Ethics

John Stuart Mills Moral theory is often called utilitarianism. The theorys originates from the Greek Philosopher named Epicrus. But generally it is known that the start was from Jeremy Bentham. Stuarts father James Mill was the follower and supporter of the theories presented by Jeremy Bentham. James Mills was a friend of Jeremy. Stuart was brought up and taught the Jeremys views and so his interest developed that way. So he supported the views of Jeremy Bentham and contributed a lot for the support of him.

Stuart Mills theory utilitarianism supports the relativist approach rather than the absolutist one. The basic thing which it focuses is that the worth of any action can be determined by the satisfaction or utility or in other words, utility by doing a certain action determines its moral worth. He says that an action is moral and good if the outcome of it is happiness and as soon as the outcome of a particular action reverses its direction from happiness the action becomes morally wrong. The theory says that happiness is when a person maximizes pleasure and minimizes the pain. While on the other hand unhappiness is the opposite in which more is the pain while less is the pleasure. He says that the mental pleasures are the ones that are higher ones and other pleasures like physical pleasures as in physical satisfaction are the lower pleasures and this point against the Jeremys point who said that all the pleasures are equal. Mill believed this because people who have both physical and mental pleasures rate mental pressures as highly regard. He also gave the statement which says that happiness calculus cannot actually calculate all the pleasures which was previously believed true by the followers of Jeremy Bentham. He says that happiness the only thing which we desire and it is an intrinsic desire and not for anything else. The basic aim is to reach the maximum happiness that will maximize the pleasures and minimize the pains and further adds that happiness is the end and all the other things are means to the ends. This means that the people desires money, health and love, they are not the end and they all give them happiness so they prove to be as means to the end i.e. happiness.

Happiness of all should be considered when making our decisions. This would ensure the total aggregate happiness for all. Every individual desires his or her happiness. He says that we can not get to know whether a thing is desirable or not until it is actually desired by the people. He also argues in the support of the statement that says that it is better to be dissatisfied man than to be a satisfied pig. He also supported that educated people should be given more voting rights to choose the legislative government. This is not because of the intrinsic nature of the educated people rather because the educated people have better skills to judge which is correct for the nation.

The basis on which the moral decisions are made in the theory is to get the happiness for all so we can get the aggregate happiness. Every decision should be made in the way that maximizes the happiness. All the things other than happiness should be considered means for the end to be reached and actions should be done in the sense that leads to ultimate end i.e. happiness. Give more considerations to intrinsic pleasures rather than external ones.