John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism Essay

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In his excerpt “Utilitarianism,” John Stuart Mill, argues that the right laws, education and public opinion would help people to make the right decisions regarding happiness as well as prevent them from having objectable desires. Utilitarianism is, in Mill’s words, pleasure and the absence of pain. The overall concept of utilitarianism is the view that the supreme principal of morality is to preform acts that bring as much happiness as possible. In his passage, Mill introduces a number of factors that influence one’s happiness and provides examples on how each being obtains the facilities to bring happiness to ourselves as well as the people around us through just laws, proper education, and public opinion. He argues for the quality and the quantity of one’s actions and the happiness produced thereof. The final point Mill attributes to his argument is that the happiness that forms the foundation of the utilitarian standard of what is morally right in one’s conduct is not only the person who is preforming the act’s happiness but the happiness of those it affects as well. Mill was correct in believing that through laws, education, and …show more content…

It is designed to set a boundary of what acts are morally right and just according to consequentialist theory. John Stuart Mill argued that it coincided with laws and social arrangements as well as education and opinion. Mill spoke on behalf of maintaining harmony as a whole and establishing an everlasting association between one’s own happiness and that of the whole. Utilitarianism implies all forms of happiness, excluding Mill’s argument of quality and quantity. I personally agree with Mill’s approach because the utilitarian standard itself does not exclude forms of happiness such as addiction, harm, and other forms of unjust happiness. Utilitarianism is not hopelessly defective in defining what is morally right, it simply encompasses too much to be the absolute

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