6.6: John Stuart Mill – On Utilitarianism

Chapter 2: What Utilitarianism Is. A passing remark is all that needs be given to the ignorant blunder of supposing that those who stand up for utility as the test of right and wrong, use the term in that restricted and merely colloquial sense in which utility is …

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism - Ethics, Morality, Society: The influence of utilitarianism has been widespread, permeating the intellectual life of the last two centuries. Its significance in law, politics, and economics is especially notable. The utilitarian theory of the justification of punishment stands in opposition to the "retributive" theory, according to which …

The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number John Stuart Mill…

Although Mill was a utilitarian too, he also provided important justifications for free speech and liberalism which are still reflected in modern laws and institutions. ... You'll be reading Chapter 2 from Mill's Utilitarianism, which lays out Mill's moral philosophy. This chapter considers and responds to several objections to ...

Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy

This is really part of a larger criticism of the conception of psychology and human nature underlying Benthamite utilitarianism, which Mill elaborates in his essays "On Bentham" (1838) and "Remarks on Bentham's Philosophy". Mill links Bentham's faults to the narrowness of his philosophy and personality.

Utilitarianism – A Level Philosophy & Religious Studies

Mill's Rule utilitarianism attempts to solve those kinds of issues too. The rule of the harm principle will result in a happier society than one which doesn't. Since torture is harm, Mill's utilitarianism can overrule individual cases where torture might result in happiness. Mill does not believe in rights.

Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill Plot Summary

The stated purpose of John Stuart Mill 's Utilitarianism is deceptively simple: the author wants to clearly explain his utilitarian ethical philosophy and respond to the most common criticisms of it. In many instances, however, the book is much more layered and complex: Mill often references other important ethical systems (like Kant 's deontological ethics …

Introduction to Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism: Crash Course Philosophy #36; Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek & Peter Singer (2017). Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ... John Stuart Mill (1863). Utilitarianism. Henry Sidgwick (1874). The Methods of Ethics. Further Reading. Julia Driver (2014). The History of Utilitarianism.

John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill. John Stuart Mill (1806–73) was the most influential English language philosopher of the nineteenth century. He was a naturalist, a utilitarian, and a …

Works of John Stuart Mill and his understanding of Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill, (born May 20, 1806, London, Eng.—died May 8, 1873, Avignon, France), British philosopher and economist, the leading expositor of utilitarianism.He was educated exclusively and exhaustively by his father, James Mill.By age 8 he had read in the original Greek Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, and all of Herodotus, and he had begun a …

Works of John Stuart Mill and his understanding …

Utilitarianism, in normative ethics, a tradition stemming from the late 18th- and 19th-century English philosophers and economists Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill according to which an action (or type of action) is …

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is one of the most influential theories of contemporary moral and political theory. It "arguably has the distinction of being the moral theory that, more than any other, shapes the discipline of moral theory and forms the background against which rival theories are imagined, refined, and articulated" (Eggleston and Miller 2014, 1).

Three Basic Principles of Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is one of the most important and influential moral theories of modern times. In many respects, it is the outlook of Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) and his writings from the mid-18th century. But it received both its name and its clearest statement in the writings of English philosophers Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) …

John Stuart Mill | Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill was born in 1806, in London. He was the son of James Mill, a friend of Jeremy Bentham's who shared many of his principles. James intended that his son carry on the radical utilitarian empiricist tradition, and this was reflected in his upbringing: John learned Greek and arithmetic at 3, and helped to edit his father's book (the History of …

Elements and Types of Utilitarianism

Introduction. As explained in Chapter 1: Introduction to Utilitarianism, the core idea of utilitarianism is that we should want to improve the well-being of everyone by as much as possible.Utilitarian theories share four elements: consequentialism, welfarism, impartiality, and aggregationism. Classical utilitarianism is distinctive because it accepts two …

Consequentialism

1. Classic Utilitarianism. The paradigm case of consequentialism is utilitarianism, whose classic proponents were Jeremy Bentham (1789), John Stuart Mill (1861), and Henry Sidgwick (1907).

