Mill's Utilitarianism: A Critique of General Happiness

Mill's Utilitarianism: A Critical Analysis

Instead, I think J. Stuart Mill could not cope with these other considerations:

1. Holding a conception of human nature – to argue that individuals properly educated generally desire happiness – and the historical process – which he said must lead, by the constant progress of the human spirit, the moral development of individuals – that transcends the empirical – not all individuals developed morally, at least in appearance, seeking to conform their conduct to the moral criterion of general happiness and although there are individuals who, in truth, to present the moral, like him, yes they do, we can not make it a general rule – and condemns his moral criterion for the overall utility or happiness the realm of the purely hypothetical.
2. Moreover, the moral criterion advocated by Mill, stating that the pleasures are qualitatively and quantitatively different, makes the calculation and comparison of the implications for moral resolve grievances in many cases extremely difficult. The moral baggage treasured by mankind will help us says Mill – Utilitarianism of the rule – and the possibility of changing the moral rules in exceptional situations – act utilitarianism – avoid the undesirable consequences of our actions. But I think the individual is not a good judge their own cause. Mill had also understand and said that, although difficult at times applying the criterion, it is always better than no leading him to absolute bias. But in practice – continues Mill, have an ultimate criterion for action can not harm anyone and concludes that this difficulty can be overcome by intelligence and virtue of the individual. Therefore, if it is ultimately the individual's intelligence and virtue that you can act morally, the moral criterion of general happiness Mill – as happened with Kant's formal ethics – does not seem to be useful to solve real moral conflicts.

The Model of Staff Position

On the one hand is 'liberating' free believe absolute moral precepts and, secondly, it is disheartening to think that all ethics are arbitrary. Maybe the moral is not entirely arbitrary because we observed in different moral equivalent problems like solutions, but does not prove that there is a universal moral and supra-social. Moreover, this thesis is not empirically demonstrable basing morality in a transcendent moral law or a universal basic feeling, and also the daily experience human actions, many of them deny it-seems clearly immoral. I therefore believe that morality is an instrument of power to serve the shared interests all the time and place of the driving forces of society. Remember the Sisyphus of Critias.

It is also another hypothesis that explains the similarities between our different moral judgments all the time and place. But it also allows better explain the often immoral behavior of human beings fighting for freedom from internal sanctions-suppressive whether through shame or enforcement by means of guilt-with which the different cultural or companies restrict their instinctive tendencies . For if Hume and Kant were right men continue working as usual but there is no social coercion each other reacting differently to the dictates of reason or the feelings aroused in us qualities useful and enjoyable to us or others.

The Ring of Gyges Thought Experiment

But if we had the ring of Gyges, as tells the tale of the chapter II of the Republic of Plato, did not we would all loose Reinder satisfaction and our instincts?. The thought that many would place us in the first-place-limits to the satisfaction of our instincts may be the result of moral education received. The answer to this question would only be available to those who possessed the gift of invisibility or freedom of action. But for now, we see social control is relaxed as in war, a disproportionate increase in unethical behavior.