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John Stuart Mill was a prominent British philosopher who made important contributions to utilitarianism and liberalism. He argued that actions should be judged based on whether they promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. For Mill, happiness was found not just in individual pleasure but also in living a morally good life and helping others. He advocated for unlimited freedom of thought and expression as well as equal rights and opportunities for women. Mill believed that through education and an ethic of caring for human welfare, societies could progress toward eliminating poverty, oppression, and unnecessary suffering.

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22 views

13 Lecture

John Stuart Mill was a prominent British philosopher who made important contributions to utilitarianism and liberalism. He argued that actions should be judged based on whether they promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. For Mill, happiness was found not just in individual pleasure but also in living a morally good life and helping others. He advocated for unlimited freedom of thought and expression as well as equal rights and opportunities for women. Mill believed that through education and an ethic of caring for human welfare, societies could progress toward eliminating poverty, oppression, and unnecessary suffering.

Uploaded by

Akbibi Yazgeldiyeva
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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moral philosophy

The Utilitarians.
John Stuart Mill
Context

• Education
• Human liberty
• Womens rights
moral philosophy

• Mill agreed that helping others


gives us pleasure because helping
others includes the quality of altruism,
or the unselfish concern for the
welfare of others.
• For Mill, altruism emphasizes
the Golden Rule: Treat others as you
would have them treat you.
The utilitarian morality does recognize in human beings the power
of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others. . . .
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.
 Mill argued that our desire to be in
unity with our fellow creatures helps
civilizations make progress.
 Granting that each of us has a
right to happiness, when we act
altruistically, we want the greatest
amount of happiness for the greatest
number of people.
Education
For Mill, education is particularly important.
Education teaches the skills that we need to live
healthy and dignified lives. He believed that, with
education, citizens of goodwill could eliminate
poverty and lessen disease.
People of “fortunate means” would find more
happiness in helping the less fortunate than they
would find in selfishly “caring for nobody but
themselves.
Mill wrote, “When people who are tolerably fortunate in their outward lot
do not find in life sufficient enjoyment to make it valuable to them, the
cause generally is, caring for nobody but themselves. To those who have
neither public nor private affections, the excitements of life are much
curtailed, and in any case dwindle in value as the time approaches when all
selfish interests must be terminated by death: while those who leave after
them objects of personal affection, and especially those who have also
cultivated a fellow-feeling with the collective interests of mankind, retain as
lively an interest in life on the eve of death as in the vigour of youth and
health. This is why the utilitarian will not be selfish. ”
Human Liberty

For Mill, we must have unlimited freedom of expression.


Practicing the principle of the greatest good for
the greatest number, he thought citizens should be free
to criticize their government, to choose their own
lifestyle, and to worship as they please.
Human liberty.
 It comprises, first the inward domain of
consciousness; demanding liberty of
conscience in the most comprehensive sense;
liberty of thought and feeling; absolute
freedom of opinion and sentiment on all
subjects, practical or speculative, scientific,
moral, or theological. . . .
 Secondly, the principle requires liberty of
tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our
life to suit our own character; of doing as we
like, subject to such consequences as may
follow: without impediment from our fellow
creatures, so long as what we do does not harm
them, even though they should think our
conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong.
• Mill argued that we must be free to express our thoughts.

• If we never challenge the opinions of others, including


governments and religious institutions, we allow ourselves
to depend upon someone else’s authority. When that
happens, the public tends toward conformity.
Mill was a passionate defender of women’s rights, and he believed both
sexes should be involved in the political process.
 Together, he and Harriet Taylor questioned the English law of their
day that proscribed that all women should marry but that no married
woman could have property.
 All property, including her children, belonged to her husband. If a
woman’s husband died, she could not become the legal guardian of their
children unless he requested it in his will.
 If the woman left her husband for any reason, she could take
nothing with her, not even her children. If necessary, her husband could force
her to return.
Because women were thought to lack intelligence,
they could neither vote nor run for Parliament.
Looked on as lesser beings than men, women were
taught that virtue meant submission and meekness to
their male “superiors.”
Men considered women best suited for
domestic jobs.
Mill and Taylor argued that women should have:
independence,
freedom to make their own choices,
freedom to get a good education.
Society should view women as individuals in
their own right, not existing as only relative to men,
and men should stop defining the nature of women to
women.

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