John
Stuart Mill was a British philosopher born on the 20th May 1806 and
passed away on the 8th May 1873. John Stuart Mill was born into the
Utilitarian project proposed by Jeremy Bentham, though as time expired, John
Stuart Mill’s ideas diverged from those of his original teacher.[1]
John Stuart Mill, however, began his adulthood writing articles for radical
newspapers, writing for things such as world suffering, women’s rights and
freedom, family life, and economic and legal ideas amongst many things. When he
wasn’t writing however, John Stuart Mill was editing work for his father and
Jeremy Bentham, whose principle he adopted: “we ought to act so as to bring
about the greatest happiness of the greatest number”.
John
Stuart Mill’s take on utilitarianism was heavily influenced by his father and
by his mentor: Jeremy Bentham. John Stuart Mill is perhaps most notably famous
for, aside from the greatest amount of total happiness for the greatest number
of people, his principles of adding qualitative values onto different
pleasures. John Stuart Mill held that pleasures were able to be classified into
states of being higher, and states of being lower. He contended that the higher
pleasures were pleasures were those of the intellectual and moral variety,
whereas the lower pleasures were those that were more physical. For John Stuart
Mill[2],
this was defined arbitrarily to an individual. However, in this sense, John
Stuart Mill can be misinterpreted as an elitist, because John Stuart Mill puts
forth that people who tend toward simple pleasures, or lower pleasures, were
uneducated in the higher forms of art, and as a result, do not get a say in the
matter. However, John Stuart Mill advocated education[3],
and saw the intrinsic worth in education, rather than in the educated, which
could lead to a swing in the Government, which in turn, can direct the society
in a way that Aristotle may deem “collective Eudaimonia”.
Mill is
criticized for two things in his arguments for utilitarianism. Firstly, Mill
is, maybe correctly so, criticized for falling under a naturalistic fallacy,
that his argument is dependent on value judgments and value statements, that
John Stuart Mill is implying an “ought” from an “is”. However, Mill feels as if
that he is legitimately making this judgment call[4],
that due to our nature to accept basic judgments, it is only natural that we as
humans must seek pleasure, and as a result, John Stuart Mill claims that it
would be “ unreasonable to suggest that anything else could be
morally demanded of us” as humans. How convenient.
Mill also seems to fall under the criticism
of schadenfreude[5] (to
obtain pleasure from the suffering of another), and such other hypothetical
type question. For the question, hypothetically speaking is raised, if one is
really being a nuisance to society, and it brings pleasure to the whole of
society to witness misfortunes of the man in question, what is to be done with
him? Does aiming at the greatest total happiness for the largest amount of
people still apply? Where is the line drawn, if any?
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