Mill's Philosophical System of Utiltarianism

In this chapter, "Of the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility," John Stuart Mill discusses the philosophical system of Utilitarianism. Here he is arguing that the system is at least as easy to believe in, and as effective a moral tool, in governing one's behavior as any other moral or ethical system that a person might hold to. This argument sounds a little odd to the modern reader, who is most likely inclined to believe in what Mill is so painfully arguing without much thinking about it. Raised as most Westerners have been in a world in which people of good will come together from varying religious and ethical systems on a daily basis, it is hard for us to imagine a world in which there was a single (or even a very small number) of moral orthodoxies. And yet, of course, this is precisely the kind of world in which Mill lived when he wrote Utilitarianism in 1836.

In the book in general, Mill is arguing the merits of a philosophical and moral doctrine called Utilitarianism. The doctrine that was established in large part both by Mill's father and the philosopher Jeremy Bentham and that is most usually summarized by Bentham's famous phrase that people should at all times act so as to produce "the greatest good for the greatest number."

In this particular chapter, Mill is arguing strenuously that it is acceptable not only to base one's actions upon this particular moral system of Utilitarianism, but in a more general sense that it is both acceptable and practica

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Category: Philosophy - M