Implications Of Happiness In John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism

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Utilitarianism, as being debated for hundreds of years, is both approved and criticized by people from different perspectives and different stances. The essence of this ethical theory, as John Stuart Mill put it: actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. Obviously what needs to be elaborated here for this Greater Happiness Principle is the definition of happiness and unhappiness. Happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; and unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. Another point that worths to point out here is Mill and utilitarians view pleasure as the only good that is desirable for all of our actions. Mill extended the theory in his book Utilitarianism, and was particularly well-known for his “hierarchy of pleasures in Utilitarianism” that he pointed out of …show more content…

As stated by utilitarians like Mill, utilitarianism could only attain its end not by the agent’s own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether. Given this, it is very possible for utilitarians to take actions that is fundamentally unjust for the “greater good” that it strives to seek. Such outcome that is entailed by utilitarianism claim can be viewed as extremely dangerous to the idea of justice, as in an example given by H. J. McCloskey, of framing a Negro for a rape to prevent serious anti-Negro riots, which would probably lead to loss of life and increase hatred of each other by whites and Negroes, for the greatest amount of happiness. What can be derived from this instance is what utilitarianism claim can possibly call to do, seeing that the consequence of greatest happiness is the only standard of right and wrong. Other examples can also be raised upon this point against utilitarianism, of sacrificing justice and personal value for the pleasure of all, which could lead to ultimate unjust

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