“One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius.” Simone de Beauvoir. This quote could not be any more accurate for a figure such as John Stuart Mill. His works on politics, logic, ethics, poetry, economics, and history, all seem to carry some hint of his intense education. He argued for sexual equality, the right to divorce, universal suffrage, free speech, and equal representation. Today these are things most feel are natural rights, but by Victorian standards, Mill was considered a radical. Mill produced many major works in his life, but here I will deal with just one, his Utilitarianism, other forms of utilitarianism, and criticisms of utilitarianism.

John Stuart Mill was born the eldest son of James Mill on May 20, 1806 in London. His father privately educated him, and secluded him from his peers (John). He began teaching John Greek at the early age of three, and Latin at eight. He also taught him history, history, languages, calculus, logic, political economy, geography, psychology and rhetoric. In addition, J.S. Mill was also put in charge of teaching his younger siblings. By the age of 14, Mill said he had the “knowledge of a man, but he still could not brush his own hair,” (Damrosch). He said that his father’s way of teaching only appealed to the intellectual side of him, and failed to recognize his practical and emotional life. Due to this, at the age of 21, Mill had an emotional breakdown that he believed to be from his strenuous early years (John). It is said that poetry can be therapeutic, and his recovery from depression was in part due to Mill’s reading of poetry, especially that of Wordsworth. Mill, although not a poet himself, went on to write an essay What is Poetry? in 1833, where he argued that the true poet expresses “passionate, solitary meditations.” In 1823 he took a job as an administrator for the East India Company. From 1859 to 1865, Mill published several influential books on philosophy, including Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, Utilitarianism, Representative Government, and Auguste Comte and Positivism. He met Harriet Taylor in 1830, who also shared his radical views on women’s rights. In 1851, they married, and later had a daughter, Helen. Mill was elected a member of parliament in 1865 and served until 1868 (Damrosch). In his time in parliament, he advocated women’s rights, labor rights, and land reform in Ireland. He produced several more works from 1865 until his death, including England and Ireland, and Subjection of Women. He spent his remaining years in Avignon, France until his death in 1873 (Mautner).

Jeremy Bentham, being a big influence on J.S. Mill’s education, is normally credited with being the developer of utilitarianism. Bentham argued "nature has put man under the governance of two sovereign masters: pleasure and pain." In other words, he found pain and pleasure to be the only absolutes in the world. From this he derived his principle of utility, that the good is whatever brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people (Utilitarianism).

There are different types of utilitarianism; negative utilitarianism is broadly defined as the least amount of harm, or the prevention of the greatest amount of harm for the greatest number. Another form is act utilitarianism, which says we must consider the consequences of our actions, and from there make the choice that would bring the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Rule utilitarianism goes further and states that we must consider the consequences of a rule instead of the act. An example of the differing philosophies is this: imagine a surgeon operating on six patients, one needs a pancreas, the second needs a liver, the third a heart, the fourth and fifth need kidneys, and the sixth just needs to have his appendix removed. If the surgeon was an act utilitarian, he would sacrifice the sixth patient for the greater amount, being the other five. A rule utilitarian would look at the new rule just implemented, and judge that if this were the case, it would have bad consequences for society as a whole (Utilitarianism).

Mill’s major contribution to the field of ethics was his Utilitarianism. He differed from many other utilitarians in that Mill considered cultural and spiritual happiness to be greater than physical happiness (John). He also argued against negative utilitarianism, stating that ultimately, the aim of negative utilitarianism would be to execute the quickest and least painful method of killing the entirety of humanity, as this would ultimately effectively minimize pain (Utilitarianism). In Utilitarianism Mill starts off by arguing that moral theories are divided by two different approaches, the intuitive and inductive schools. The difference between both is that the intuitive school believes we have knowledge of a “single and highest, normative principle” without experience (a priori), and the inductive school through experience and observation (a posteriori). Utilitarianism, he says, belongs on the empirical side. In the second chapter, Mill explains What Utilitarianism Is, “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” He refers to this as the principle of utility. The principle of utility looks at an action’s end consequences, not the motives or what the action requires (John). If a moral dilemma came up and I had to choose between feeding a starving neighbor, or feeding myself, then I would have to choose based on which would produce the greater general happiness (Mautner).

There are two classes motivations for promoting general happiness. There are motivations from our hope of pleasing and fear of displeasing God and other people (external), and there is a motivation which is internal to the agent himself and is his feeling of duty. Mill says that although duty is a subjective feeling that develops with experience, humans have an “instinctive feeling of unity which guides the development of duty towards general happiness.” He induces that “If X is the only thing desired, then X is the only thing that ought to be desired.” Likewise, “General happiness is the only thing desired, therefore general happiness is the only thing that ought to be desired.” He then goes on to say that happiness is composed of many desires including virtue, money, power, and fame.

The last chapter, “The Connection between Utility and Justice,” which was originally written as a separate essay, goes on to defend utilitarianism against an argument many critics of it made, being that morality is not based on the consequences of action, but is based on the universal concept of justice. To this Mill argued that all moral elements in the concept of justice depend on social utility. He also argued that if justice was as foundational and universal as non-consequentialists claimed it to be, then it would not be as uncertain and vague as it is. He concluded that justice is a genuine concept, but that we must see it based on utility (John).

In addition to this criticism, there are other criticisms of utilitarianism, which I will briefly state here, along with a contemporary problem. One of the criticisms of utilitarianism is that it is difficult to measure happiness (Utilitarianism). First of all, since many different types of people exist, then many different types of happiness exist. And secondly, even though early utilitarians hoped that happiness could be measured and compared between people through “felicific calculus” (a formula invented by Bentham to calculate the degree or amount of happiness that a specific action is likely to cause), no one has ever managed to put into practice a working system of it. Another criticism is that utilitarianism would ignore what is considered common sense, for example one might say that it is common sense that one should never sacrifice a human being for the happiness of others (Utilitarianism). Some reject utilitarianism on the basis that it could violate human rights on some occasions. A present-day dilemma is whether torture should be allowed or not. The current Bush administration (namely Dick Cheney) sometimes seems to take a utilitarian stance, claiming that if torture were allowed, it would serve the greater good. Rule utilitarians would probably argue that general anxiety and fear might increase for all if human rights are commonly ignored, therefore, utilitarianism is compatible with human rights (Utilitarianism).