Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill: Free EPUB, AZW3 & KEPUB Download

Philosophy · Ethics

Utilitarianism

By John Stuart Mill · (Published 1863) · Seventh edition, London, 1879 · All John Stuart Mill books

Word Count ~31,000 words (estimated)

Reading Time Approx. 1.7 hours (estimated)

Copyright Status Public Domain in the US; check local laws

Source Project Gutenberg #11224

Source Edition Project Gutenberg #11224

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The opening three paragraphs of Chapter I

There are few circumstances among those which make up the present condition of human knowledge, more unlike what might have been expected, or more significant of the backward state in which speculation on the most important subjects still lingers, than the little progress which has been made in the decision of the controversy respecting the criterion of right and wrong. From the dawn of philosophy, the question concerning the summum bonum, or, what is the same thing, concerning the foundation of morality, has been accounted the main problem in speculative thought, has occupied the most gifted intellects, and divided them into sects and schools, carrying on a vigorous warfare against one another. And after more than two thousand years the same discussions continue, philosophers are still ranged under the same contending banners, and neither thinkers nor mankind at large seem nearer to being unanimous on the subject, than when the youth Socrates listened to the old Protagoras, and asserted (if Plato’s dialogue be grounded on a real conversation) the theory of utilitarianism against the popular morality of the so-called sophist.

It is true that similar confusion and uncertainty, and in some cases similar discordance, exist respecting the first principles of all the sciences, not excepting that which is deemed the most certain of them, mathematics; without much impairing, generally indeed without impairing at all, the trustworthiness of the conclusions of those sciences. An apparent anomaly, the explanation of which is, that the detailed doctrines of a science are not usually deduced from, nor depend for their evidence upon, what are called its first principles. Were it not so, there would be no science more precarious, or whose conclusions were more insufficiently made out, than algebra; which derives none of its certainty from what are commonly taught to learners as its elements, since these, as laid down by some of its most eminent teachers, are as full of fictions as English law, and of mysteries as theology. The truths which are ultimately accepted as the first principles of a science, are really the last results of metaphysical analysis, practised on the elementary notions with which the science is conversant; and their relation to the science is not that of foundations to an edifice, but of roots to a tree, which may perform their office equally well though they be never dug down to and exposed to light. But though in science the particular truths precede the general theory, the contrary might be expected to be the case with a practical art, such as morals or legislation. All action is for the sake of some end, and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and colour from the end to which they are subservient. When we engage in a pursuit, a clear and precise conception of what we are pursuing would seem to be the first thing we need, instead of the last we are to look forward to. A test of right and wrong must be the means, one would think, of ascertaining what is right or wrong, and not a consequence of having already ascertained it.

The difficulty is not avoided by having recourse to the popular theory of a natural faculty, a sense or instinct, informing us of right and wrong. For—besides that the existence of such a moral instinct is itself one of the matters in dispute—those believers in it who have any pretensions to philosophy, have been obliged to abandon the idea that it discerns what is right or wrong in the particular case in hand, as our other senses discern the sight or sound actually present. Our moral faculty, according to all those of its interpreters who are entitled to the name of thinkers, supplies us only with the general principles of moral judgments; it is a branch of our reason, not of our sensitive faculty; and must be looked to for the abstract doctrines of morality, not for perception of it in the concrete. The intuitive, no less than what may be termed the inductive, school of ethics, insists on the necessity of general laws. They both agree that the morality of an individual action is not a question of direct perception, but of the application of a law to an individual case. They recognise also, to a great extent, the same moral laws; but differ as to their evidence, and the source from which they derive their authority. According to the one opinion, the principles of morals are evident à priori, requiring nothing to command assent, except that the meaning of the terms be understood. According to the other doctrine, right and wrong, as well as truth and falsehood, are questions of observation and experience. But both hold equally that morality must be deduced from principles; and the intuitive school affirm as strongly as the inductive, that there is a science of morals. Yet they seldom attempt to make out a list of the à priori principles which are to serve as the premises of the science; still more rarely do they make any effort to reduce those various principles to one first principle, or common ground of obligation. They either assume the ordinary precepts of morals as of à priori authority, or they lay down as the common groundwork of those maxims, some generality much less obviously authoritative than the maxims themselves, and which has never succeeded in gaining popular acceptance. Yet to support their pretensions there ought either to be some one fundamental principle or law, at the root of all morality, or if there be several, there should be a determinate order of precedence among them; and the one principle, or the rule for deciding between the various principles when they conflict, ought to be self-evident.

