Utilitarianism: Principles and Human Dignity in Mill's Philosophy

Utilitarianism: Principles and Human Dignity

Bernard Williams on Utilitarianism

Bernard Williams, in his Introduction to Ethics (pp. 95-110), states that utilitarianism, as an ethical school of thought, has four characteristics:

• Utilitarianism of the Act and Utilitarianism of the Rule
  • 1. Utilitarianism of the Act: This involves a calculation of what course of action will maximize pleasure or happiness in each specific case or circumstance, without following a priori rules. Every action has consequences, and these consequences are what allow us to judge its value. Utilitarianism of the act is associated with Bentham.
  • 2. Utilitarianism of the Rule: This is an attempt to universalize criteria, and it is based on the utilitarian standard of "maximum pleasure for the greatest number." Good or evil cannot be judged from the perspective of a specific action, but from the global consequences of a rule that must be applied universally.

Utilitarianism and Human Dignity According to Mill

For Mill, Utilitarianism is the foundation of human dignity:

• 1. Capacity for Growth: The ability to understand and, therefore, to change our opinions.
• 2. Individuality: If pressure from society (and especially the middle class) on individuals is very strong, we have a compulsion, and therefore, there can be no freedom.

Happiness and Contentedness

• 1. Happiness: This is a shared enjoyment. One can only be fully happy when surrounded by people who are also happy. No man is an island, to quote the verse of John Donne.
• 2. Contentedness: This is a purely personal enjoyment, "without morals." It consists of simply "being good" and is not even "good living"; it belongs to individuals who have not yet attained moral autonomy. In short, you can be content in misfortune, but not happy.

The Concept of Liberty in John Stuart Mill

• 1. Positive Freedom: Understood as the ability to perform a certain action or, more commonly, to do what one wants. Positive freedom refers to the internal potential and points to man's ideal of mastering his own actions.
• 2. Negative Freedom: Understood as the absence of interference in an area where each individual is the absolute master, and everyone—even, or especially, the state—must respect it. Negative freedom is inserted in space: a moral imperative drawn from a purely private sphere. Abstention is the right to privacy, which is also freedom for Mill.

As a liberal, Mill believes that man is a being who is both "external" (interested in public affairs) and "internal" (master of himself). As a rationalist, Mill considered utilitarianism as a kind of humanism.