His Conception of Utility

ity” vs. “quantity” of pleasure. When Mill talks about this distinction, he has in mind the special structure of the overall schedule of activities which specifies our way of life and the priority we give to the activities involving the exercise of our higher faculties. Our conception of happiness, then, is that of a way of life more or less successfully lived, given reasonable expectations of what life can provide (II: ¶12). To say that there are higher vs. lower pleasures is just to say that we decidedly prefer a way of life the special structure of which gives the central focus and priority to those activities that call upon the higher faculties.

§5. Further Comments on the Decided Preference Criterion

(a)First, for Mill’s purposes I don’t think it necessary to make any finegrained distinctions within the class of higher pleasures or within the class of lower pleasures. Mill is concerned to rebut the objection made by Carlyle and others that utilitarianism is a doctrine fit only for swine. He rebuts this charge as presuming a low view of human nature and he counters with his distinction between the higher and lower pleasures. Once this distinction is made and the decided preference for the higher pleasures established, Mill has made his case. Given his whole doctrine, further refinements within the higher and the lower pleasures are not essential.

(b)Mill comments (II: ¶8) that “neither pains nor pleasures are homogeneous, and pain is always heterogeneous with pleasure.” He goes on to say that all distinctions within both pleasures and pains, and between pleasures and pains, are reflected in our judgments, resulting in our actual decisions and choices. This further emphasizes the fact that the distinction between the quality and the quantity of pleasures rests on special structural features and priorities embedded in the preferred schedule of activities specifying our way of life.

(c)It follows that it is a bad mistake to take Mill’s distinction between the quality and quantity of pleasures as resting on differences between the introspectable qualities of pleasures and pains as kinds of sensory feelings or experiences. All the distinctions that Mill makes, and needs to make, are reflected in our actual decisions and choices. I take him to say that all these distinctions depend on matters open to view in the special structure and priorities of the way of life we decidedly prefer.

[ 263 ]

Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College

m i l l

§6. Mill’s Underlying Psychology

1.I now discuss some aspects of the moral psychology that underlies Mill’s conception of utility as stated in Utilitarianism. This psychology consists of several important psychological principles. One principle—the principle of dignity—supports the idea of happiness that we have just discussed. Another principle, considered in III: ¶¶6–11, that the general happiness is recognized as the ethical standard, and that mankind has a desire to be in unity with his fellow creatures, supports Mill’s idea of the ultimate sanction of the principle of utility regarded as the basic principle of morality. I start with the principle of dignity.

We have seen how meaning can be given to the idea of differences in the quality of pleasures by referring to the structure and priorities embedded in the ways of life that we, as normal human beings, decidedly prefer. But Mill doesn’t stop with this criterion. He says (II: ¶¶4 and 6) that we also think a life not focused around the activities that call upon our higher faculties is a degrading form of existence.

He says that we may attribute the unwillingness to lead such a life to pride, or to the love of liberty and personal independence, or even to a love of power. But Mill thinks that the most appropriate explanation lies in a sense of dignity that all human beings possess in proportion to the development of their higher faculties (II: ¶6). By this last I take him to mean: in proportion to the degree to which our higher faculties have been realized by suitable training and education, and their development has not been stunted by impoverished conditions or lack of opportunity, not to speak of hostile circumstances.

2.Mill believes that our sense of dignity is so important to us that no mode of existence that violates it could be desired by us, without a special explanation (II: ¶7). To think that the desire to maintain our dignity is fulfilled at the sacrifice of happiness is, Mill thinks, to mistake happiness for contentment. The question arises as to how Mill’s idea of dignity is related to what he says about the higher and the lower pleasures. Is it another way of making the same distinction, or does it add a further element? And is it consistent with his utilitarianism?

The text seems unclear on this point. I shall suppose that the idea of dignity does add a new element. One question is whether it can be inter-

[ 264 ]

Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College

His Conception of Utility

preted in a way consistent with Mill’s view as I have presented it; and I shall consider this later when we come to discuss On Liberty. The new element is this: not only do we have a decided preference for the higher over the lower pleasures, but we also have a higher-order desire to have desires cultivated by a way of life suitably focused on the higher activities and sufficient to sustain them.

