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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Utilitarianism, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Utilitarianism, Happiness, and The Good Life
Criticism and the Principles of Utility
The Common Good
Meta-Ethics
Summary
Analysis
Although philosophers have seen ethics as a subject of prime importance for 2,000 years, Mill begins, they have reached very little agreement about what the principal value in human life actually is. While most sciences use “particular truths” about the world to reveal a “general theory” of underlying principles, philosophy works in the other direction, developing a “general theory” and then deriving “particular truths.” This is also true of “practical art[s], such as morals or legislation,” which are extensions of philosophy: because people always act with some purpose in mind, defining “rules of action” requires coming up with “a clear and precise conception of what we are pursuing.”
Mill begins by putting his theory in conversation with the broader field of philosophical ethics, which both establishes his authority as a writer and sets the stage for his case for utilitarianism. He focuses on other thinkers’ meta-ethical confusion: they conflate the first and second principles of ethical philosophy, but utilitarianism has a much clearer “conception of what we are pursuing.” Mill also makes utilitarianism’s stakes clear: the ground rules for morality that he establishes will in turn imply a vision of the “practical art[s],” meaning that he can derive wide-ranging moral rules and even principles of government from utilitarianism’s central principle.
Themes
Literary Devices
Mill clarifies that, contrary to popular opinion, the “moral faculty” (that is, the ability to distinguish right and wrong) is part of human reason, not human instinct. The two main branches of ethical thought—the “intuitive” thinkers who think moral laws are a priori, and the “inductive” thinkers who think people can derive moral laws from experience—agree that morality is about applying general laws to specific situations. These two groups also agree that morality’s structure is scientific, with certain fundamental theoretical principles about morality as the “groundwork” of specific “maxims” that describe how people should act. Among the fundamental principles, one must be the most important, or else there should be some clear “rule for deciding between the various principles when they conflict.” However, the main ethical thinkers have not specifically explained their principles or defined the hierarchy among them.
Here, Mill outlines the most important questions in meta-ethics, which are methodological because they speak to how morality should be established in the first place (rather than what specifically is moral and immoral). Although he indicates a preference for reason over instinct, throughout his book Mill consistently argues that people’s moral instincts ultimately align with utilitarian principles anyway, which means he does not negate the value of moral instincts. Similarly, he does not take a stance on the “intuitive” versus “inductive” debate because he thinks that utilitarianism wins out either way. In short, Mill makes it clear that the power of his theory (from the analytical perspective of truth-seeking philosophers) lies in its first principle of utility, which is more fundamental than the principles on which other philosophers base their theories.
Themes
Literary Devices
Mill thinks that the “steadiness or consistency” in people’s moral thinking comes from a principle that everyone believes in, but few people recognize explicitly: they do what they think will bring happiness, both to themselves and to other people. All ethical thinkers see that happiness is important, and Mill thinks that even “a priori moralists” like the famous philosopher Immanuel Kant ultimately have to rely on the utilitarian principles that will be defended in this book.
Mill now explicitly states utilitarianism’s core axiom, which he thinks is the true rational principle underlying most people’s moral instincts. No matter what moral beliefs someone holds, Mill thinks, it is impossible to deny that people’s most important goal is actually happiness. Unlike other moral philosophies, utilitarianism gets straight to the point: if happiness is the ultimate good, then what is good is simply what promotes happiness. Mill’s nod to Kant might be unfamiliar to many readers without a background in philosophy, and Mill recognizes this, as his audience consists as much of a British public curious about his theories as of philosophers and other academics. Essentially, Kant went to great lengths attempting to establish moral principles that were ostensibly based purely in rational thought, but that (according to Mill) ultimately appealed to the general good of all people. Kant puts the cart before the horse, Mill thinks.
Themes
Literary Devices
Any moral theory must rely on assuming that some things—like pleasure, health, etc.—are fundamentally good and showing how everything else is a means to those things. As a result, it is not possible to “prove” utilitarianism in any ordinary sense, but Mill thinks there is a different way to “prove” it, which he will explain in Chapter Four. But first, he wants to make sure his readers clearly understand utilitarianism, which is often misinterpreted.
Mill clarifies that his meta-ethical argument bypasses those of most other philosophers: it does not much matter whether one looks toward reason or instinct, the mind or the world, because searching in all these places will always lead one to the principle that more happiness is better, less happiness is worse, and nothing is good or bad unless it affects human happiness in some way.
Themes
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