An Introduction to Mill's Utilitarian Ethics

John Stuart Mill was the leading British philosopher of the nineteenth century and his famous essay Utilitarianism is the most influential statement of the philosophy of utilitarianism: that actions, laws, policies and institutions are to be evaluated by their utility or contribution to good or bad consequences.

John Stuart Mill: Main Ideas

Mill was raised with an advanced education and was translating Greek before he was even in his teens. His teacher and mentor, Jeremy Bentham, was an enormous influence on his philosophy, but Mill was able to minimize most of the major flaws in Bentham's version of Utilitarianism to allow it to hold the status that it currently …

Utilitarianism – A Level Philosophy & Religious Studies

Arguably the question of how exactly to categorise Mill is irrelevant and we could simply conclude that Mill's Utilitarianism is the perfect synthesis of Act and Rule Utilitarianism. It does avoid the problem of generic Rule Utilitarianism, that it either becomes a meta-ethically empty deontological theory or collapses back into Act ...

Bentham, Jeremy | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Jeremy Bentham (1748—1832) Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher and political radical. He is primarily known today for his moral philosophy, especially his principle of utilitarianism, which evaluates actions based upon their consequences.The relevant consequences, in particular, are the overall happiness created for everyone affected by …

Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy

However, nowadays Mill's greatest philosophical influence is in moral and political philosophy, especially his articulation and defense of utilitarianism and liberalism (Nicholson 1998). This entry will examine Mill's contributions to the utilitarian and liberal …

The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number John Stuart …

John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, Chapter 2. Table of Contents Adam Piovarchy Research Fellow in Philosophy, University of Notre Dame Australia. ... He was also tutored by …

10 Utilitarianism Examples (Plus Pros and Cons)

Utilitarianism is the view that one ought to promote maximal well-being, welfare, or utility. The theory evaluates the moral rightness of actions, rules, policies, motives, virtues, social institutions, etc. in terms of what delivers the most good to the most people.. According to MacAskill, Meissner, and Chappell (2022), all utilitarian theories …

Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill

by John Stuart Mill (1863) Chapter 1 General Remarks. THERE ARE few circumstances among those which make up the present condition of human knowledge, more unlike what might have been expected, or more significant of the backward state in which speculation on the most important subjects still lingers, than the little progress which has been made …

utilitarianism summary | Britannica

James Mill was a Scottish philosopher, historian, and economist. He was prominent as a representative of philosophical radicalism, a school of thought also known as Utilitarianism, which emphasized the need for a scientific basis for philosophy as well as a humanist approach to politics and

The Philosophy of Utilitarianism and the Critics of Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill's philosophy of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a philosophy of society in which every action should be done for the benefit of everyone, not merely the benefit of an individual. Mill's philosophy relies heavily on the sentiment of justice.It is human nature to react to acts of injustice, and we cannot exclude these feelings from our theory of …

Introduction (Chapter 1)

What is utilitarianism? In his brief essay Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill provides a very succinct account of the Utility Principle. Actions are right in proportion as they tend to …

Utilitarianism – Introduction to Philosophy: Ethics

While Mill argued that the notion of rights could be accounted for on purely utilitarian terms, Bentham simply dismissed it. For him such "natural rights" are "simple nonsense, natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts" (Bentham [1796] 1843, 501).

Introduction (Chapter 1)

(Mill, Utilitarianism, 55) However, this deceptively simple principle is not the whole story. Utilitarianism is a broad tradition of philosophical and social thought, not a single principle. ... Throughout the past two centuries, the utilitarian tradition has been very influential – not just within philosophy, but in the more obviously ...

John Stuart Mill | Biography, Philosophy, …

John Stuart Mill was an English philosopher, economist, and exponent of utilitarianism. He was prominent as a publicist in the reforming age of the 19th century and remains of lasting interest as a …