Utilitarianism

by

John Stuart Mill

Another word for net or aggregate happiness, which is utilitarianism’s principal measure of good and evil. Since Mill defines happiness as “pleasure and the absence of pain,” the utility of an action is essentially the sum of the pleasure it creates, minus the sum of the pain it causes, both taking into account all the people the action affects. Note that while the word utility in common usage often has connotations of ignoring emotional experience, the opposite is true in utilitarianism—utility in this context is explicitly concerned with happiness above all else.

Utility Quotes in Utilitarianism

The Utilitarianism quotes below are all either spoken by Utility or refer to Utility. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Utilitarianism, Happiness, and The Good Life Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

It is not my purpose to criticize these thinkers; but I cannot help referring, for illustration, to a systematic treatise by one of the most illustrious of them, the Metaphysics of Ethics by Kant. This remarkable man, whose system of thought will long remain one of the landmarks in the history of philosophical speculation, does, in the treatise in question, lay down a universal first principle as the origin and ground of moral obligation; it is this: “So act that the rule on which thou actest would admit of being adopted as a law by all rational beings.” But when he begins to deduce from this precept any of the actual duties of morality, he fails, almost grotesquely, to show that there would be any contradiction, any logical (not to say physical) impossibility, in the adoption by all rational beings of the most outrageously immoral rules of conduct. All he shows is that the consequences of their universal adoption would be such as no one would choose to incur.

Related Characters: John Stuart Mill (speaker), Immanuel Kant (speaker)
Page Number: 3-4
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

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. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.

Related Characters: John Stuart Mill (speaker)
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:

It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that, while in estimating all other things quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasure should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.

If I am asked what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.

Related Characters: John Stuart Mill (speaker)
Page Number: 8
Explanation and Analysis:

It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.

Related Characters: John Stuart Mill (speaker)
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:

I must again repeat what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct is not the agent’s own happiness but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. “To do as you would be done by,” and “to love your neighbor as yourself,” constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness or (as, speaking practically, it may be called) the interest of every individual as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; and, secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole, especially between his own happiness and the practice of such modes of conduct, negative and positive, as regard for the universal happiness prescribes; so that not only he may be unable to conceive the possibility of happiness to himself, consistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but also that a direct impulse to promote the general good may be in every individual one of the habitual motives of action, and the sentiments connected therewith may fill a large and prominent place in every human being’s sentient existence.

Related Characters: John Stuart Mill (speaker)
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

In all ages of speculation one of the strongest obstacles to the reception of the doctrine that utility or happiness is the criterion of right and wrong has been drawn from the idea of justice.

Related Characters: John Stuart Mill (speaker)
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:
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Utility Term Timeline in Utilitarianism

The timeline below shows where the term Utility appears in Utilitarianism. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: What Utilitarianism Is
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Criticism and the Principles of Utility Theme Icon
Mill begins by dismissing the misconception that “utility is opposed to pleasure,” and that utilitarians are about putting pragmatism and order above “beauty”... (full context)
Utilitarianism, Happiness, and The Good Life Theme Icon
Criticism and the Principles of Utility Theme Icon
The Common Good Theme Icon
Mill then turns to the objection that utilitarianism turns people into cold, utility-calculating machines who do not care about people’s moral character. He replies that virtuous people with... (full context)
Criticism and the Principles of Utility Theme Icon
The Common Good Theme Icon
Meta-Ethics Theme Icon
...benefit of breaking the rule outweighs the damage of weakening it, and “the principle of utility is good for […] weighing these conflicting utilities” and deciding when it is acceptable to... (full context)
Criticism and the Principles of Utility Theme Icon
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...moral principles when they come in conflict: people can appeal to the “first principle” of utility. (full context)
Chapter 3: Of the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility
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The Common Good Theme Icon
...will punish them. For utilitarians, these external sanctions express the ultimate moral principle of maximizing utility: good reputation is a reward for acting for the common good, and God wants to... (full context)
Chapter 4: Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility is Susceptible
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Criticism and the Principles of Utility Theme Icon
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...are “a part of happiness.” And this is the “proof [to which] the principle of utility is susceptible.” If Mill can show that no natural human desire is anything but a... (full context)
Chapter 5: On the Connection between Justice and Utility
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...color and taste”), or instead a more complicated way of expressing a moral truth about utility (although people tend to resist this possibility). (full context)
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...that it is something we expect society to defend, in the service of the “general utility.” Of course, people also have an emotional attachment to their rights, which guarantee their security.... (full context)
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Any explanation that sees justice as “totally independent of utility” cannot account for the ambiguity in what different people consider to be just. Mill provides... (full context)
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...as they treat all the rest equally well. Third and finally, “the very meaning of utility, or the greatest happiness principle” requires that “one person’s happiness […] is counted for exactly... (full context)
Criticism and the Principles of Utility Theme Icon
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...view of justice as the set of “moral requirements” that are the most important for utility, and therefore that people are obligated to fulfill above all else. There are exceptions, of... (full context)