Rawls J. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

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His Conception of Utility

§1. Introductory Remarks: J. S. Mill (1806–1873)

1. Mill was the eldest child of the utilitarian philosopher and economist

James Mill, who, along with Bentham, was among the leaders of the Philo-

sophical Radicals. Mill was educated entirely by his father and never at-

tended a school or university. His father made him tutor his younger sib-

lings, and Mill was kept so occupied that he was deprived of a normal

childhood.

Under his father’s tutelage, he gained at an early age full mastery of the

utilitarian theory of politics and society as well as of its associationist psy-

chology of human nature. He also mastered all his father could teach him

about Ricardian economics, and by the age of sixteen Mill was a formidable

intellectual ﬁgure in his own right.

2. Recall what we have said before: that in studying the works of the

leading writers in the philosophical tradition, one guiding precept is to

identify correctly the problems they were facing, and to understand how

they viewed them and what questions they were asking. Once we do this,

their answers will most likely seem much deeper, even if not always en-

tirely sound. Writers who, at ﬁrst, strike us as archaic and without interest,

may become illuminating and repay serious study.

Thus, as with all political philosophers, we must ask what Mill took as

his questions and what he was trying to accomplish through his writings. In

particular, we should note Mill’s choice of vocation. He did not aim to be a

scholar, or, as Kant did, to write original and systematic works in philoso-

phy, economics, or political theory, however original and systematic his

works may in fact be. Nor did Mill wish to become a political ﬁgure or a

man of party.

3. Instead Mill saw himself as an educator of enlightened and advanced

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opinion. His aim was to explain and defend what he took to be the appro-

priate fundamental philosophical, moral, and political principles in accor-

dance with which modern society should be organized. Otherwise he

thought the society of the future would not achieve the requisite harmony

and stability of an organic age, that is, an age uniﬁed by generally acknowl-

edged political and social ﬁrst principles.

The idea of an organic age (as opposed to a critical age) Mill took from

the Saint-Simonians.

Mill thought modern society would be democratic

and industrial and secular, that is, one without a state religion: a non-con-

fessional state. This was the kind of society he thought he saw coming into

being in England and elsewhere in Europe. He hoped to formulate the fun-

damental principles for such a society so they would be intelligible to the

enlightened opinion of those who had inﬂuence in political and social life.

4. I have said that it was not part of Mill’s chosen vocation that his writ-

ings should be signiﬁcant works of scholarship, or original contributions to

philosophical or social thought. In fact, however, I believe that Mill was a

deep and original thinker, but his originality is always repressed, and this for

two reasons:

First, it is required by his choice of vocation: in order to address those

who have inﬂuence in political life—those who (as he says in his review of

Tocqueville’s Democracy in America) have property, intelligence, and the

power of combination (the ability to combine with other people to get

things done, especially in government)

—his writings cannot appear too

original, too scholarly, or too difﬁcult. Otherwise, he loses his audience.

Second, Mill’s originality was repressed by his complicated psychologi-

cal relation to his father. It was, I think, impossible for him to make an open

public break with the utilitarianism of his father and Bentham. Doing so

would have given comfort to those Mill regarded as his political opponents,

the Tories who held the intuitionist conservative doctrine which he consis-

tently opposed.

However, Mill did publicly express serious reservations

about Bentham’s doctrine in two essays, “Bentham” (1838) and “Coleridge”

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1. A French sect, followers of Saint-Simon, who believed that historically organic peri-

ods are followed by critical periods, or periods characterized by doubt and skepticism.

2. John Stuart Mill, Collected Works (CW) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963–

1991), Vol. XVIII, p. 163.

3. See Mill, Whewell on Moral Philosophy (1852). CW, X.

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(1840); but not surprisingly he was more critical still in his anonymous “Re-

marks on Bentham’s Philosophy” (1833).

5. In his chosen vocation Mill surely succeeded to an extraordinary de-

gree. He became one of the most inﬂuential political and social writers of

the Victorian Age. For our purposes, understanding his vocation helps us to

understand the defects of his works: their often loose and ambiguous ter-

minology, and their almost incessant lofty style and sermonizing tone un-

troubled by self-doubt, even when the most intricate questions are being

discussed. Those who disliked him said he sought to convince, and when

that failed, to convict.

