Rawls J. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

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ments). The explanation is that, given human psychology, we can devote

more time and energy to poetry before we become tired, or bored, and lose

interest.

Bentham’s view is that the source of pleasure (the activity that gives

rise to it) is irrelevant: intensity and duration being the same, a pleasure is

a pleasure is a pleasure. When Bentham says that at the margin, pushpin

is as good as poetry, he is not expressing a low opinion of poetry (although

he did indeed have such an opinion)

but rather stating his hedonistic

doctrine.

4. Now, however, there is a difﬁculty, which arises as follows. Mill grants

in II: ¶8 that differences in the quantity and the intensity of pleasure are

also shown in, and known by, our preferences. That is, that in our decisions

and choices we also disclose our estimates of the intensity and quantity of

different pleasures. But if this is so, how can the decided preference crite-

rion distinguish between the quality and quantity of different pleasures?

The answer lies, I think, in the special structure of the schedule of ac-

tivities that speciﬁes our preferred mode of existence as well as in the prior-

ities we reveal in drawing up that schedule and in revising it as circum-

stances change.

Thus, what shows that a pleasure (as an activity) is of a higher quality

than another is that we won’t abandon it altogether (eliminate it from the

schedule, from our way of life) in return for any amount of fulﬁllment of

the lower pleasures which our nature is capable of. In arranging our way of

life (or in scheduling our activities) there comes a point at which the rate of

exchange of the lower for the higher pleasures is, practically speaking,

inﬁnite. This refusal to abandon the higher pleasures for any amount of the

lower shows the special priority of the higher (II: ¶¶5–6).

5. Yet one question still remains. For surely in drawing up our schedule

of activities there must come a point at which the opposite rate of ex-

change of the higher for the lower pleasures is also inﬁnite, practically

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His Conception of Utility

6. On this, see Mill’s comments in his essay “Bentham” in CW, Vol. X, pp. 113f, where

he speaks of “Bentham’s peculiar opinions on poetry.” He says that Bentham enjoyed mu-

sic, painting, and sculpture, but “towards poetry...that which employs the language of

words, he entertained no favors. Words, he thought, were perverted from their proper of-

ﬁce when they were employed in uttering anything but precise logical truth.” Mill says that

even so, Bentham’s pushpin/poetry quote “is only a paradoxical way of stating what he

would equally have said of the things which he most valued and admired.”

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speaking. The reason is that we must reserve a certain minimum of time

and energy to keeping ourselves well and healthy, and in good spirits. This

is necessary if we are to carry out effectively our other activities, particu-

larly the higher ones. To express Mill’s distinction between quantity and

quality of pleasure we must say, then, that the explanation of why the two

rates of exchange become inﬁnite, practically speaking, are different. In

the case of securing the necessary minimum needed to keep us well and

healthy, and in good spirits, the explanation is physiological and psychologi-

cal: it concerns our ﬁtness and morale. Whereas with the other rate of ex-

change, the explanation lies in features intrinsic to the activities that involve

the exercise of the higher faculties.

6. In summary: Mill’s distinction between the quantity and quality of

pleasures (activities) is this. He holds that when we look at the ways of life

that we decidedly prefer, then the schedules of activities (over an appropri-

ate period of time, say a year) which specify these ways of life have several

characteristic features:

(a) There are essentially two different kinds of activities to be distin-

guished in these schedules, namely, those involving the exercise of the

higher faculties vs. those involving the exercise of the lower faculties. These

two kinds of faculties are regarded as sources of qualitatively distinct kinds

of pleasures in the sense explained.

(b) In scheduling our activities we must, of course, give a signiﬁcant

place to the activities giving rise to the lower pleasures: this is required for

normal health and vigor and psychological well-being. Once this minimum

is secured, a greater fulﬁllment of the lower pleasures rapidly becomes of

far less importance and soon approaches zero.

quickly take over and become the focus and center of our way of life, as

shown in our schedule of activities over the appropriate unit of time.

