John Stuart Mill believes that it creates pleasure in life when people engage in ethical actions and all that every human being wants in life is pleasure and not pain. Comparably, other utilitarian’s believe that all things worthy having are pleasurable experiences. It is unfortunate that not all experiences bring pleasure, they can still cause pain. According to Mill, utilitarianism is based on the principle that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Mill, 2001). When there is happiness, there is pleasure and no pain and when there is unhappiness, there is no pleasure and pain takes over. The happiness should for the good of all and not and individual.
John Stuart Mill describes happiness as the, absence of pain and the presence of pleasure. He argues that one’s pleasure differs in quantity and quality and it depends on their culture and education. Mill in the utilitarian principle affirms that, one’s achievement of their goals is counted on their happiness and they have to act in the right way in order to ultimately achieve the happiness they desire or else al they will achieve is pain.
Mill accounts for justice as a moral requirement that is higher other than others. This is for the simple reason that justice concerns the well being of individuals and it is a moral requirement with many obligations. Justice is the most important part of morality and it concerns the well being of humans. When moral rules are put in place, people will not harm others and this brings happiness. According to Mill, every human being is entitled to happiness and not just happiness, but equal claim to it and therefore justice should be preserved to forbid people from hurting others (West, 2004). Moreover, if justice prevails among people, there will be peace and therefore no pain but happiness. Justice is grounded on happiness. Furthemore, there are many applications of justice and it is very hard to determine what is just and unjust. Mill contends that the two likely components of justice are the desire to punish people who have done harm to others either in self defense or out of sympathy and those who have been hurt.
If one looks outside utilitarianism, it is clear that Mill is not a psychological egoist. There is clear evidence that he doubts psychological egoism and hedonism compared to his fellow utilitarian’s. Mill rejects the psychological egoism and hedonism doctrines. Furthermore, his pleasure doctrine shows that he is a happiness perfectionist. What one person sees as happiness is not what the other considers as happiness too. Mill argues that an individual’s happiness is good for them and for other people. This is much unfounded because one person’s happiness cannot be everybody’s happiness. Some people can become happy by hurting other people and this makes his arguments void. Another problem of utilitarianism is that it gives conditions on what one should do in order to achieve happiness with their actions. Furthermore, it does not differentiate the sources of utility as everything is just general.
According to Mill, the happiness of all should be considered when one acts meaning that a number of people should be pleased by one’s actions. In my assessment, this is not possible because one has to consider their own happiness first before the happiness of the others. It is a fact that when one is unhappy, there is no way they will make others happy. On the contrary, utilitarianism helps protect and formulate the public policy since it protects everyone’s interests and this brings peace and happiness to all.
In conclusion, Mill is a utilitarian who believes that when actions are in the right proportion, one achieves higher levels of happiness and pleasure and when they are not in the right proportion, pain is achieved. Therefore if an individual achieves an ethical behavior, they will experience pleasure and if they achieve an unethical behavior, they will have to experience pain. Utilitarianism mainly focuses on the consequences of one’s actions and the motivation behind one engaging in the action. People have to act with expectations that they will be happy since no one would want to achieve pain as a result of their actions.
Mill states that one can determine whether an action is good by the end results of the action. When the end results are happiness and pleasure the action is good and when the action brings pain, it is unethical. Justice is a moral result since it concerns the well being of everyone and therefore if it prevails, there will be no pain but happiness and pleasure.
References
Mill, J.S. (2001). Utilitarianism. New York: Hacked Publishers.
West, H. (2004). An Introduction to Mill's Utilitarianism, New York: Cambridge University Press.
