Key Concept
God as God – The phrase “God as God” is basically a synonym for “God the subject.” In other words, it refers to God precisely in God’s status as an incomprehensible divine Other.
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Lots of things make us happy. Eating chocolate. Winning a race. Joking with friends. Being loved. But what do these things all have in common? What even is happiness? The Declaration of Independence famously puts “the pursuit of happiness” front and center as one of our inalienable rights. But being able to do this requires first recognizing the thing we’re pursuing.
These questions matter not only so we can lead good lives, but because moral thinking is concerned with how we treat other people. It seems good to make people happy. But how important is this compared to, say, making them free, or treating them fairly? Could happiness be the only thing that matters?
Today, we’ll consider John Stuart Mill’s answer to these questions. He thought not only that happiness was good, but that it was the only good, and that every action’s rightness depended on how much happiness it produced.
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was an English philosopher who is considered one of the most influential political thinkers to have ever lived. A child prodigy who was given a very rigorous education, he could read ancient Greek at seven and sat university entrance exams at age twelve. He was also tutored by Jeremy Bentham, a very influential moral philosopher. 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. He was also notable for arguing that women should have the right to vote, against the prevailing views of society at the time.
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 utilitarianism, which helps outline Mill’s version of the theory and how it works. If you’re interested, the full text of Utilitarianism can be found here.
Utility – The thing that is ultimately valuable in itself. For Mill, this is happiness, which he then understands as pleasure and the absence of pain.
Utilitarianism – A normative theory of which actions are right or wrong. Utilitarianism says the right action is that which maximises utility.
The Doctrine of Swine – An objection that utilitarianism entails that if people would be happy rolling in mud, that’s what would be morally best for them to do, so we should reject the theory.
Higher and Lower Pleasures – Types of pleasures that differ in terms of their quality. Things like food and drugs create lower pleasures. Things like intellectual pursuits and doing the right thing create higher forms of pleasure.
The Greatest Happiness Principle – A principle which says that actions are right insofar as they promote happiness and wrong insofar as they promote unhappiness.
Moral theories need to tell us what things count as good, or what we should care about when deciding how to act. Utilitarians think utility is good, but what is that? Mill starts the chapter by laying out what utility is, responding to some misconceptions, and then using this to fill in his moral theory:
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Those who know anything about the matter are aware that every writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, who maintained the theory of utility, meant by it, not something to be contradistinguished from pleasure, but pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain; and instead of opposing the useful to the agreeable or the ornamental, have always declared that the useful means these, among other things. Yet the common herd, including the herd of writers, not only in newspapers and periodicals, but in books of weight and pretension, are perpetually falling into this shallow mistake. Having caught up the word utilitarian, while knowing nothing whatever about it but its sound, they habitually express by it the rejection, or the neglect, of pleasure in some of its forms; of beauty, of ornament, or of amusement.
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. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure […] pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.
Because ‘pleasure’ and ‘utility’ are different words, it can be easy to take them to mean different things, and ‘utility’ gets used by people outside of philosophy in other ways (economists, for example, think of it as the satisfaction derived from consuming a good or service). Mill is clear that he thinks utility consists of pleasure, and that pleasure can come in many forms.
Utilitarianism also cares about happiness. But this isn’t yet another variable: Mill thinks happiness just is pleasure and the absence of pain, so happiness is also equivalent to utility. Not only is happiness good, it is the only thing that is good in itself. Other things can be good by helping us achieve pleasure (money can be used to buy ice cream, which tastes good), but those things don’t matter themselves when deciding what the right thing to do is. If a decision would make more money, but that money would never make anyone feel more pleasure, then that decision wouldn’t be worthwhile.
Mill isn’t the first to think that utility or happiness is concerned with pleasure. But happiness seems to be much broader than pleasure, and some people in Mill’s time used this discrepancy to object to his theory with something called The Doctrine of Swine objection. He, however, thinks there is a reply to the objection, which is that pleasure can come in a wide variety of forms:
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Now, such a theory of life excites in many minds, and among them in some of the most estimable in feeling and purpose, inveterate dislike. To suppose that life has (as they express it) no higher end than pleasure—no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit—they designate as utterly mean and grovelling; as a doctrine worthy only of swine […]
The comparison […] to that of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely because a beast’s pleasures do not satisfy a human being’s conceptions of happiness. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification [… we] assign to the pleasures of the intellect; of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation.
