Utilitarianism: And the 1868 Speech on Capital Punishment

John Stuart Mill, 1806-73, worked for the East India Co. helped run Colonial India from England. Minister of Parliament 1865-68 he served one term. Maiden speech was a disaster his second was great success. He was first MP to propose that women should be given the vote on equal footing with the men who could vote. He got 1/3 support, England gives franchise to women after U.S. He was a great Feminist, his essay "Subjection of Women" is written with great passion and prose. It was a brave position for him to take he was ridiculed for it. He favored democracy, and letting more men from lower classes the right to vote, but believed that people that are more educated should have more votes then less educated because they would make better decisions about what government should do. He would have wanted to extend education to the masses, so that all may have gotten 2-3 votes and so on. He didn't think it should be extended to where a small elite could carry the day on votes. The idea was that if the working class, and middle class, where divided on an issue, the people with more intelligence would have the power to tip the balance. Mill thought that people with more education would probably not only be better able to make political decisions, especially in terms of intellectually being able to see what would be best for the government to do, but that they would also be more concerned about the common good publicly then people in general. He was intensely educated by his father James. John could read Greek, and Latin at 6 yrs.; his Dad tutored him at home. Dad thought environment was everything. He was treated like an adult, never played games with kids; he had a very cerebral upbringing. He had a period of depression in his twenties, it changed his philosophy, and he recognized the importance of developing feelings along with the intellect, this is something that he stressed in his work. He read poetry to get out of depression; he became devoted to poetry and became a romantic. He fell in love with a married woman Harriet Taylor, was a platonic relationship, after her husband's death they married 3 years later and probably never consummated the marriage maybe due to his having syphilis. His dedication to "On Liberty" is to her, very devoted to each other. Both buried together in Avignon France where they used to vacation. Mill as a moral theorist subscribed to a theory we call Utilitarianism. It means---In some way morality is about the maximization of happiness. Whether actions are right or wrong depends on how happiness can be most effectively maximized. I say in some way, because there are allot of different kinds of Utilitarians. Allot of different ways of saying exactly how it is the maximization of happiness comes into morality. Therefore, happiness is clearly an important idea for Utilitarians. Mill has a hedonistic view of happiness, he thinks that happiness can be defined in terms of "pleasure in the absence of pai

If someone would like to know what Utilitarianism is, this is the book. But if someone thinks to find in the Utilitarianism a moral standard to follow, this is just one of the books. According to the Mill' theory, we should always act in a manner that will maximize overal happines and in this essay John Stuart Mill wrote which are the effects of each possible action we may perform. The Speech on Capital Punishment tells one of this possible action.

I read this book for a graduate Mill seminar in Philosophy. Recommended reading for anyone interested in philosophy, political science, and history. John Stuart Mill, 1806-73, worked for the East India Co. helped run Colonial India from England. Minister of Parliament 1865-68 he served one term. Mill develops a theory of morality in Utilitarianism. He argues against the group of people who think that morality is intuitive. Intuitionists think that God put morality in us, thus, morality is a priori. Moral rules or principles were programmed in us, we can see these rules, they are binding, however they do acknowledge that on a case by case basis we still need to use them to reason out the ultimate answer for a particular case. Mill also believes that there are a set of moral principles that we ought to be thinking about. Intuitionists today think that case by case we can reason out what is right or wrong. However, they would be suspicious that of believing there were general moral principles. Intuitionists say it is not up to us to investigate what is right or wrong. Mill would disagree. Mill doesn't like Intuitionists theory because they can't prove their view; and they can't explain why "lying is wrong" as an example. In addition, they do not provide a list of these innate morals we are suppose to have, and they do not have a hierarchy for them to resolve the conflict between two morals when they arise. Background on essay, written in 1861 came out in 3 magazine articles, pretty scanty which sometimes drives one crazy trying to deduce what Mill is saying. A lot of interpretation is necessary. Chapter 2: The second paragraph is official statement of the theory. "The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." Happiness=pleasure and freedom from pain. This makes him a Hedonist philosophically. Higher Pleasures Doctrine- Jeremy Bentham says how valuable pleasure was based on 2 dimensions that we evaluate our experience of pleasure by, intensity and duration. Bentham says this determines quantity in pleasure. Bentham said this determined how much a given experience adds to a person's happiness. Mill adds a third value to evaluate pleasure by and that's its quality, how good it is. Many don't understand Mill's idea that pleasure has value and quality. Most people think that Mill is really talking about quantity, or they don't believe one can be a hedonist, that pleasure is the only thing that has value, and yet think that there is something more to judging how valuable an experience is than the intensity and the duration of the pleasure it contains. So, they say that one of two things must be going on here. Of course, some people are sure it is one thing, and some are sure it is another. Either what Mill is talking about when y

'Utilitarianism' by 19th Century English social philosopher, John Stuart Mill is the classic statement of a theory of ethics which is bases its argument primarily on the question of 'What is Good' instead of questions of obligation on which many other classic theories are based. Today, Mill's theory and Utilitarianism in general fall under the shadow of an equally famous work by English philosopher, G. E. Moore, the great analytical work 'Principia Ethica'. Utilitarianism is based on determining what is good by what provides the greatest pleasure for the greatest number of people. All by itself, this theory leaves itself open to all sorts of difficult questions about whether great good for a large number of people is worth the suffering of a single individual and all sorts of variations on this theme. Moore's argument is simply that these problems simply point up the fact that what is moral cannot be reduced to statements of fact, such as the amount of pleasure received by a number of people. Oddly enough, Moore did not kill Utilitarianism. That is why Mill's work is still studied today. Unlike scientific theories, philosophical theories, being different ways of looking at the world, never entirely loose their insights, even some of the most absurd sounding notions such as Bishop Berkeley's solipsism. Like Kant's short 'Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals', the greatest virtue of this book is that it is a classic statement of an important position by it's most famous proponent in a relatively short work. It is not easy reading, but it's length means one can read and analyze it within the course of a week, which is why professors still assign it. A very important work.

You can read Rand, Emerson and Hayek. You can even marvel at the orations of Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson. There is still not a single book that defends individual liberty and individual spirit as well as J.S. Mill's "On Liberty." First, it must be said; If we are judging by original philosophical arguments, Mill is not much. His "Utilitarianism" (on which much of "On Liberty" was built) has been attacked from many angles. His "Representative Government" is better replaced by Locke's "Second Treatise" or (if you've time to kill), Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws." I still give this five stars though because "On Liberty" is just that good. I've already read it 5 times in '02!What makes it so gosh-durn tasty is that it is the first book- to my knowledge- to defend individual liberty without stooping to the 'natural rights' or 'social contract' balderdash. Liberty, Mill argues, is good for a few reasons. First, it maximizes debate which helps avoid the stifler of all societies, dogmatism. It is also the best way not to screw things up, meaning, that people know their interests better than others. As the reviewer below points out, Mill does disdain majority rule though it's not out of contempt for the masses (Mill is clear this is not what he means.) Rather, his view is that majority rule leads to tyranny just as fast as despotic rule. What it boils down to is that Mill defends democracy, liberty, skepticism and tradition (yes..simultaneously) as long as each AVOIDS dogmatic thinking and operates while keeping the individual sacrosanct. Ya know..come to think of it...Bush, Gore, Dashcale, Gephardt, Hatch, Lott and the entire beltway clan might benefit from this read. I wonder if they can understand such big thoughts?! Just kidding!! (No, I'm not!) ;-/