Above this minimum, we will never freely give up, or resign (as Mill says in

II: ¶5), the activities giving rise to the higher pleasures, no matter how great

the compensating fulﬁllment of the lower pleasures may be.

(d) Finally, in the evaluations made in (c) above, no account is taken of

circumstantial advantages, or of the consequences, of the higher activities

as a group, except insofar as this is necessary to be sure that the schedule of

activities is practicable and feasible.

It is all these features taken together that give force to the term “qual-

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ity” vs. “quantity” of pleasure. When Mill talks about this distinction, he

has in mind the special structure of the overall schedule of activities which

speciﬁes our way of life and the priority we give to the activities involving

the exercise of our higher faculties. Our conception of happiness, then, is

that of a way of life more or less successfully lived, given reasonable expec-

tations of what life can provide (II: ¶12). To say that there are higher vs.

lower pleasures is just to say that we decidedly prefer a way of life the spe-

cial structure of which gives the central focus and priority to those activities

that call upon the higher faculties.

§5. Further Comments on the Decided Preference Criterion

(a) First, for Mill’s purposes I don’t think it necessary to make any ﬁne-

grained distinctions within the class of higher pleasures or within the

class of lower pleasures. Mill is concerned to rebut the objection made by

Carlyle and others that utilitarianism is a doctrine ﬁt only for swine. He

rebuts this charge as presuming a low view of human nature and he coun-

ters with his distinction between the higher and lower pleasures. Once

this distinction is made and the decided preference for the higher plea-

sures established, Mill has made his case. Given his whole doctrine, further

reﬁnements within the higher and the lower pleasures are not essential.

(b) Mill comments (II: ¶8) that “neither pains nor pleasures are homoge-

neous, and pain is always heterogeneous with pleasure.” He goes on to say

that all distinctions within both pleasures and pains, and between pleasures

and pains, are reﬂected in our judgments, resulting in our actual decisions

and choices. This further emphasizes the fact that the distinction between

the quality and the quantity of pleasures rests on special structural features

and priorities embedded in the preferred schedule of activities specifying

our way of life.

the quality and quantity of pleasures as resting on differences between the

introspectable qualities of pleasures and pains as kinds of sensory feelings

or experiences. All the distinctions that Mill makes, and needs to make, are

reﬂected in our actual decisions and choices. I take him to say that all these

distinctions depend on matters open to view in the special structure and

priorities of the way of life we decidedly prefer.

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His Conception of Utility

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§6. Mill’s Underlying Psychology

1. I now discuss some aspects of the moral psychology that underlies

Mill’s conception of utility as stated in Utilitarianism. This psychology con-

sists of several important psychological principles. One principle—the prin-

ciple of dignity—supports the idea of happiness that we have just discussed.

Another principle, considered in III: ¶¶6–11, that the general happiness is

recognized as the ethical standard, and that mankind has a desire to be in

unity with his fellow creatures, supports Mill’s idea of the ultimate sanction

of the principle of utility regarded as the basic principle of morality. I start

with the principle of dignity.

We have seen how meaning can be given to the idea of differences in

the quality of pleasures by referring to the structure and priorities embed-

ded in the ways of life that we, as normal human beings, decidedly prefer.

But Mill doesn’t stop with this criterion. He says (II: ¶¶4 and 6) that we also

think a life not focused around the activities that call upon our higher facul-

ties is a degrading form of existence.

He says that we may attribute the unwillingness to lead such a life to

pride, or to the love of liberty and personal independence, or even to a love

of power. But Mill thinks that the most appropriate explanation lies in a

sense of dignity that all human beings possess in proportion to the develop-

ment of their higher faculties (II: ¶6). By this last I take him to mean: in

proportion to the degree to which our higher faculties have been realized

by suitable training and education, and their development has not been

stunted by impoverished conditions or lack of opportunity, not to speak of

hostile circumstances.