Since we naturally like beautiful things, pleasant things, and things that benefit us, we can be trained to do noble deeds by receiving beautiful, pleasant, or otherwise beneficial rewards in exchange for our good actions. Since we naturally dislike ugly things, painful things, and things that hurt us, we can be trained to avoid evil deeds by receiving ugly, painful, or otherwise harmful consequences for bad action. If we aren’t trained in this way, then we will likely pursue pleasure to an extreme, since pleasure is our instinctual desire as animals.
The argument Mill is considering looks something like this:
Premise 1: If utilitarianism is true, the best life for people is a life spent pursuing pleasurable experiences.
Premise 2: A life spent pursuing pleasurable experiences is analogous to the kind of life had by a pig that just eats and rolls in mud: one filled with pleasurable sensations, but which never aims for anything important.
Conclusion: If utilitarianism is true, the best life for people would be the kind of life that has lots of pleasurable sensations but never aims for anything important, like a happy pig.
This argument is valid, so if the premises are true, then the conclusion is true as well. But this conclusion strikes people as absurd, which leads them to reject Premise 1 and say that utilitarianism is false.
Mill argues that the error is actually Premise 2. Because his opponents have a mistaken idea about what counts as pleasure, the best life for humans isn’t analogous to the life of a pig, even if that kind of life would create the most intense and longest lasting pleasure for them. When considering humans, we also need to take into account the quality of those pleasures, which things like intellectual pursuits can provide. There can be what he calls higher and lower pleasures. While things like eating chocolate, being drunk, and (for some people) rolling in mud create pleasurable sensations, these are merely lower pleasures. Higher pleasures include things like reading a book, doing philosophy, or enjoying art.
If we agree with Mill that there is a difference between higher and lower pleasures, then how can we work out which ones are ‘high’ and which are ‘low’? Let’s see what Mill says:
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If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.
Mill claims we can know there’s a difference between higher and lower types of pleasures because people who have experienced both will choose one even though it is less intense. When we try to make ourselves happy, we don’t always choose things that produce the most intense pleasure. Can you think of examples of things that create utility for you but which aren’t very intense? Why do you prefer them to some other pleasures that are more intense, and is it because they seem like higher forms of pleasure to you?
Having established a method for distinguishing higher and lower pleasures, Mill returns to considering The Doctrine of Swine objection and shows why utilitarians will not be worried by it:
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Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what they possess more than he for the most complete satisfaction of all the desires which they have in common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that to escape from it they would exchange their lot for almost any other, however undesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence […] It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.
In this famous passage, Mill curtly summarises why a moral theory emphasizing pleasure without distinguishing between qualities of pleasure goes badly wrong. Even though his version of utilitarianism says pleasure is the only type of thing that is valuable, this doesn’t entail accepting that living like a pig is valuable.
Mill now turns to examining what utilitarianism means in practice. Because utilitarianism cares about overall happiness, it means we need to care about everyone’s happiness when deciding what to do. We need to follow The Greatest Happiness Principle, taking into account what effects our actions will have on everyone over the long term, not just those who are near and dear to us. This feels quite demanding, and is different to how most people engage in moral decision-making:
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I must again repeat, what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent’s own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness, or (as speaking practically it may be called) the interest, of every individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole
The objection to utilitarianism is that we cannot expect people to be impartial and to constantly put other people’s ends above their own self-interest. To this, Mill replies that we should arrange society so that people’s self-interest is in harmony with the collective good. This means that by being self-interested they will help the good. Giving rewards, status and fame to people who improve society can significantly change the behavior of even very self-interested people.
Mill also thinks we should educate everyone in a way that will make them into the kinds of people who want to become happy by promoting others’ happiness. We’ve all felt the ‘warm glow’ that comes from helping others, and trying to get more of that pleasure will probably have good effects for all.
Mill then considers a second objection to utilitarianism’s requirement that we care about everyone’s overall happiness. This is that we cannot expect people to always act out of concern for the common good. Even if people wanted to end up doing things that improve overall happiness, it is too much to expect them to single-mindedly do so only because it will improve overall happiness:
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The objectors to utilitarianism cannot always be charged with representing it in a discreditable light. On the contrary, those among them who entertain anything like a just idea of its disinterested character, sometimes find fault with its standard as being too high for humanity. They say it is exacting too much to require that people shall always act from the inducement of promoting the general interests of society. But this is to mistake the very meaning of a standard of morals, and confound the rule of action with the motive of it. It is the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties, or by what test we may know them; but no system of ethics requires that the sole motive of all we do shall be a feeling of duty […] He who saves a fellow creature from drowning does what is morally right, whether his motive be duty, or the hope of being paid for his trouble; he who betrays the friend that trusts him, is guilty of a crime, even if his object be to serve another friend to whom he is under greater obligations.