These defects are most disturbing in the later essays (after 1850, say),

which are widely read, and three of which we will be discussing: Utilitarian-

ism, On Liberty, and The Subjection of Women. By this time Mill had Eng-

land’s ear. He knew it and meant to keep it. But the most creative period of

Mill’s life is roughly 1827–1848. Anyone who doubts Mill’s extraordinary

gifts has only to consider the works of this period, beginning with the Es-

says on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (late 1830–31, the 5th es-

say partially rewritten in 1833, but not published until 1844), then the many

brilliant essays of the 1830s and A System of Logic in 1843, and on to The

Principles of Political Economy in 1848.

Despite his defects, it is a great mistake to assume a superior manner in

reading Mill. He is a great ﬁgure and deserves our attention and respect.

J. S. Mill: Biographical Data

1806 Born May 20, in London.

1809–1820 Period of intensive education at home by his father.

1820–1821 Year in France in the household of Sir Samuel Bentham.

1822 Studied law. First publication in newspapers.

1823 Begins his career in East India Company.

1823–1829 Period of study with friends in “Utilitarian Society” and at

Grote’s house.

1824 Founding of Westminster Review, for which he wrote until 1828.

1826–1827 Mental crisis.

1830 Met Harriet Taylor. In Paris during the Revolution of 1830.

1832 Death of Bentham; ﬁrst Reform Bill.

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His Conception of Utility

4. This appeared ﬁrst anonymously as Appendix B in Edward Lytton Bulwer’s England

and the English (London: Richard Bentley, 1833), in CW, X.

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1833 Publication of “Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy.”

1836 Death of Mill’s father.

1838 Publication of “Bentham” and “Coleridge” (1840).

1843 Publication of A System of Logic. Eight editions in his life.

1844 Publication of Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Econ-

omy, written 1831–32.

1848 Publication of Principles of Political Economy. Seven editions.

1851 Married Harriet Taylor, whose husband John Taylor had died in

1849.

1856 Became Chief Examiner of East India Company.

1858 Retired from East India Company. Death of Harriet Taylor.

1859 Publication of On Liberty.

1861 Publication of Utilitarianism and On Representative Government.

1865 Elected Member of Parliament for Westminster. Defeated in

1868.

1869 Publication of The Subjection of Women.

1871 Died May 7, in Avignon.

1873 Publication of Autobiography.

1879 Publication of Chapters on Socialism.

§2. One Way to Read Mill’s Utilitarianism

1. I want to propose a way to read the essay Utilitarianism that con-

nects it with Mill’s earlier criticisms of Bentham, ﬁrst in his “Remarks on

Bentham’s Philosophy” (1833), and then later in his essay “Bentham” (1838),

written two years after his father’s death in 1836. This essay along with his

essay “Coleridge” (1840) marks the most open break Mill was to make with

the utilitarianism of Bentham and his father. I say open break because I

think the form of utilitarianism he developed, as will become clear in due

course, was very a different doctrine from theirs. This, however, is a matter

of interpretation and not widely shared.

In “Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy” (which I shall refer to as RB in

textual citations), Mill ﬁrst deﬁnes Bentham’s philosophy, saying, “The ﬁrst

principles ...arethese;—that happiness, meaning by that term pleasure

and exemption from pain, is the only thing desirable in itself; that all other

things are desirable solely as a means to that end: That the production,

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therefore, of the greatest possible happiness, is the only ﬁt purpose of all

human thought and action, and consequently of all morality and govern-

ment; and moreover, that pleasure and pain are the sole agencies by which

the conduct of mankind is governed.”(RB, ¶2). He then makes these objec-

tions, among others, to Bentham’s view. First, he objects that Bentham no-

where attempts to give a serious philosophical justiﬁcation of the principle

of utility, and that Bentham displays a curt and dismissive tone with his op-

ponents. Mill argues that those who hold other philosophical and moral

doctrines deserve better than this (RB, ¶¶3–6).

