During Mill’s lifetime, he was most widely admired for his work in theoretical philosophy and political economy. However, nowadays Mill’s greatest philosophical influence is in moral and political philosophy, especially his articulation and defense of utilitarianism and liberalism (Nicholson 1998)

We will concentrate on his two most popular and best known works, Utilitarianism (1861, cited as U) and On Liberty (1859, cited as OL), drawing on other texts when this sheds light on his utilitarian and liberal principles.

Utilitarianism assesses actions and institutions in terms of their effects on human happiness and enjoins us to perform actions and design institutions so that they promote—in one formulation, maximize—human happiness.

As Mill emerged from his depression, he became more concerned with the development of well-rounded individuals and with the role of feeling, culture, and creativity in the happiness of individuals

We need to try to understand the extent of the transformation Mill brings to the utilitarian and liberal principles of the Radicals.

Bentham and James Mill understand happiness hedonistically, as consisting in pleasure, and they believe that the ultimate aim of each person is predominantly, if not exclusively, the promotion of the agent’s own happiness (pleasure).

Bentham endorses a version of psychological egoism, which claims that the agent’s own happiness is and can be the only ultimate object of his desires.

On the occasion of every act he exercises, every human being is led to pursue that line of conduct which, according to his view of the case, taken by him at the moment, will be in the highest degree contributory to his own greatest happiness.

James Mill also treats psychological hedonism as axiomatic in his Essay on Government

The desire, therefore, of that power which is necessary to render the persons and properties of human beings subservient to our pleasures, is the grand governing law of human nature.

Bentham claims that utility not only describes human motivation but also sets the standard of right and wrong

By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question

Bentham’s answer, and the answer characteristic of utilitarianism, is the happiness of all

if this is Bentham’s view, he faces a problem, for he combines the ethical claim that each of us ought to aim at the general happiness (pleasure) with the psychological claim that each of us can only aim (ultimately) at his own happiness (pleasure).

In the political context, the problem is how we can get self-interested rulers to rule in the interest of the governed, as utilitarianism implies that they should.

Because the utilitarian asks us to maximize value, he has to be able to make sense of quantities or magnitudes of value associated with different options, where he assigns value to pleasure and disvalue to pain. Intensity, duration, and extent would appear to be the most relevant variables here.

For every distinct pleasure and pain, we must calculate its intensity and its duration. That would give us the total amount of (net) pleasure (or pain) associated with each option. Then we must do that option with greatest total. If there are two (or more) options with the greatest total, we are free to select any of these.

Though Mill accepts the utilitarian legacy of the Radicals, he transforms that legacy in important ways. Part of understanding Mill’s contributions to the utilitarian tradition involves understanding his disagreement with the Radicals on issues about human motivation and the nature of happiness.

While Mill does say that each person has an ultimate desire for her own happiness, he does not say that this is each person’s only ultimate desire.

Mill also disagrees with the Radicals about the nature of happiness. Though he never abandons the utilitarian tradition of the Radicals, Mill modifies their assumptions about happiness.

The creed which accepts as the foundations 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.

Hedonism implies that the mental state of pleasure is the only thing having intrinsic value (and the mental state of pain is the only intrinsic evil). All other things have only extrinsic value; they have value just insofar as they bring about, mediately or directly, intrinsic value (or disvalue).

If we correctly value one more than another, it must be because the first produces more numerous, intense, or durable pleasures than the other.

If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.

he uses the term ‘pleasure’ sometimes to refer to (a) a certain kind of mental state or sensation and at other times to refer to (b) non-mental items, such as actions, activities, and pursuits that do or can cause pleasurable mental states

We might call (a)-type pleasures subjective pleasures and (b)-type pleasures objective pleasures. What’s unclear is whether Mill’s higher pleasures are subjective pleasures or objective pleasures.

Insofar as Mill does discuss subjective pleasures, he is not clear which, if either, of these conceptions of pleasure he favors. Nonetheless, it may seem natural to assume that as a hedonist he conceives of pleasures as subjective pleasures.

even if we can distinguish higher and lower pleasures, according to their causes, it remains unclear how the hedonist is to explain how higher pleasures are inherently more pleasurable.

Insofar as Mill’s higher pleasures doctrine concerns objective pleasures, it appears anti-hedonistic for two reasons. First, he claims that the intellectual pursuits have value out of proportion to the amount of contentment or pleasure (the mental state) that they produce.

Second, Mill claims that these activities are intrinsically more valuable than the lower pursuits

We take pleasure in these activities because they are valuable; they are not valuable, because they are pleasurable.

Mill thinks that the preferences of competent judges are not arbitrary, but principled, reflecting a sense of the value of the higher capacities. But this would make his doctrine of higher pleasures fundamentally anti-hedonistic, insofar it explains the superiority of higher activities, not in terms of the pleasure they produce, but rather in terms of the dignity or value of the kind of life characterized by the exercise of higher capacities.

We can begin to see the possibility and the appeal of reading Mill as a kind of perfectionist about happiness, who claims that human happiness consists in the proper exercise of those capacities essential to our nature.

I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.

Mill suggests that he thinks that humans are responsible agents and that this is what marks us as progressive beings. There he claims that capacities for practical deliberation are necessary for responsibility. In particular, he claims that moral responsibility involves a kind of self-mastery or self-governance in which one can can deliberate about the appropriateness of one’s desires and regulate one’s actions according to these deliberations

If our happiness should reflect the sort of beings we are, Mill can argue that higher activities that exercise these deliberative capacities form the principal or most important ingredient in human happiness.

But exactly how Mill thinks duty is related to happiness is not entirely clear.

our focus here is on right action or duty. Act utilitarianism is the most familiar form of direct utilitarianism applied to action, whereas the most common indirect utilitarian theory of duty is rule utilitarianism.

It is the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties, or by what test we may know them; but no system of ethics requires that the sole motive of all we do shall be a feeling of duty; on the contrary, ninety-nine hundredths of all our actions are done from other motives, and rightly so done if the rule of duty does not condemn them.

utilitarianism provides a standard of right action, not necessarily a decision procedure

Mill thinks that much moral reasoning should be governed by secondary precepts or principles about such things as fidelity, fair play, and honesty that make no direct reference to utility but whose general observance does promote utility.

Mill asserting that utilitarianism is “the doctrine that utility or happiness is the criterion of right and wrong”