| An Introduction to Mill’s Utilitarianism |
| John Stuart Mill was born into an intellectually privileged family, and he was aware from an | Párr. 1 |
| early age of the British traditions of philosophy that had emerged during the Enlightenment | |
| of the 18th century. John Locke and David Hume had established a philosophy whose new | |
| empiricism stood in stark contrast to the rationalism of continental European philosophers. | |
| 5 | But during the late 18th century, Romantic ideas from Europe began to influence British | |
| moral and political philosophy. The most obvious product of this influence was | |
| utilitarianism, which was a very British interpretation of the political philosophy that had | |
| shaped the 18th-century revolutions of both Europe and America. Its originator, Jeremy | |
| Bentham, was a friend of the Mill family, and he influenced John's home education. | |
| 10 | As a philosopher Mill sets himself the task of synthesizing a valuable intellectual | Párr. 2 |
| heritage with the new 19th-century Romanticism. His approach is less skeptical than that of | |
| Hume (who argued that all knowledge comes from sense experience, and nothing is certain) | |
| and less dogmatic than Bentham (who insisted that everything be judged on its usefulness), | |
| but their empiricism and utilitarianism informed his thinking. Mill's moral and political | |
| 15 | philosophy is less extreme than his predecessors', aiming for reform rather | |
| than revolution, and it formed the basis of British Victorian liberalism. | |
| Mill supports Bentham's happiness principle, but he thinks it lacks practicality, | Párr. 3 |
| Bentham had seen the idea as depending upon an abstract "felicific calculus" (an algorithm | |
| for calculating happiness), but Mill wants to find out how it might be implemented in the real | |
| 20 | world. He is interested in the social and political implications of the principle, rather than | |
| merely its use in making moral decisions. How would legislation promoting the "greatest | |
| happiness of the greatest number" actually affect the individual? Might laws that sought to | |
| do this, enacting a kind of majority rule, actually prevent some people from achieving | |
| happiness?
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| 25 | Mill thinks that the solution is for education and public opinion to work together to | Párr. 4 |
| establish an "indissoluble association" between an individual's happiness and the good of | |
| society. As a result, people would always be motivated to act not only for their own good or | |
| happiness, but toward that of everyone. He concludes that society should therefore allow all | |
| individuals the freedom to pursue happiness. Furthermore, he says that this right should be | |
| 30 | protected by the government, and that legislation should be drawn up to protect the | |
| individual's freedom to pursue personal goals. There is, however, one situation in which this | |
| freedom should be curtailed, Mill says, and that is where one person's action impinges on | |
| the happiness of others. This is known as the "harm principle." He underlines this by pointing | |
| out that in these cases a person's "own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient | |
| 35 | warrant." | |
| Mill then turns his attention to how best to measure happiness. Bentham had | Párr. 5 |
| considered the duration and intensity of pleasures in his felicific calculus, but Mill thinks it | |
| is also important to consider the quality of pleasure. By this he is referring to the difference | |
| between a simple satisfaction of desires and sensual pleasure, and happiness gained through | |
| 40 | intellectual and cultural pursuits. In the "happiness equation" he gives more weight to higher, | |
| intellectual pleasures than to baser, physical ones. | |
| Mill was not a purely academic philosopher, and he believed his ideas should be put | Párr. 6 |
| into practice, so he considered what this might mean in terms of government and legislation. | |
| He saw any restriction of the individual's freedom to pursue happiness as a tyranny, whether | |
| 45 | this was the collective tyranny of the majority (through democratic election) or the singular | |
| rule of a despot. He therefore suggested practical measure to restrict the power of society | |
| over the individual, and to protect the rights of the individual to free expression. | |
| In his time as a Member of Parliament, Mill proposed many reforms which were not | Párr. 7 |
| to come about until much later, but his speeches brought the liberal applications of his | |
| 50 | utilitarian philosophy to the attention of a wide public. Strongly influenced by his wife | |
| Harriet Taylor-Mill, he was the first British parliamentarian to propose votes for women as | |
| part of his government reforms. His liberalist philosophy also encompassed economics, and | |
| contrary to his father's economic theories, he advocated a free-market economy where | |
| government intervention is kept to a minimum. | |
| 55 | Mill places the individual, rather than society, at the center of his utilitarian | Párr. 8 |
| philosophy. What it is important is that individuals are free to think and act as they please, | |
| without interference, even if what they do is harmful to them. Every individual, says Mill in | |
| his essay On Liberty, is "sovereign over his own body and mind." His ideas came to embody | |
| Victorian liberalism, softening radical ideas that had led to revolutions in Europe and | |
| 60 | America, and combining them with the idea of freedom from interference by authority. This, | |
| for Mill, is the basis for just governance and the means to social progress, which was an | |
| important Victorian ideal. He believes that if society leaves individuals to live in a way that | |
| makes them happy, it enables them to achieve their potential. This in turn benefits society, | |
| as the achievements of individual talents contribute to the good of all. | |
| 65 | In his own lifetime Mill was regarded as a significant philosopher, and he is now | Párr. 9 |
| considered by many to be the architect of Victorian liberalism. His utilitarian-inspired | |
| philosophy had a direct influence on social, political, philosophical, and economic thinking | |
| well into the 20th century. Modern economics has been shaped from various interpretations | |
| of his application of utilitarianism to the free market, notably by the British economist John | |
| 70 | Maynard Keynes. In the field of ethics, philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, | |
| William James, and John Rawls all took Mill as their starting point. | |
| Fuente: Buckingham, W. "Over his Own Body and Mind: John Stuart Mill (1806- | |
| 1873). (2017)" en The Philosophy Book; Big Ideas Simply Explained. DK Publishing. | |
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