2. Second, he objects that Bentham interprets the principle of utility in

the narrow sense of what Mill calls the principle of speciﬁc consequences,

which approves or disapproves of an action solely from a calculation of the

consequences to which that kind of action, if generally practiced, would

lead. Mill grants that this principle is appropriate in many cases, for exam-

ple, from the point of view of a legislator who is concerned to encourage

or to deter certain kinds of conduct by legal inducements or penalties; and

Mill grants the merit of Bentham’s work in advancing the study of jurispru-

dence and legislation (RB, ¶¶8–9).

Mill’s objection is that this interpretation of the principle of utility is

much too narrow for dealing with the fundamental political and social

questions of the age; for these questions concern human character as a

whole. Here we must not be concerned primarily with how to provide legal

incentives for good conduct, or how to deter people from committing

crimes, but with how to arrange basic social institutions so that the mem-

bers of society come to have a character—with aims, desires, and senti-

ments—such that they are incapable of committing crimes, or are already

inclined to engage in the desired conduct. These broader questions force us

to go beyond the principles of speciﬁc consequences and to take into ac-

count the relation of actions to the formation of character, and from this to

consider the guidance of conduct in general by means of political and so-

cial institutions. Legislation must be seen in the greater historical context

and connected with “the theory of organic institutions and general forms

of polity...[which] must be viewed as the great instruments of forming

national character, of carrying forward the members of the community to

perfection, or preserving them from degeneracy” (RB, ¶12; see generally

RB, ¶¶7–12).

3. Mill says, third, that Bentham is not to be ranked high as an analyst

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of human nature, that he wrongly supposed that we are moved entirely by

a balance of desires concerning future pleasures and pains, and that he mis-

takenly tried to enumerate motives (human desires and aversions), which

are in principle innumerable both in number and kind. He also ignored

some of the most important social motives, such as conscience, or the feel-

ing of duty, with the result that his view is psychologically egoistic in tone

(RB, ¶¶23–30).

Mill further objects that Bentham fails to see that the greatest hope for

human improvement lies in a change in our character and in our regulative

and predominant desires. This failure on Bentham’s part is connected with

his failure to see political and social institutions as a means for social educa-

tion of a people and as a way to adjust the conditions of social life to their

stage of civilization (RB, ¶35).

4. Finally, Mill says that Bentham’s prevailing error is to ﬁx on only a

part of the motives that actually move people and to regard them as “much

cooler and more thoughtful calculators than they really are.” This tendency,

which is connected with his idea of the artiﬁcial, or reasoned, identiﬁcation

of interests, leads Bentham to think of legislation as achieving its effect

through citizens’ rational calculation of rewards and penalties, leading to

laws and governments providing the necessary legal protections. He under-

estimates the role and effects of habit and imagination, and the central

importance of people’s attachment to institutions, which depends on the

continuity of their existence and their identity in their outward form. It is

this continuity and identity that adapt them to a people’s historical recollec-

tions and helps their institutions to sustain their authority (RB, ¶¶36–37).

Bentham overlooks the way in which long-standing institutions and tradi-

tions make possible the innumerable compromises and adjustments with-

out which no government, Mill believes, can long be carried on. For Mill,

Bentham is a “half-thinker” who said much of great merit, but, while pre-

senting it as the whole truth, actually left it to others to supply half of the

truth (RB, ¶¶36–37).

5. Keeping in mind this critique of Bentham, we can, I suggest, regard

each chapter of Utilitarianism as Mill’s attempt to reformulate part of the

doctrine of Bentham and of his own father so as to meet his own objec-

tions to it, as he had stated them in the “Remarks” of 1833. Mill always pro-

fesses to be a utilitarian and to be revising the doctrine, as it were, from

within. One controversy about these revisions is whether they are really

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consistent with utilitarianism, given a reasonably general characterization

of it, or whether they amount to a substantially different doctrine; and if so,

what this doctrine is. I put this question aside for the time being.

