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The Greek Origins of J. S. Mill's Happiness*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Geraint Williams
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Extract

The larger topic which interests me is the general influence of the Greeks on Mill but here I shall concentrate on one aspect of this larger problem – can some of the difficulties which Mill is seen as getting into with his modified utilitarianism be better understood through an appreciation of the primacy of Greek views on happiness instead of the usual emphasis given to the Benthamite starting-point? The traditional objections to Mill's version of utility hardly need rehearsing: how can he admit a qualitative element into a scale which only objectively measures quantity? How can he include the higher nature of man in a scheme which only recognizes pleasures and pains? Whether these and other criticisms lead the commentator to condemn Mill's attempt or whether they act as a springboard to discover a plausible defence of Mill, there is today a consensus that Mill's trouble arises from tampering with Bentham as a result of later alien influences.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 5 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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Footnotes

*

This article was originally presented as a paper to the Fourth Conference of the International Society for Utilitarian Studies, held in Tokyo, Japan, in August 1994.

References

1 I have considered this at greater length in an article ‘J. S. Mill on the Greeks: History Put to Use’, The Mill News Letter, xvii (1982), 1–11Google Scholar.

2 Scarre, Geoffrey, ‘Epicurus as a Forerunner of Utilitarianism’, Utilitas, vi (1994), 219–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Mill, John Stuart, Appendix B, Autobiography and Literary Essays, ed. Robson, John M.and Stillinger, Jack, Toronto, 1981Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (hereafter CW), i.551–81.

4 Mill, James, ‘Education’, James Mill on Education, ed. Burston, W. H., Cambridge, 1969, p. 92Google Scholar.

5 Ibid., p. 112.

6 Ibid., p. 63.

7 Mill, John Stuart, Essays on Philosophy and the Classics, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1978Google Scholar, CW, xi.150.

8 John Stuart Mill, ‘On Genius’, CW, i.330.

9 Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism, Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1969Google Scholar, CW, x.235.