James Mill And John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism

In order to understand John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism we must first understand his history and motives in writing the series of essays. Mill had many influencers most notably his father James Mill and the father of Utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham. James grew up poor but was influenced by his mother, who had high hopes for the formerly named Milne family, and educated himself becoming a preacher and then executive in the East India Company. James was a proponent of empiricism and believed in John Locke’s idea of man being born as a blank slate. James did not send his son John to school, teaching him rigorously from the early age of three. Despite his father’s emphasis on the blank slate, Mill was criticized for being a manufactured man because

Nevertheless, most great men must learn from and expand on their predecessors and Mill came to accept his role as the new leader of the Utilitarian movement but only after some tumultuous times at the age of twenty. Mill studied law under the Utilitarian John Austin and while studying adopted Bentham’s Greatest Happiness Principle as one of his central beliefs. When his father was promoted at the East India Company, John took his place. Mill wrote that he only needed to work four hours a day at his job and the rest of his time could be spent ruminating, writing, and discussing ideas. He discussed his ideas at the Utilitarian Society, which he formed at Bentham’s home and wrote for a scholarly journal setup by Bentham called The Westminster Review. Mill fell in love in 1830 with a married woman named Harriet who he married after her husband passed in 1851. Mill thought highly of his wife, even calling her a genius. She greatly influenced

Mill writes that thinkers are still arguing the foundation of morality and constantly squabbling over the definition of right and wrong. He tells the reader that Plato wrote that Socrates first postulated the idea of Utilitarianism in his writings against the Sophists (Mill 1). He says man must test what is right and wrong seemingly against his own instinct, and that instinct can only give general principles of moral judgment (Mill 2). He writes that the intuitive and deductive schools taught that there is a science of morals but did not have a first principle. Rather they relied only on second principles to guide moral action. Mill writes that utilitarian arguments are indispensable for moralists and that the greatest happiness principle has influenced even those who vocally reject it (Mill