Chapter I of Utilitarianism addresses the ﬁrst criticism of Bentham: that

is, Mill says that he will address the question of the justiﬁcation of the prin-

ciple of utility, and he sketches what is needed in I: ¶¶3–5. This chapter to-

gether with Chapters IV and V complete his justiﬁcation. (The whole argu-

ment is found in I: ¶¶3–5; IV: ¶¶1–4, 8–9, 12; V: ¶¶26–31, 32–38.) (In textual

references, chapter numerals are followed by paragraph numbers. As usual,

you will have to number your own paragraphs.)

Mill’s argument here foreshadows the argument that Henry Sidgwick

develops in great detail later in his Methods of Ethics (1st edition 1874; 7th

and last edition 1907). Roughly, this argument is that everyone, including

those who belong to the intuitionist school (this covers conservative writers

like Sedgwick and Whewell who are among Mill’s opponents), concedes

that one major ground of right conduct is that it tends to promote human

happiness. Hence, if there is some other ﬁrst principle that may conﬂict

with the principle of utility, we must have some way of deciding, in cases

of conﬂict, which principle is to take priority and to settle the case. Both

Mill and Sidgwick argue that there is no principle except the principle of

utility that is sufﬁciently general, and that has all the features required to

serve as a regulative ﬁrst principle.

Mill and Sidgwick both argue further that the principle of utility is the

principle we tend to use in practice, and that our use of it gives whatever

order and coherence our considered moral judgments actually possess.

They maintain that common sense morality when people do reﬂect and

balance is secondary and is implicitly utilitarian. As I shall note next time,

Mill presses this kind of argument in V: ¶¶26–31 in connection with the

various precepts of justice.

6. Chapter II contains in its initial paragraphs Mill’s reformulation of

the idea of utility. I focus on ¶¶1–18, which, for our purposes, are the most

relevant. They may be divided as follows.

¶1: Introduction.

¶2: States the principle of utility in roughly the form Bentham gave it,

which Mill is going to revise.

¶¶3–10: Addresses the objection that utilitarianism is a doctrine ﬁt only

for swine. In the course of meeting this objection Mill presents his account

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of happiness as the ultimate end (which I take up below). These paragraphs

form a unit. They are further elaborated in IV: ¶¶4–9.

¶¶11–18: These paragraphs also form a unit and discuss two objections:

ﬁrst, that utilitarianism is impracticable because happiness is unattainable;

and second, that human beings can do without happiness, and forming our

character so that we can do without it is the condition of achieving the no-

bility of virtue.

The rest of Chapter II takes up various other objections. I should men-

tion, though, II: ¶¶24–25, which are important in sketching Mill’s view of

the relation between moral precepts and principles and the principle of util-

ity itself as the supreme regulative standard. These paragraphs bear on re-

cent discussions as to whether Mill is an act utilitarian or a rule utilitarian or

something else. I touch on this question brieﬂy in the next lecture.

7. Chapter III contains Mill’s account of how we may naturally acquire

a ﬁrm regulative desire to act from the principle of utility, that is, to act

from this principle independent of external legal or social sanctions of vari-

ous kinds, including public opinion viewed as coercive social pressure. Just

as Chapter II develops the idea of utility that looks beyond Bentham’s prin-

ciple of speciﬁc consequences and is meant to apply to the basic institutions

that shape and educate national character, so Chapter III goes beyond what

Mill regards as Bentham’s rational and calculating egoistic psychology. Here

III: ¶¶8–11 are especially important, and I shall discuss them later.

Chapter IV contains an essential part of Mill’s justiﬁcation of the princi-

ple of utility (the so-called proof ), while Chapter V takes up the utilitarian

basis of the various principles and precepts of justice, and how they sup-

port moral and legal rights. This question Mill thinks Bentham did not treat

satisfactorily, and Mill’s discussion of it is impressive and one of the stron-

gest parts of the essay. It will be our topic for the next lecture.

