Bentham And Mill: Two Different Utilitarians: Example Essay By An Expert Writer To Follow

There are many different ways to think about how to lead the good life. One of these is Utilitarianism is one of these schools of morality, of which John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham were two of the greatest exponents. This arose as a critique of deontological moral theories, like that of Immanuel Kant. Utilitarians believed that “actions are moral if they produce the greatest benefit” (Week 131 Notes 2); as such, both Mill and Bentham took into account the consequences of the action, not just the action itself, in order to establish that which would lead to the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest amount of people.
Nevertheless, Bentham’s theory of pleasure is evidently different than Mill’s. The former emphasized the quantity of pleasure, while Mill believed that one should take into account its quality as well. Furthermore, the latter believed that one should consider social utility along with pleasure, even though Bentham stressed that one should take into account what caused pleasure for the individuals. For Mill, the inclusion of the individuals and their personality should be oriented into social well-being for everybody, including at an institutional level.
As a consequence, it should come to no surprise that Bentham’s theory of pleasure was very controversial for its day. This was mainly due to the fact that he considered the pleasure and pain of all sentient beings to have the same value. Therefore, people would see themselves as being reduced to animals, including swine. It failed to take into account the more philosophical components of the human, which many people thought was unacceptable. This was obviously even worse in a time when the rational aspects of humans was being started to be taken into account again.
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