2. Mill believes that our sense of dignity is so important to us that no

mode of existence that violates it could be desired by us, without a special

explanation (II: ¶7). To think that the desire to maintain our dignity is

fulﬁlled at the sacriﬁce of happiness is, Mill thinks, to mistake happiness for

contentment. The question arises as to how Mill’s idea of dignity is related

to what he says about the higher and the lower pleasures. Is it another way

of making the same distinction, or does it add a further element? And is it

consistent with his utilitarianism?

The text seems unclear on this point. I shall suppose that the idea of

dignity does add a new element. One question is whether it can be inter-

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preted in a way consistent with Mill’s view as I have presented it; and I shall

consider this later when we come to discuss On Liberty. The new element is

this: not only do we have a decided preference for the higher over the lower

pleasures, but we also have a higher-order desire to have desires cultivated

by a way of life suitably focused on the higher activities and sufﬁcient to

sustain them.

This higher-order desire is a desire ﬁrst, that as a human being with the

higher faculties, these faculties be realized and cultivated, and second, that

we have desires appropriate to set our higher faculties in motion and to en-

joy their exercise, and that we do not have desires interfering with this.

3. It is important to note that in connection with the sense of dignity,

Mill uses the language of ideals and human perfection (II: ¶6). He speaks of

self-respect, rank, and status, and of certain ways of life seen by us as de-

grading and unworthy. He introduces, in effect, another form of value be-

sides the enjoyable and the pleasing, namely, the admirable and the worthy

along with their opposites, the degrading and the contemptible.

Our sense of dignity is tied, then, to our recognition that some ways of

life are admirable and worthy of our nature, while others are beneath us

and unﬁtting. It is essential to add that the sense of dignity is not derived

from a sense of moral obligation. To say this would conﬂict with one of the

conditions of the decided preference criterion as well as with the sense of

dignity as a different form of value.

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7. Mill discusses these values in “Bentham,” CW, X, pp. 95f, 112f; and in On Liberty, IV:

¶¶4–12 passim.

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mill ii

His Account of Justice

§1. Our Approach to Mill

1. This is a good time to explain our approach to Mill, and to relate it to

our approach to Locke and Rousseau.

With Locke we mainly discussed two things. First, we considered his

account of legitimacy, that is, his criterion of a legitimate regime as one

that can arise in ideal history. We saw that this means a regime that can be

contracted into by rational persons without violating any duties imposed

on them by the fundamental law of nature. And second, we considered

Locke’s account of property and how it was compatible with unequal basic

political liberties (the property-qualiﬁcation for the franchise), and so with a

class-state.

With Rousseau we also considered mainly two things; ﬁrst, his account

of inequality in regard both to its historical origins and to its political and

social consequences in giving rise to the vices and evils of civilization. This

set the stage for the question whether there are any principles of right and

justice such that when society realizes those principles in its institutions,

those vices and evils are kept in check, if not eliminated altogether. The So-

cial Contract answers this question. Rousseau sees the social compact as

specifying the desired principles as norms of political and social coopera-

tion between citizens as free and equal; and we tried to understand his idea

of the general will.

We saw that Rousseau takes the idea of the social compact further than

Locke. His view of the role and signiﬁcance of equality (and inequality) is

deeper and more central. Justice as fairness

follows Rousseau more closely

in both of these respects.

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1. The name of the political conception of justice developed in Rawls, A Theory of Jus

tice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971; rev. ed. 1999) and in Justice as Fair-

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2. I begin by stating a problem about understanding Mill. In many of

his writings, Mill states certain principles which he sometimes calls “the

principles of the modern world.” These principles we can think of as princi-

ples of political and social justice for the basic structure of society.

I will be

discussing these principles in some detail in the next two lectures, when we

take up the essays On Liberty and The Subjection of Women; but sufﬁce it to

say here that Mill thinks them necessary to protect the rights of individuals

and minorities against the possible oppression of modern democratic ma-

jorities (On Liberty, Chapter I).

Now I believe that the content of Mill’s principles of political and social

justice is very close to the content of the two principles of justice as fair-

ness.

