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John Stuart Mill's Concept of Utility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

Wendy Donner
Wendy Donner
Affiliation:
University of Cincinnati, University of Florida
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Extract

I offer here an interpretation and defense of John Stuart Mill's qualitative hedonism. One of the results of Mill's well-known mental crisis was a concept of utility substantially different from the orthodox Benthamite quantitative hedonism which Mill came to regard as being fraught with difficulties. He saw Bentham's concept as being excessively narrow, and he sought to overcome its limitations by enlarging his own concept of utility. He did this by including the quality of pleasures along with the quantity in the estimation of their worth. At the same time, Mill was highly critical of the intuitionist ethical theories of his day, and propounded utilitarianism as the rational, objective, and scientific alternative. So if Mill is to succeed in his enterprise of countering intuitionism while avoiding the pitfalls of Benthamite utilitarianism, he must retain the objectivity of Benthamism while repudiating its narrowness. Mill's critics have argued that when he opened up his concept of utility to include quality, he modified his theory so radically that he can no longer be called a hedonistic utilitarian, and that he relinquished the consis- tency and objectivity of Benthamite utilitarianism along with its weak- nesses. I argue here that Mill abandons neither hedonism nor utilitarianism, and that the objectivity and consistency of his theory are not undermined.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , September 1983 , pp. 479 - 494
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1983

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References

1 Mill, John Stuart, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. Robson, John M., vol. 10 (19 vols.; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962–1982), 210.Google Scholar (Hereafter referred to as CW).

2 John Stuart Mill edited the 1868 edition of his father's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, adding lengthy and numerous editorial notes, further clarifying and developing the theory or setting out disagreements. See Mill, James, An Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, ed. Mill, John Stuart (2 vols.; reprinted New York: Augustus M. Kelly, 1967)Google Scholar.

3 Mill, James, Analysis, vol. 1, 3.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., 70.

5 Ibid., 71.

6 Ibid., 78.

7 Ibid., 83.

8 Ibid., 86 n.

9 CW, vol. 8, 852.

10 See Edwards, Rem, Pleasures and Pains (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), 18Google Scholar.

11 Mill, James, Analysis, vol. 2, 233 n.Google Scholar

12 CW, vol. 8, 852–854.

13 Mill, James, Analysis, vol. 2, 235 n.Google Scholar

14 Bowring, John, ed., The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 1 (11 vols.; New York: Russell & Russell, 1962),Google Scholar 16. In the sections on Bentham I have been greatly helped and my discussion has been much influenced by my reading of L. W. Sumner's unpublished manuscript on Bentham, in particular, chap. 4, “Utility”, and chap. 5, “The Principle of Utility”.

15 Ibid., Vol. 4, 540.

16 CW, vol. 7, 65.

17 Ibid., 67–68.

18 Ibid., 995.

19 Ibid., 74. In his conclusion, he groups quality and quantity together, but separates them from relation.

20 Ibid., vol. 10, 211. See also vol. 10, 213, 214, 419–420, 422, 484–485; Mill, James, Analysis, vol. 2, 252–255 n.Google Scholar; Mill, J. S., Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1867), 44–45Google Scholar.

21 Rem Edwards, Pleasures and Pains, for example, makes this error (see 32).

22 Jan Narveson has an interpretation of Mill which is in some respects similar. See Narveson, Jan, Morality and Utility (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), 79–82Google Scholar.

23 Bradley, F. H., Ethical Studies (2nd ed.; London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 138.Google Scholar

24 Whewell, William, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, 1862).Google Scholar

25 CW, vol. 10, 190.

26 Ibid., 237.

27 Ibid., 206–207; vol. 8, 951–952.

28 Whewell, , Lectures, 4.Google Scholar

29 CW, vol. 10, 187–189.

30 Ibid., 178–179.

31 Bradley, , Ethical Studies, 119.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., 118.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid., 119.

36 As Wesley Mitchell correctly points out, in some of his writings Bentham claims that units can be identified and intensity measured. See Halévy, Elie, La Formation du Radicalisme Philosophique, vol. 1 (Paris: Ancienne Librairie Germer Bailliere, 1901), 398.Google Scholar Also quoted by Mitchell, Wesley, “Bentham's Felicific Calculus”, in Jeremy Bentham: Ten Critical Essays, ed. Parekh, Bhikhu (London: Frank Cass, 1974). 172.Google Scholar However, in other places he thinks differently (see Bowring, Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 4, 542).

37 See, for example, Cowan, J. L., Pleasure and Pain (London: St. Martin's Press, 1968), 178Google Scholar; and Lewis, Thomas, Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1942), 88Google Scholar.

38 The discussion of Mill's doctrine of cultivation which explains the education of competent agents as this relates to his procedure for measuring value is the subject of another paper. See my “John Stuart Mill's Doctrine of Cultivation”, forthcoming in Douglas Long, ed., Ethics and Social Science in the Age of Enlightenment.

39 CW, vol. 10, 213.