§3. Happiness as the Ultimate End

1. I now turn to Chapter II. Let’s start straightaway by looking at Mill’s

summary statement at II: ¶10. Here he says that: “According to the Greatest

Happiness Principle . . . the ultimate end, with reference to and for the

sake of which all other things are desirable, (whether we are consider-

ing our own good or that of other people), is an existence exempt as far as

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possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in quantity

and quality.”

2. Note that Mill speaks of the ultimate end (the greatest happiness) as

an existence (II: ¶10); or as a mode, or manner, of existence (II: ¶¶8 and 6

respectively). Happiness is not merely pleasurable or agreeable feelings, or a

series of such feelings, whether simple or complex. It is a mode, or one

might say, a way of life, as experienced and lived by the person whose life it

is. Here I assume that a mode of life is happy only when it is more or less

successful in achieving its aims.

Mill does not talk about pleasures and pains as merely feelings, or as

sensory experiences of a certain kind. Rather, he speaks of them, especially

pleasures, as enjoyable activities that are distinguished by their source (II:

¶4): that is, by the faculties, the exercise of which is involved in the enjoy-

able activity. It is in this connection that Mill mentions the higher vs. the

lower faculties:

(a) the higher faculties are those of intellect, of feeling and imagination,

and of the moral sentiments, while:

(b) the lower faculties are those associated with our bodily needs and re-

quirements, the exercise of which gives rise to pleasures of mere sensation

(II: ¶4).

3. Thus, by way of summary, happiness as the ultimate end is a mode

(or manner) of existence—a way of life—which includes in due degree and

variety a suitable place for both the higher and the lower pleasures, that is, a

suitable place for the exercise of both the higher and the lower faculties in

an appropriate ordering of enjoyable activities.

§4. The Decided Preference Criterion

1. The test of quality is said to be the following. One pleasure is higher

in quality than another when:

(a) Those who have experience of two pleasures have a decided prefer-

ence for the activity connected with one over the activity connected with

the other, and this preference is independent both from any feeling of

moral obligation to prefer that pleasure, and also from any consideration of

its circumstantial advantages (II: ¶4).

(b) A decided preference for one pleasure over another (for instance, for

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the pleasures associated with having “faculties more elevated than the ani-

mal appetites” [II: ¶4]), means that the enjoyment of that pleasure will not

be given up, or abandoned, for any amount of the enjoyment of the other

pleasure that our nature is capable of, even when it is known that the pre-

ferred pleasure involves “a greater amount of discontent” (II: ¶5).

its of self-consciousness and self-observation (II: ¶10).

2. The decided preference criterion includes four elements:

(a) The persons making the comparison between the two pleasures (en-

joyable activities) must be competently acquainted with both, and this nor-

mally involves experiencing both.

(b) These persons must have settled habits of self-consciousness and

self-observation.

of moral obligation.

(d) It must not be formed on the basis of the circumstantial advantages

of the pleasures in question (like permanence, safety, price, etc.), or their

consequences (rewards and punishments), but in view of their intrinsic na-

ture as pleasures.

It is (c) and (d) together that provide a foothold for speaking of the

quality vs. the quantity of pleasure. We shall come back to this.

3. When he says that in comparing pleasures we are not to consider cir-

cumstantial advantages, Mill has in mind the kinds of reasons Bentham

gave for preferring the higher pleasures (as Mill describes them). Bentham

says, “Quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin [a game of darts] is as

good as poetry.”

Here, think of a mode, or a way, of life as our living ac-

cording to a plan of life, this plan consisting of various activities engaged in

according to a certain schedule. With this thought in mind, what Bentham

means is that in drawing up the schedule of activities that speciﬁes our

mode of life, there comes a point at which the marginal utility of pushpin

(per unit of time) is just equal to the marginal utility of poetry (per unit of

time). He grants that normally the total time and energy we give to poetry

(or to the activities exercising the higher faculties) is greater than the time

and energy we give to pushpin (or to other similar games and amuse-

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5. In Jeremy Bentham, Rationale of Reward, in The Works of Jeremy Bentham (London:

Simpkin, Marshall, 1843–1859), Vol. II, p. 253.

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