This content is, I assume, close enough so that, for our present pur-

poses, we may regard their substantive content as roughly the same. The

problem that now arises is this:

How does it happen that an apparently utilitarian view leads to the

same substantive content (the same principles of justice) as justice as fair-

ness? Here there are at least two possible answers:

(a) Perhaps these principles of political justice can be justiﬁed—or ar-

rived at—within both views, so that both support these principles much as

they would in an overlapping consensus.

In the Restatement, I said that the

parties in the original position, selecting principles for the basic structure,

might be viewed as using what I called a utility function based on the fun-

damental needs and requirements of citizens conceived as free and equal

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ness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001),

hereafter cited as Restatement.

2. A society’s basic structure consists of its main political and social institutions and

the way they hang together in one system of cooperation (Restatement, pp. 8f ).

3. The two principles of justice as fairness are: (a) each person has the same indefeasi-

ble claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible

with the same scheme of liberties for all; and (b) social and economic inequalities are to

satisfy two conditions: ﬁrst, they are to be attached to ofﬁces and positions open to all un-

der conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest

beneﬁt of the least-advantaged members of society. This last is called “the difference prin-

ciple.” Some writers prefer the term “maximin principle,” but I prefer the difference princi-

ple, to distinguish it from the maximin rule for decision under uncertainty (Restatement,

pp. 42f ).

4. An overlapping consensus is a consensus in which the same political conception of

justice is endorsed by the reasonable, though opposing, religious, philosophical, and moral

doctrines that gain a signiﬁcant body of adherents and endure from one generation to the

next (Restatement, p. 32 and p. 184).

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persons, and characterized by the two moral powers, a capacity for a sense

of justice, and a capacity for a conception of the good. It is not based on

people’s actual preferences and interests. Using this suitably constructed

utility function, they would adopt the two principles of justice.

Mill’s con-

ception of utility might have much the same result. This is one thing we

want to explore.

(b) On the other hand, Mill may be mistaken in thinking his doctrine

leads to his principles of the modern world. While he might think his con-

ception of utility does that, perhaps it does not actually do so.

3. I shall assume that the second answer is not correct. I assume instead

that someone with Mill’s enormous gifts can’t be mistaken about some-

thing so basic to his whole doctrine. Little mistakes and slips, yes—they

don’t matter and we can ﬁx them up. But fundamental errors at the very

bottom level: no. That we should regard as very implausible, unless it turns

out to our dismay that there is no other alternative.

I note that this is a precept of method. It guides us in how we are to ap-

proach and to interpret the texts we read. We must have conﬁdence in the

author, especially a gifted one. If we see that something is wrong when we

take the text in a certain way, then we assume the author would have seen

it too. So our interpretation is likely to be wrong. We then ask: How can

we read the text so as to avoid the difﬁculty?

For the present, then, I suppose that the ﬁrst alternative is the correct

one; and therefore, that Mill’s conception of utility, together with the fun-

damental principles of his moral psychology and his social theory, leads

him to think correctly that his principles of the modern world would do

better than the other principles he considers in maximizing utility—that is,

in maximizing human happiness understood as a mode of existence (way

of life) as described in the important II: ¶3–10 of Utilitarianism.

4. To check this understanding of Mill’s doctrine, we must look at its

details as found in the essays we read, Utilitarianism, On Liberty, and The

Subjection of Women. We need to see how he treats several important politi-

cal questions and to examine the way the conception of utility is connected

with the principles of the modern world, and in particular with the princi-

ples of justice and the principle of liberty.

To this end, I shall try to show that one plausible rendering of Mill’s

view—I don’t claim it is the most plausible—can be seen as utilitarian,

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5. Restatement, p. 107.

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when it is understood in terms of his conception of utility.

Although I read

him as allowing an important role for perfectionist values, his view is still

utilitarian in that it does not give perfectionist values a certain kind of

weight as reasons in political questions, in particular questions of liberty. I

will explain this in the next two lectures.

