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then, consists in part of those inequalities that are not justified by social expediency, by what is necessary to maximize social utility in the long run. This second interpretation leaves us where we were.
4. We are left with two questions we must try to answer.
First, why is Mill so confident that the two parts of his criterion for identifying the basic rights of justice do not diverge? Or, alternatively, why is he so confident that the political and social institutions that realize the principles of the modern world—principles with a content somewhat similar to the two principles of justice as fairness—are necessary to maximize social utility (in the long run), given the historical conditions of that world? And how does his answer rely on his conception of utility as spelled out in
Utilitarianism, II: ¶¶3–10?
Second, if our conjecture that Mill’s confidence rests on certain rather specific psychological principles of human nature is correct, then what are these more specific principles, and how does Mill think they work in tandem with his conception of utility to justify his principles of the modern world? Once Mill’s doctrine is fully set out, we will have to ask whether it is utilitarian in an appropriate sense. But for the time being I leave that aside. Our first aim must be to understand his view.
§6. The Desire to Be in Unity with Others
1. In the last lecture we considered the sense of dignity as a psychological principle that supports Mill’s view of happiness as a way of life giving a special place and priority to activities involving the exercise of the higher faculties. We now turn to another principle in his psychology, the desire to be in unity with others. This desire is taken up in III: ¶¶8–11 in connection with what Mill calls the ultimate sanction of utilitarian morality. This includes the desire, or willingness, to act justly, and so is appropriately discussed at this point.
As I have said, Chapter III presents part of Mill’s moral psychology and his account of how we can be moved to act from (and not merely in accordance with) the principle of utility and the requirements of justice. In some places this chapter is not very clear; but I think that we can make satisfactory sense of it for our purposes.
One of Mill’s main points is that whatever our philosophical account of
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moral judgments may be, whether we think moral distinctions have a transcendental or an objective foundation, or whether our view is naturalistic or even subjective, it is still true that as moral agents we do not act from moral principles unless we are moved by our conscience, or by moral conviction, or some other form of moral motivation. Right conduct must have some basis in our nature and character. Thus, a transcendentalist or an intuitionist doctrine, as much as the utilitarian or any other doctrine, must include a moral psychology.
Another of Mill’s main points is that historical experience shows that we can be educated to act from the principle of utility as well as from other moral principles. He contends that the principle of utility has a foothold in our moral psychology at least as secure and natural as that of any other principle.
2.I focus now on ¶¶8–11, which conclude Chapter III. ¶¶8–9 form a unit, as do ¶¶10–11. Let’s begin with 8–9. Here Mill states several general theses of his moral psychology, as follows.
(a) Our moral feelings and attitudes are not, to be sure, innate in the sense that they are spontaneously present in everyone without training and education; but like the educated capacities to speak and to reason, to build cities and to engage in agriculture, they are a natural outgrowth of our nature. Moral feelings and attitudes are capable of springing up, to some small degree, spontaneously, and they are also susceptible of being brought to a high level of cultivation and development.
(b) Mill grants that by an extensive enough use of external sanctions and of early moral training guided by the laws of association, our moral faculty can be cultivated in almost any direction. But there is this difference: early associations which are entirely artificial creations, and which have no support in our nature, yield by degrees to the dissolving force of intellectual analysis. Unless the feeling of duty is associated with a principle congenial to our nature and harmonious with its natural sentiments, it will upon intellectual analysis gradually lose its power to move us. This is part of Mill’s criterion of the natural as opposed to the artificial.
(c) Hence Mill needs to show that given the content of the principle of utility, the feelings of duty and moral obligation associated with it meet this essential condition. For if they did not, they would be artificial and therefore would dissolve in the face of reflection and analysis.
3.Mill tries to show this in ¶¶10–11. He begins by saying that there is a
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powerful natural sentiment in human nature that supports the principle of utility, namely, the desire to be in unity with others. This desire is such that, even apart from learning based on the laws of association, it tends to become stronger from the influences of advancing civilization. Let’s consider first, the content of this desire to be in unity with others, and second, the influences which make it stronger as civilization advances:
(a)The content of this desire Mill describes in ¶11 as the desire that we should not be rivals with others for the means of happiness. It is also the desire that there should be a harmony between our feelings and aims and the feelings and aims of others, so that the objectives of our conduct and theirs are not in conflict but complementary. What Mill has in mind is that the desire to be in unity with others is the desire to act from a principle of reciprocity. For he says in ¶10 that the feeling of unity with others, when perfect, would never make us desire any beneficial condition for ourselves, in the benefits of which others are not also included.14
(b)Why is this desire a natural outgrowth of our nature? Mill thinks that the social state itself is not only natural to us, but necessary and habitual. Any features of society that are essential to it we tend to regard as equally essential to us. Society is our natural habitat, as it were, and so what is essential to it must be harmonious with our nature. But how have the features essential to modern society been affected by the advances of civilization? The desire to be in unity with others is increasingly characteristic of the present age; so Mill must think there are special features of an advancing society that more and more sustain that desire.
(c)Mill gives a brief account of these features in the long paragraph 10 of Chapter III. They are not sharply enumerated, but his main idea seems to be that numerous changes are making modern society increasingly a society in which people recognize that they must, of course, pay due regard to the feelings and interests of others. The increasing equality of modern civilization, and the large scale of cooperation with other people and of proposing to them collective purposes, have made us aware that we must work together for shared and not for individual ends.
(d)The increasing equality of modern society comes about in this way: Mill thinks that all society among human beings, except for that between
14. The fact that Mill says this leads us to ask whether the difference principle (see Restatement, pp. 42f ) is a better expression of Mill’s view about equality and distributive justice than the principle of utility. However, I shan’t pursue this here.
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master and slave, is impossible unless the interests of all are to be consulted; and a society between persons who regard one another as equals can only exist on the understanding that the interests of all are to be regarded equally. In every stage of society, everyone “except an absolute monarch lives on equal terms with somebody; and in every age some advance is made towards a state in which it will be impossible to live permanently on other terms [than equality] with anybody.” So the advance of civilization towards greater equality strengthens the desire to be in unity with others.
Moreover, this desire is congenial to and harmonious with our nature and is not artificial. Why? Because the condition of equality is natural to society. It is the result of removing historical barriers and inequalities of power and property originating from force and conquest, and long maintained by dominion, ignorance, and the generally impoverished state of earlier society.
4. Aside, then, from the principle of dignity, what is the ultimate sanction of the principle of utility with its concern for equal justice? In Mill’s description it would appear to have two components. The first component is the desire to be in unity with others, as supported and strengthened by the conditions of modern equality; while the second component is certain convictions about, and attitudes related to, that desire.
This second component needs to be clarified. I take Mill to mean that to those who have this desire, it seems as natural a desire as are the feelings that accompany it. That is, it does not strike them on reflection and analysis as a desire imposed by education guided by the laws of association, or by laws relying on the intimidating power of society, and such that, once they understand this, the desire tends to disappear. To the contrary, this desire they think to be an attribute that it would not be good for them to be without.
Thus, by Mill’s criterion of the artificial vs. the natural, the desire to live in unity with others is natural and not undermined by analysis. And it is this conviction (indeed all these convictions and attitudes together) about the desire to be in unity with others that Mill says is the ultimate sanction of the principle of utility, and so the ultimate basis of our willingness to give justice.
The question now arises: how solid is the answer or explanation Mill gives here? Can we really make it out? Do we need to do better? How might we try?
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