Utilitarianism Themes

Although he did not invent the utilitarian doctrine, philosopher John Stuart Mill remains its best-known proponent, largely because of his attempts to make it accessible to the general public and assuage common doubts about it through this widely publicized essay. In Utilitarianism, Mill lays out this deceptively straightforward philosophy with a specificity that he hopes will clarify his audience’s misinterpretations, whether innocent or deliberate. He emphasizes that utilitarianism is based on a single, central…

In Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill continually references his critics in an attempt to show that all other ethical systems ultimately rely on utilitarianism’s first principles: no matter how deeply they elaborate their moral values, at the end of the day all ethical theories see happiness and utility maximization as inherently good, thereby corroborating utilitarianism’s core idea. Non-utilitarians either use utilitarian principles to decide between competing moral values (for instance, when deciding whether stealing…

How do we determine what is right and wrong? In ethics, this question, which defines the field known as meta-ethics, is as important as practical questions of which moral stances, courses of action, and social structures are actually the right and wrong ones. Like any philosopher building an ethical theory from the ground up, John Stuart Mill must offer some explanation of this: what makes happiness the best thing for humans, and therefore proves the…