Mill replies that he is giving a theory of right action, and this theory does not care about motives. People can improve others’ happiness for any reason they like, and this will not change whether their action counts as right. If a billionaire donates all their money to charity simply to get a lot of attention, this does not mean their action—donating to charity—is wrong, because the happiness produced will be the same regardless of their motives for donating. A world full of selfish people who manage to save the poor and make everyone happy seems preferable to a world full of saints who have good intentions but never make anyone better off.
Even if we accept utilitarianism, it is commonly objected that it is far too hard to follow The Greatest Happiness Principle in practice. Calculating the long-term effects of every action on every other person seems like the kind of thing even a super-computer would struggle with. Isn’t it a problem for utilitarianism that this seems so difficult? Mill thinks not:mindedly do so only because it will improve overall happiness:
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Defenders of utility often find themselves called upon to reply to such objections as this- that there is not time, previous to action, for calculating and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the general happiness. This is exactly as if any one were to say that it is impossible to guide our conduct by Christianity, because there is not time, on every occasion on which anything has to be done, to read through the Old and New Testaments. The answer to the objection is, that there has been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the human species. During all that time, mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of actions; on which experience all the prudence, as well as all the morality of life, are dependent. People talk as if the commencement of this course of experience had hitherto been put off, and as if, at the moment when some man feels tempted to meddle with the property or life of another, he had to begin considering for the first time whether murder and theft are injurious to human happiness […] mankind must by this time have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some actions on their happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules of morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher until he has succeeded in finding better […] The corollaries from the principle of utility, like the precepts of every practical art, admit of indefinite improvement, and, in a progressive state of the human mind, their improvement is perpetually going on.
Mill grants that we won’t always know for certain what the right thing to do is. For example, by saving someone’s life, we can’t be certain that they won’t then go on to become a ruthless dictator. But this is true of many moral theories: making the right decisions requires a lot of education, practice, and information. Additionally, we can usually make educated guesses about what the effects of our actions will be. Saving lives is almost always the right thing to do, even if we don’t know what the person we save will do in the future. If our educated guesses are wrong, that is simply all the more reason to practice more, try harder, and learn more about what kinds of things produce happiness, not to reject utilitarianism entirely.
In recent years, a movement has sprung up to try and work out which kinds of charitable causes produce the best outcomes, and this is known as Effective Altruism. In addition to arguing that most people should be donating more to charity, they also argue we should think more about which charities are most effective. For example, the money used to train one seeing-eye dog can instead be used to cure several people in developing nations of blindness. Effective Altruists—and most people who endorse utilitarianism—will thus say that anyone who donates to seeing-eye dog training won’t be doing the right thing, since this isn’t the option that has the best effects.
In Chapter 1 of Utilitarianism, Mill remarks on how little progress has been made in developing a moral theory everyone can agree upon. He then tries to argue for a foundational principle that underlies all the moral beliefs that most people do agree upon, which he calls “The Greatest Happiness Principle”.
Chapter 2 of Utilitarianism (which you just read) explains what this principle entails. Mill lays out what counts as happiness (pleasure and the absence of pain) and what it means for an action to be right (the action is that which maximises overall happiness), responding to many objections along the way. He thinks that it isn’t a doctrine for swine because we can distinguish between higher and lower pleasures, that it isn’t too demanding, that motives aren’t what determine rightness, and that we are usually capable of knowing what the effects of our actions will be.
For a recap of Chapter 2 of Utilitarianism, and more detail on how Mill thinks about moral decision-making, check out this video:
If you’re curious to learn more about Mill’s theory, you can read Chapter 3 (on by what means we can get others to accept utilitarian principles), Chapter 4 (on how to demonstrate that his theory is the correct one), and Chapter 5 (on the connection between utilitarianism and justice). For more on utilitarianism generally, check out this page from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
This work has been adapted from Utilitarianism, a title from the Toronto Metropolitan University’s online library. This work is in the public domain. All images were created using Midjourney and are the property of the Philosophy Teaching Library.
Piovarchy, Adam. 2024. “Pleasure, Happiness, and the Moral Life: John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism, Chapter 2.” The Philosophy Teaching Library. Edited by Robert Weston Siscoe, <https://philolibrary.crc.nd.edu/article/pleasure-equals-happiness/>.
God as God – The phrase “God as God” is basically a synonym for “God the subject.” In other words, it refers to God precisely in God’s status as an incomprehensible divine Other.
