a consistent hedonist and he can consistently say that pleasure is the only thing that can have value and yet it is still the case that some pleasures are just more valuable than other pleasures.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The calculus of pleasure and pain is not enough, October 30, 2005

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Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Utilitarianism and Other Essays (Paperback)

This is John Stuart Mill's restatement and qualification of the philosophical doctrine of' Utilitarianism'- the doctrine that the aim of Society is to produce the "greatest happiness for the greatest number".
The philosophy whose great inventor was Jeremy Bentham built itself upon the idea of a calculus of pleasures and pains, an almost mechanical measuring of feeling.
However the complexity, contradictory quality of our inner life suggest that any calculation of this type has a certain shallowness and illegitimacy about it.
In any case Mill's idea of utilitarianism does connect with his conception of Liberalism, and does have effect on his later thought even as he rejected most of it.

4 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dogmatism at its height., September 11, 2004

By 

Roberto P. De Ferraz "ferraz9" (Sao Paulo, Brazil) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Utilitarianism and Other Essays (Paperback)

Jeremy Bentham is the father of the doctrine called Utilitarianism, and John Stuart Mill (son of the second-rank philosopher James Mill and a kind of mouthpiece for Jeremy) is his most known disciple. «Utilitarianism and other Essays » presents the reader some of the most important and exciting excerpts texts written by the two thinkers, who, despite outwardly embracing the same doctrine, had to do a lot of theoretical gymnastics to accomodate each other points of view under the same ideological umbrella, thus demonstrating that sometimes the battle is fiercest, albeit muffled, inside than outside ideological headquarters. In hindsight , it seems that John Stuart Mill, who ran the rudders of the Economic doctrine of England until the 1860's, had some scores to settle with Jeremy, who was many years his senior and had ben, by some, the person behind the culturally sophisticated (although stripped of any emotional and religious overtones) education John received as a boy, learning Greek at 3, Latin at 8 and revising at 15 (in French) the first volume of the book « Democracy in America », by Tocqueville. The outcome of all this is that Mill developed a type of melancholic character who almost pushed him to the depths of depression, only rescued by his second marriage in his mid-life, when he embraced a lot of libertarian and anti-establishment proposals.
The writting styles of the two are blatantly different, James being the pragmatical dogmatist who accepted no exception to his utilitarian praecepts, Mill, on the contrary, the soft-minded scholar who diligently tried to mend the many defficiencies of a theory so rigidly framed and which was supposed to answer to all demands of human action. This dogmatism by Bentham, forced Mill later in life to abscond that doctrine, althoug never converting himself to any religion creed. Worthy of mention if the superb introduction by Alan Ryan, being a book on utilitarianism in itself.