The Conversion of JS Mill
October 4, 2014
In a recent book Henry West emphasises the similarities between Bentham and Mill and concludes that Mill ‘revised and perhaps broadened and softened Benthamism, but never deserted it” (2004:5) In this blog I fundamentally disagree with his analysis: Mill greatly modifies Bentham’s hedonism and then in the final chapter of Utilitarianism abandons it altogether. Mill’s essay is, however, inconsistent (not his best work), so we need to look at his autobirgraphy and to an anonymous essay he published to get his real feelings.
Mill ended up rejecting not utilitarianism, but Bentham’s version of it. There’s a lot more to this rejection than the higher/lower pleasure distinction beloved of textbooks (and students). In an essay published anonymously in 1833, Mill argues that Bentham’s doctrines are based on a wrong psychology, one which neglects the role of sympathy and the desire to co-operate, and a failure to recognise the function of social rules in building a happy society. Furthermore, Mill argues that Bentham neglects the role of virtue and habits in the formation of happy character. In short, Mill is an Aristotelean in his view that happiness has a wider social as well as a personal dimension, and that the two are inevitably linked in a longer term and deeper conception of happiness that goes well beyond mere consequential calculations. Mill’s happiness is closer to Aristotle’s eudaimonia. And he comes to this stunning conclusion: “I conceive Mr. Bentham’s writings to have done and to be doing very serious evil” (1833:15). What did Mill mean by this?
Benthamite morality ‘wears away feelings’
In 1826 Mill suffered a nervous breakdown. He blamed this on the rigid tutoring of his father James Mill and an over reliance on analysis at the expense of feelings. He finds himself marooned in an emotionless hell, depressed, unable to feel, unable to function. His feelings had in a sense been drained from him by the power of logical detachment and the kind of empirical view of morals at the heart of Benthamite calculations.
Mill was saved from this dark state of mind by the romantic poetry of Wordsworth, from whom he found “a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared in by all human beings” (autobio:104). From then on he begins to see that feelings are a true source of the moral life – and that “the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others the object of existence, were the greatest and surest source of happiness” (autobio: 97). This explains why in his essay on Utilitarianism, Mill makes so much of sympathy as the internal motivator of the moral life. He writes of a ‘natural feeling’, a ‘sense of duty’ and a ‘deeply felt conception of oneself as a social being’. Whatever amount of this feeling a person has, Mill argues, ‘he is urged by the strongest motives both of interest and of sympathy to demonstrate it’. It is, in other words, the fruit of an educated conscience.
Bentham sees interests as overly narrow and selfish
Bentham believed that human beings were driven by pursuit of pleasure and self-interest. Mill found that the “tendency of Mr. Bentham’s own opinions” was to consider the self-regarding interest “as exercising, by the very constitution of human nature, a far more exclusive and paramount control over human actions than it really does exercise.” (1833:14) But this tendency to confuse the selfish and the communal interest led Mill to this severe conclusion: “I conceive Mr. Bentham’s writings to have done and to be doing very serious evil”. So “the balance can be turned in favour of virtuous exertion, only by the interest of feeling or by that of conscience—those ‘social interests,’ the necessary subordination of which to ‘self-regarding’ is so lightly assumed.” (1833:15.)
For this reason Mill spends the last chapter of his essay on Utilitarianism elevating justice and rights to a central position in his scheme of thought. “Justice is a name for certain moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility, and are therefore of more paramount obligation, than any others” (Utilt ch6). In other words, Mill argues that without rights and a sense of social obligations and equality enshrined in a legal code, we cannot have happy society. In this he is surely correct. The idea of sacrificing one innocent person to save the many is thus morally abhorrent to Mill, and could only be undertaken if some greater good is appealed to which makes such a sacrifice repugnantly necessary.
Bentham doesn’t consider social utility
Bentham calls his work ‘Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation”, and Mill sees Bentham’s theory as working well for legilslation, but poorly for morality. In other words, when we make the utilitarian calculation looking backwards at, for example, abortion in 1967, we can see how the misery of illegal abortions and unwanted pregnancies outweighs the pleasure of those anti-abortionists who wanted to restrict women’s rights. But when we look forwards we find the consequential calculation frought with difficulty.
Yet even here Mill criticises Bentham for failing to give weight to “the greater social questions—the theory of organic institutions and general forms of polity; for those must be viewed as the great instruments of forming the national character ” (2003:9). Bentham neglects to see the historical role of politics and political development in shaping the national mind and national character: in Britain, three revolutions (1215, 1645 and 1688) have formed our sense of rights, freedom and limited government. We have, Mill believes, an idea of social virtues – habits of national character that mould our thinking and speaking. And back to the first point – when it comes to morality we are influenced by virtues of character and moral feelings as much as by calculations of consequences.
So Bentham fails because, argues Mill “he supposes mankind to be swayed by only a part of the inducements which really actuate them; but of that part he imagines them to be much cooler and more thoughtful calculators than they really are” (1833:17).
Mill concludes thus in his essay on Utilitarianism: ‘the utilitarian standard requires the cultivation of the love of virtue up to the greatest strength possible, as being above all things important to the general happiness’ (Utilit ch4).
So we find Mill disagreeing with Bentham in at least three fundamental ways: he sees moral feelings as more important than cold calculation; he argues that Bentham’s narrow egoism needs to be replaced with a concept of society and social obligations, and he sees virtue, and pleasure in virtue as necessary for building social agreement on the source of utilitarian goodness. There is even more we could say: but for that, it’s best to read my book Utilitarianism and Situation Ethics, available here.
References
“Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy” in Lytton Bulwer’s England and the English (1833)
Autobiography of JS Mill (2003) http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10378/pg10378.txt
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