Incarnation – The Christian doctrine of the incarnation is the notion that the word of God became fully human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It is closely associated with the doctrine of the trinity, which asserts that God the Father, God the Son (Jesus as the word made flesh), and God the Holy Spirit are one God.
Religious Fanaticism – In Feuerbach’s use of the term, a religious fanatic is someone who is unwaveringly faithful to God as an utterly mysterious superhuman being. They subordinate other things—especially the love of other humans—to submission before this divine other.
God the Subject – When Feuerbach refers to God as a subject, he is referring to the commonplace religious belief that God is a being who has various attributes, like a loving nature.
Faith Separates Man From God – Faith separates God from man in this sense: it treats God as a mysterious other, a being radically distinct from us.
Faith – Belief in and fidelity to a transcendent divine subject like God.
Orthodoxy – Orthodoxy refers to “right belief,” and it is concern with identifying heresies and ensuring that people believe and practice correctly.
Indirect Form of Self-Knowledge – Feuerbach’s view is that religious belief is a naive way of relating to our human nature and its perfections. It is naive or childlike because it treats these as external realities that belong to God. He believes a mature and contemplative person realizes these don’t belong to God, but rather to our species, abstractly conceived.
Above the Individual Man – The human perfections are “above the individual” insofar as no particular individual ever perfectly realizes them. They are abstractions.
Divine Trinity – Feuerbach is having fun here. He is using the theological phrasing of the Trinity to talk about human perfections. In calling reason, love, and freedom of the will “divine,” he means they are absolutely good; they are activities whose goodness is intrinsic to their practice or exercise. This isn’t a novel philosophical view. For example, Immanuel Kant argued that autonomy or a good will is the only thing which is unconditionally good.
Perfections – The end to which a faculty or power is ordered. For example, omniscience would be the perfection of the intellect. Traditionally, God is said to possess all perfections.
Love – When Feuerbach writes about love, he is referring to unconditional concern for others and the desire for fellowship with them. He is here asserting that love, understood in this sense, is the perfect activity of the affective faculty. In other words, our feelings and passions are fully actualized and engaged in an intrinsically valuable activity when we genuinely love others.
Infinite – The infinite is whatever can be understood as unbounded or unlimited. Human nature in the abstract is unbounded and unlimited. It is only bounded or limited in its concrete form as it is realized by particular material individuals.
Higher Consciousness – The sort of consciousness that mature human beings possess, but which other animals do not. It is “higher” than animal consciousness because it involves thinking abstractly about the form or essence of things.
Science – Feuerbach uses the term science in its classical sense, meaning systematically organized knowledge. Any body of knowledge founded on an understanding of first principles and the essences of things is a science in this sense.
Popular Sovereignty – The view that a government’s authority to rule comes from the people, making a ruler subject to the will of their citizens.
The Divine Right of Kings – The theory that kings are chosen by God and thus that political revolt is a rebellion against the will of God.
Synthesis – The prefix ‘syn-’ means “together,” so a synthesis “brings together” or combines elements of both a thesis and its antithesis.
Antithesis– An antithesis is the contradiction of a thesis. For example, internationalism could be understood as the antithesis of nationalism.
Thesis – In Hegelian terms, a thesis can be understood as a position or theory. Examples include any of the “-isms” that we discuss in science, history, and philosophy, such as Darwinism, capitalism, nationalism, etc.
Progressor’s Temptation – a unique temptation for those making progress in which pride impedes their further progress and leads to backsliding.
Progressors – those who are not yet expert Stoic practitioners, but who are also aware of the fact that they must change their lives in that direction. They are working on making progress.
Intellectualism – the philosophical view that our motivations and emotions are all judgments. The reason why you do something, your motivation, is because you believe it’s the right thing to do. The reason why you feel good or bad about something, an emotion, is because you believe that something good or bad happened to you.
Duties – acts of service, obedience, and respect that we owe to each other. The duties we owe to each other depend on what kind of relationship we have.
Askeses – exercises of Stoic thought and practice that make the lessons and habits of Stoic philosophy second-nature for Stoic practitioners.
Externals – things that are not under our control but that are all-too-easily confused with things that should be important to us, like wealth, status, and pleasure. Too many people believe externals like these are necessary for the good life, and the Stoic path is to focus not on these things but rather what is up to us.
The Fundamental Division – the division between things that are under our direct control and those that are not. The important lesson is to care only about the things we can control.
The Greatest Happiness Principle – A principle which says that actions are right insofar as they promote happiness and wrong insofar as they promote unhappiness