Nietzsche: John, I take exception to your definition of happiness as being derived from the absence of pain and the presence, quantity, and quality of pleasure.
Mill: Friedrich, I would assume you do since your definition of the greatest happiness is to embrace the eternal recurrence of all life good and bad, not in order to be liberated from pain but “in order to be oneself the eternal joy of becoming, beyond all terror and pity-that joy which included even joy in destroying” as it says in your Twilight of the Idols (Kauffmann 563).
Nietzsche: Your idea of happiness and morality are interesting to me, but so because I enjoy the philological study of utopias. No matter how ideal they seem, they never work in reality.
Mill: You are trying to tell me that shaping one’s desires and actions to produce the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest numbers of people is not a good morality?
Nietzsche: You are so misjudging human nature I am surprised. Your morality only works if people choose to adopt it which is to say all people will choose a course of action based on your utility principle. History and every day life prove that an idealistic illusion. Human nature will always contain those who choose to act based on their own will. For them, your utility principle does not apply. No universal moral theory will ever work in reality because none can ever be forced upon all people, people who create all things good and evil by some shared ideological definition. The happy man obeys the self and does not expect a life without having to pay the price of living, i.e. pain, suffering, tragedy along with the joys.
Mill: So you are saying good and evil will continue to exist because of free will? And that we will not evolve into a higher level of morality as a species?
Nietzsche: I am saying man will not change, only definitions of good and evil for the slave morality. For the individu
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