. John Stuart Mill answers the charge that utilitarianism cannot accommodate justice and individual rights in terms of his view of the meaning of utility. He approaches the obligations of both the state and the individual in terms of his Harm Principle as introduced in On Liberty, a principle addressing the basic issue of when power can be exercised over any individual member of a civilized community against his or her will. Mill says such power cannot be wielded except to prevent harm to others. Mill thus takes an anti-parentalist view. There are those who see the government acting in loco parentis, or in place of the parent, imposing restrictions for the individual's own good. Mill opposes any such notion.
Mill begins his discussion of moral theory with
a definition of utilitarianism, stating that this is the creed
that accepts utility as the foundation of morals, meaning the
greatest happiness principle. This holds that actions are right
in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, and wrong as
they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. Happiness means
the intended pleasure and the absence of pain, while unhappiness
means pain and the privation of pleasure. While Mill
agrees that those actions which produce happiness are good and
those that produce pain are bad, it is not the happiness or pain
of the person taking action that is necessarily the guide.
Rather, it is a more abstract happiness overall that is being
considered so that actions which add to happiness overall is good
while actions reducing happiness are bad. Happiness for Mill is a unified way of life rather than an abstraction toward which we tend as we make our choices and behave as our analyses dictate. "Living right" is a moral proposition that is more than an abstraction based on concepts of pleasure and pain and the development of a sum total of happiness. For Mill, living right is itself part of the happ...