A special feature of Mill’s view is that it rests on a particular psycho-

logical account of human nature, as expressed by certain quite speciﬁc

psychological ﬁrst principles. In one place Mill refers to them as: “the gen-

eral laws of our emotional constitution” (Utilitarianism, V: ¶3). Among

these principles are the following, the ﬁrst two of which we discussed in the

last lecture:

(a) The decided preference criterion: Utilitarianism, II: ¶¶5–8.

(b) The principle of dignity: Utilitarianism, II: ¶¶4, 6–7; Liberty, III: ¶6.

¶¶8–11.

(d) The principle of individuality: Liberty, III: ¶1.

(e) The Aristotelian principle: Utilitarianism, II: ¶8.

Clearly these principles are related in various ways, as some would

seem to support or to underlie others; for example, (b) might be thought to

underlie (a), or at least to support it. But I leave these matters aside for now.

5. I shall not argue that these principles are correct or incorrect, al-

though many may ﬁnd them implausible. They do make Mill’s doctrine de-

pend on a quite speciﬁc human psychology. We may think it better for a po-

litical conception of justice to be more robust in its principles and to

depend, so far as possible, only on psychological features of human nature

more evident to common sense. But still, if Mill’s psychological principles

are correct, then so far his doctrine is sound.

Here there is a range of possibilities. A political conception can depend

on a quite speciﬁc human psychology; or else on a more general psychol-

ogy together with a quite speciﬁc normative conception of person and soci-

ety. Take, as an example of such a normative conception, that used in jus-

tice as fairness.

I would conjecture that political conceptions differ in how

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6. Whether his conception of utility is itself utilitarian is an altogether different ques-

tion. I believe it is not, but I put this aside for now.

7. A normative conception of the person and society is given by our moral and politi-

cal thought and practice, and not by biological or psychological traits. In justice as fairness,

in specifying society as a fair system of cooperation, we use the companion idea of free

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they conceive of the division of labor between normative political concep-

tions on the one hand and basic psychological principles on the other. With

a principle so general and abstract as that of utility, even as Mill under-

stands it, a rather speciﬁc psychology seems required to get deﬁnite conclu-

sions. Whereas it seems that the psychology of justice as fairness can per-

haps be more general in ways to be explained later.

§2. Mill’s Account of Justice

1. In Chapter V, “On the Connection between Justice and Utility,” the

long ﬁnal chapter of Utilitarianism—it constitutes over a third of the essay—

Mill gives his account of justice. He has saved this topic for a full treatment,

as he thinks the apparent inconsistency between the principle of utility and

our convictions and sentiments of justice is the only real difﬁculty in the

utilitarian theory of morals (V: ¶38). As is evident at times from his replies,

he thinks that the many other objections he examines are based on misun-

derstandings and worse. He now comes to what for him must have been a

real problem. His wonderful discussion of this question must be the fruit of

his own searching inquiries.

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and equal persons as those who can play the role of fully cooperating members over a

complete life. The normative and political conception of the person in justice as fairness is

tied to persons’ capacities as citizens. They are free and equal, and have the two moral

powers: (1) a capacity for a sense of justice (the ability to understand, apply, and act from

the principles of political justice that specify the fair terms of cooperation); and (2) a capac-

ity for a conception of the good (to have, revise, and rationally to pursue an ordered family

of ﬁnal ends and aims that speciﬁes a person’s conception of what is of value in human

life—normally set within a comprehensive religious, philosophical, or moral doctrine).

They also have the powers of reason, inference, and judgment required to exercise the two

moral powers.

They are equal in that they are all regarded as having, to the essential minimum de-

gree, the moral powers necessary to engage in social cooperation over a complete life, and

to take part in society as equal citizens. They are free in that they conceive of themselves

and of one another as having the moral power to have a conception of the good, and the

ability to revise and change it on reasonable and rational grounds if they so desire. There is

no loss of their identity if they choose to do so. They are free also in that they consider

themselves as self-authenticating sources of valid claims—as being entitled to make claims

on their institutions so as to advance their conceptions of the good (Restatement, pp. 18–

23).

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