This higher-order desire is a desire first, that as a human being with the higher faculties, these faculties be realized and cultivated, and second, that we have desires appropriate to set our higher faculties in motion and to enjoy their exercise, and that we do not have desires interfering with this.

3. It is important to note that in connection with the sense of dignity, Mill uses the language of ideals and human perfection (II: ¶6). He speaks of self-respect, rank, and status, and of certain ways of life seen by us as degrading and unworthy. He introduces, in effect, another form of value besides the enjoyable and the pleasing, namely, the admirable and the worthy along with their opposites, the degrading and the contemptible.7

Our sense of dignity is tied, then, to our recognition that some ways of life are admirable and worthy of our nature, while others are beneath us and unfitting. It is essential to add that the sense of dignity is not derived from a sense of moral obligation. To say this would conflict with one of the conditions of the decided preference criterion as well as with the sense of dignity as a different form of value.

7. Mill discusses these values in “Bentham,” CW, X, pp. 95f, 112f; and in On Liberty, IV: ¶¶4–12 passim.

[ 265 ]

Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College

mill ii

His Account of Justice

§1. Our Approach to Mill

1. This is a good time to explain our approach to Mill, and to relate it to our approach to Locke and Rousseau.

With Locke we mainly discussed two things. First, we considered his account of legitimacy, that is, his criterion of a legitimate regime as one that can arise in ideal history. We saw that this means a regime that can be contracted into by rational persons without violating any duties imposed on them by the fundamental law of nature. And second, we considered Locke’s account of property and how it was compatible with unequal basic political liberties (the property-qualification for the franchise), and so with a class-state.

With Rousseau we also considered mainly two things; first, his account of inequality in regard both to its historical origins and to its political and social consequences in giving rise to the vices and evils of civilization. This set the stage for the question whether there are any principles of right and justice such that when society realizes those principles in its institutions, those vices and evils are kept in check, if not eliminated altogether. The Social Contract answers this question. Rousseau sees the social compact as specifying the desired principles as norms of political and social cooperation between citizens as free and equal; and we tried to understand his idea of the general will.

We saw that Rousseau takes the idea of the social compact further than Locke. His view of the role and significance of equality (and inequality) is deeper and more central. Justice as fairness1 follows Rousseau more closely in both of these respects.

1. The name of the political conception of justice developed in Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971; rev. ed. 1999) and in Justice as Fair-

[ 266 ]

Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College

His Account of Justice

2. I begin by stating a problem about understanding Mill. In many of his writings, Mill states certain principles which he sometimes calls “the principles of the modern world.” These principles we can think of as principles of political and social justice for the basic structure of society.2 I will be discussing these principles in some detail in the next two lectures, when we take up the essays On Liberty and The Subjection of Women; but suffice it to say here that Mill thinks them necessary to protect the rights of individuals and minorities against the possible oppression of modern democratic majorities (On Liberty, Chapter I).

Now I believe that the content of Mill’s principles of political and social justice is very close to the content of the two principles of justice as fairness.3 This content is, I assume, close enough so that, for our present purposes, we may regard their substantive content as roughly the same. The problem that now arises is this:

How does it happen that an apparently utilitarian view leads to the same substantive content (the same principles of justice) as justice as fairness? Here there are at least two possible answers:

(a) Perhaps these principles of political justice can be justified—or arrived at—within both views, so that both support these principles much as they would in an overlapping consensus.4 In the Restatement, I said that the parties in the original position, selecting principles for the basic structure, might be viewed as using what I called a utility function based on the fundamental needs and requirements of citizens conceived as free and equal

ness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), hereafter cited as Restatement.

2.A society’s basic structure consists of its main political and social institutions and the way they hang together in one system of cooperation (Restatement, pp. 8f ).

3.The two principles of justice as fairness are: (a) each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all; and (b) social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society. This last is called “the difference principle.” Some writers prefer the term “maximin principle,” but I prefer the difference principle, to distinguish it from the maximin rule for decision under uncertainty (Restatement, pp. 42f ).

4.An overlapping consensus is a consensus in which the same political conception of justice is endorsed by the reasonable, though opposing, religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines that gain a significant body of adherents and endure from one generation to the next (Restatement, p. 32 and p. 184).

