John Stuart Mill Individuality Essay

Individuality to John Stuart Mill’s (Mill’s) as seen in his works, is one of the essential points in human well-being. In his philosophical work On Liberty, Mill’s writes “To give any fair play to the nature of each, it is essential that different persons should be allowed to lead different lives” (Mill, On Liberty, p 65). From this, one can conclude the importance Mill’s asserts onto individuality and the effects of growing to be different people.

On Liberty also focus’ on the Mill’s ‘Harm Principle’, arguing that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others" (Mill, On Liberty, p 10). Thus, allowing people to have freedom of action and

With this being said, He opposed Jeremy Bentham’s concept that all happiness is equal and proposed that physical forms of pleasures be lesser than intellectual and moral forms of pleasures, stating;

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question. (Mill, Utilitarianism, p 7)

When opposing Bentham’s concept, Mill’s simply published his theory and gave a considerable amount of though into it, adding it into his work (Utilitarianism) and backing it up whenever necessary. He also altered the focus’ from which Utilitarianism sprouted, with his concept focusing on creating rules and principles to follow (Rule Utilitarianism) rather than a sole focus on hedonism (Act Utilitarianism).

To be a Rule Utilitarian, one will look at each individual potential action and determine what rule produces the most happiness for the majority, but one must still follow moral rules, eg. killing a ‘bad’ person for overall happiness is against human