Utilitarianism: Happiness as the Ultimate Goal in Ethics
John Stuart Mill’s Principle of Utility
The first question that arises is to clarify the principle which Mill called the principle of utility, or the greatest happiness principle. Mill argued that ethical and political principles had been formulated earlier by Bentham and responded to the name of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is the theory that advocates happiness as the moral criterion, and happiness for the greatest number of people as a political criterion. Utilitarianism upholds the principle of greatest happiness, and one might wonder: What is happiness? Mill responds that it is “pleasure and the absence of pain.” Happiness is not the purpose for him in the search and attainment of “any pleasure,” but there is a hierarchy of pleasures, which will introduce a change in the initial approach. Because we are talking about happiness, but the happiness of a human being, and to Mill what is undeniable is that, as human beings, we will never desire to go down to lower levels of existence.
Doctrine of Pigs
A special “sense of dignity” related to the higher powers prevents this. Illustrative of what he tries to imply in his statement: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” Because being happy is not the same as being satisfied or pleased. So what defines the human being is what determines how happy we can talk about. What happiness is depends on the conception of the human being that one has.
Happiness as the Ultimate End
The blunt statement that defines happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain was being nuanced while changing the principle that Mill started with. It is not just to defend happiness as the end of mankind but rather to defend the development of human beings as such, or, in other words, to defend the human being as an end in itself. What are the characteristics, or what constitutes a “happy life”? Education, culture, and suitable intellectual and social conditions are necessary for achieving a balanced equilibrium; tranquility and excitement are the key factors to achieve this objective. The aim is to make it possible for more people, thanks to education. Such happiness as an end, although the research does not deny sacrifice as a way of life, it is considered that this makes sense only as a way to get the happiness of the majority: “The multiplication of happiness is, according to utilitarian ethics, the goal of virtue.” The consequences of virtuous action will qualify the action.
Individual and Collective Interests
The details of what happiness is introduce the problem of relations between the individual and the collectivity, between individual interests and collective interests, along with other related problems. There are several statements:
- That happiness is not synonymous with any pleasure and that, therefore, utilitarianism is not equivalent to hedonism;
- That it is possible, through education, to train individuals to achieve individual and collective lifestyles that respond to the principles of utilitarianism and, therefore, happiness as an end goal can be achievable; and
- That the problem of compatibility-incompatibility between individual interests and collective interests should be clarified.
Each of these theses means the defense of certain ethical and political conceptions. However, happiness, seen as a criterion to distinguish correct and incorrect action, acts as a leitmotif of the problem of freedom, and introduces, among others, the problem of education as a crucial issue for understanding his conception of both problems: happiness and freedom.
The Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility
“If my own happiness lies in anything different, why should I not give it preference?” The question refers to what the ultimate sanction of the principle of utility is, which defends the principle of happiness for the greatest number of people and, ultimately, the problem of what is the justification or proof of this. The conception of happiness that the increase proposes requires the acquisition of a sense of sociability that would make “the individual tend to a natural desire to experience the fact that it produces a harmony between his feelings and aims and those of their peers.” The utilitarian principle, happiness for the greatest number, is the sole end of human action, and the promotion of happiness is the test to judge all human conduct. The test patterns of this principle lie, on the one hand, in considering that human nature has such characteristics and, on the other hand, in noting that establishing a sense of social order in human beings makes the morality of greatest happiness for the greatest number possible.
Desire, Will, and Habit
For Mill, one only wants to achieve anything if the idea is nice. Even considering that the desire will be different, which would forward the possibility of acting as something they want, regardless of the consequences that could have been explained as pleasant by habit, so we wanted it due to the habit that you no longer want for yourself, or just want it because they want. This means that only the desire for something pleasurable can be moved to act, so virtue must be associated with pleasure. In short, the configuration of a virtuous behavior is possible only when there has been an association between duty and pleasure, between action and undue pain. This is ultimately the test of the principle of utility. But, as mentioned, there is something else. Mill links the individual pursuit of happiness to the happiness of society, and this is based on two assumptions: that human relationships would not be possible if you do not take into account the interests of all, which, in turn, makes a society of equals possible. And all this adds up, in addition, to a habit or tendency to consider the interests of others as their own. Mill expresses it clearly: “In a state of progress of the human spirit, there is a constant unity with everything else, a feeling that, when perfect, will never think of, nor want, any condition that benefits a particular individual, even if there are other benefits.” Ultimately, the principle of utility will only be a sense of human progress.
Justice and the Principle of Utility
These problems about the fine arts introduce the principle of utility, in turn, the question of the relationship between happiness for the greatest number and justice as a duty, as a moral duty. The problem is whether humans act or ought to wish happiness; more precisely, if the right action from the morally correct action is useful. In principle, the affirmation in the sense that the end is to promote human happiness as the moral seems to contravene the pursuit of virtue. However, for Mill, the confrontation between happiness and justice is not so. The defense is that the principle of utility involves equal rights, the idea of justice. As a means of illustrating his point of view on this issue, it is enough to cite his critique of Kant. The Kantian conception that man is himself, and so must be worthy of happiness, rather than as a move towards this end that the duty desvinculàs considers moral action as a condition of the possibility of happiness. For Mill, what is in Kant, however, is a tacit acceptance of the principle of utility, as it believes that the first formulation of the Kantian imperative, “Work so that the rule under which you act may be adopted as a law for all rational beings,” there would be virtually a recognition of the collective interest of humanity. So the challenge only makes sense when you consider the benefit that could be the norm for the collective interests of rational beings. What we want is to show that ultimately, happiness is not opposed to justice; what happens is that the application of the idea of restricting the universality of justice and the rule is subordinated ultimately to the idea of social desirability. The following text illustrates what Mill is saying: “The whole history of social improvement has involved a series of transitions through which a custom or institution after another has reached the rank of an injustice generally repudiated or tyranny. This has happened with the distinction between slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs, patricians and plebeians. And certainly, it will occur, and in part is already happening, with the aristocracies of color, race, and sex.” His defense of the principle of utility and details have been showing how the problem of happiness is related to many other issues: education, progress, desire, justice, social skills, interest groups, etc. The link with the principle of happiness is to show how these are implicit in Mill an idea of what human beings should be, as he is in a certain conception of man. So attention will increasingly focus on conducting research as a human being, a human being who is, above all, himself.