[ 267 ]

Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College

m i l l

persons, and characterized by the two moral powers, a capacity for a sense of justice, and a capacity for a conception of the good. It is not based on people’s actual preferences and interests. Using this suitably constructed utility function, they would adopt the two principles of justice.5 Mill’s conception of utility might have much the same result. This is one thing we want to explore.

(b) On the other hand, Mill may be mistaken in thinking his doctrine leads to his principles of the modern world. While he might think his conception of utility does that, perhaps it does not actually do so.

3.I shall assume that the second answer is not correct. I assume instead that someone with Mill’s enormous gifts can’t be mistaken about something so basic to his whole doctrine. Little mistakes and slips, yes—they don’t matter and we can fix them up. But fundamental errors at the very bottom level: no. That we should regard as very implausible, unless it turns out to our dismay that there is no other alternative.

I note that this is a precept of method. It guides us in how we are to approach and to interpret the texts we read. We must have confidence in the author, especially a gifted one. If we see that something is wrong when we take the text in a certain way, then we assume the author would have seen it too. So our interpretation is likely to be wrong. We then ask: How can we read the text so as to avoid the difficulty?

For the present, then, I suppose that the first alternative is the correct one; and therefore, that Mill’s conception of utility, together with the fundamental principles of his moral psychology and his social theory, leads him to think correctly that his principles of the modern world would do better than the other principles he considers in maximizing utility—that is, in maximizing human happiness understood as a mode of existence (way of life) as described in the important II: ¶3–10 of Utilitarianism.

4.To check this understanding of Mill’s doctrine, we must look at its details as found in the essays we read, Utilitarianism, On Liberty, and The Subjection of Women. We need to see how he treats several important political questions and to examine the way the conception of utility is connected with the principles of the modern world, and in particular with the principles of justice and the principle of liberty.

To this end, I shall try to show that one plausible rendering of Mill’s view—I don’t claim it is the most plausible—can be seen as utilitarian,

5.Restatement, p. 107.

[ 268 ]

Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College

His Account of Justice

when it is understood in terms of his conception of utility.6 Although I read him as allowing an important role for perfectionist values, his view is still utilitarian in that it does not give perfectionist values a certain kind of weight as reasons in political questions, in particular questions of liberty. I will explain this in the next two lectures.

A special feature of Mill’s view is that it rests on a particular psychological account of human nature, as expressed by certain quite specific psychological first principles. In one place Mill refers to them as: “the general laws of our emotional constitution” (Utilitarianism, V: ¶3). Among these principles are the following, the first two of which we discussed in the last lecture:

(a)The decided preference criterion: Utilitarianism, II: ¶¶5–8.

(b)The principle of dignity: Utilitarianism, II: ¶¶4, 6–7; Liberty, III: ¶6.

(c)The principle of living in unity with others: Utilitarianism, III: ¶¶8–11.

(d)The principle of individuality: Liberty, III: ¶1.

(e)The Aristotelian principle: Utilitarianism, II: ¶8.

Clearly these principles are related in various ways, as some would seem to support or to underlie others; for example, (b) might be thought to underlie (a), or at least to support it. But I leave these matters aside for now.

5.I shall not argue that these principles are correct or incorrect, although many may find them implausible. They do make Mill’s doctrine depend on a quite specific human psychology. We may think it better for a political conception of justice to be more robust in its principles and to depend, so far as possible, only on psychological features of human nature more evident to common sense. But still, if Mill’s psychological principles are correct, then so far his doctrine is sound.

Here there is a range of possibilities. A political conception can depend on a quite specific human psychology; or else on a more general psychology together with a quite specific normative conception of person and society. Take, as an example of such a normative conception, that used in justice as fairness.7 I would conjecture that political conceptions differ in how

6.Whether his conception of utility is itself utilitarian is an altogether different ques-

tion. I believe it is not, but I put this aside for now.

7. A normative conception of the person and society is given by our moral and political thought and practice, and not by biological or psychological traits. In justice as fairness, in specifying society as a fair system of cooperation, we use the companion idea of free

[ 269 ]

Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College