Political philosophers |

The utilitarian perspective of John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), British philosopher, economist, moral and political theorist, and administrator, was the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century. He was an influential contributor to social theory , political theory and political economy, and his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's. Among his most well-known and significant works are « A System of Logic », « Principles of Political Economy », « On Liberty », « Utilitarianism », « The Subjection of Women », « Three Essays on Religion », and his « Autobiography ». In his twenties, Mill felt the influence of historicism, French social thought, and Romanticism. This led him to begin searching for a new philosophic radicalism that would be more sensitive to the limits on reform imposed by culture and history and would emphasize the cultivation of our humanity, including the cultivation of dispositions of feeling and imagination (something he thought had been lacking in his own education). It means that Mill believes principles standards of living and justice but he argues that humans and desires feelings have to be in the center of the human being's reflection. The principle of utility that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (p.66 « morality and moral controversies ») was the centerpiece of his ethical philosophy. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.” Utilitarianism is also called the Happiness Theory.
According to Mill there is a single and highest normative principle being that actions are right if they tend to