The excerpt below is the opening of Chapter I, in three paragraphs. The first names the problem: after more than two thousand years the controversy about the criterion of right and wrong is no nearer settlement, and the schools stand where Socrates and Protagoras left them. The second meets the obvious reply by pointing to the first principles of the sciences, which are the last results of analysis rather than foundations, and argues that a practical art such as morals or legislation must begin from the end it serves. The third takes up the moral sense, and observes that the intuitive and the inductive schools agree that morality is deduced from principles, though neither has produced the one principle.

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Further Reading

Read next: On Liberty and The Republic

Free edition

On Liberty

By John Stuart Mill · The other book of 1859 that made his name as a reformer

Free edition

The Republic

By Plato · The oldest argument about what the good is, and who knows it

Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill: Summary, Ideas & Arguments

This page offers a summary and analysis of Utilitarianism, with the five chapters set out in reading order and the work each one does described as it comes. John Stuart Mill published the book in 1863, gathering three articles he had written for Fraser’s Magazine two years earlier; the title page records the reprinting and names the seventh edition, London, 1879. The argument is a treatise, not an anthology, and it is written against opponents Mill names as he goes: the a priori moralists, the intuitionists, and the critics who took utility to mean something dry and calculating. It sits with the rest of the Philosophy Classics on this site. Bentham is the source of the doctrine’s other name, the greatest happiness principle, which the text uses interchangeably with utility.

Chapter I opens the question. Mill says the controversy about the criterion of right and wrong has gone on since philosophy began, and that confusion about first principles is not peculiar to morals, since the sciences also arrive at their principles last. He states what he will attempt: not proof in the ordinary sense, because questions of ultimate ends do not admit of it, but considerations able to determine the intellect to accept or reject the formula. He adds that the a priori school cannot do without utilitarian arguments, and quotes Kant’s formula only to say that Kant fails to deduce the particular duties from it. He ends the chapter by saying that he will first clear away the grosser misconceptions of the doctrine and then argue for it, and that is the order the rest of the book keeps.

Chapter II holds the doctrine. Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, and happiness is pleasure together with the absence of pain. Mill separates quality from quantity among pleasures, and settles the difference by the preference of those who have experience of both, which yields the sentence about a human being dissatisfied and a pig satisfied. The chapter then answers a run of objections: that utility is opposed to pleasure, that the standard asks too much of agents, that it makes men cold, that it is godless, that it confuses utility with expediency, that there is no time to calculate, and that it leaves no room for secondary rules. Its first work is a point of language, since the word had come to be used as if it meant the rejection of beauty, ornament and amusement, and Mill says the writers who introduced it may well resume it to rescue it from that use.

Chapter III asks for the sanction, the motive to obey. External sanctions are the hope of favour and the fear of displeasure from other men and from God; the internal one is conscience, a feeling in the mind that must be broken through before we do wrong, and which Mill describes as encrusted with associations from sympathy, love, fear, religion and childhood. The social feelings, he argues, give the principle a natural basis, since society cannot subsist except on the footing that the interests of all are consulted. He denies that the question counts specially against utility, since it arises for every standard a person adopts on a basis other than custom, and the customary morality is the only one that feels obligatory in itself. He recommends Comte’s Système de Politique Positive as evidence of what a religion of humanity could do, while rejecting its politics.

Chapter IV turns to proof. The only evidence that a thing is desirable is that people desire it; each person desires his own happiness, so the general happiness is a good to the aggregate. The objection that virtue is desired for its own sake is met by arguing that virtue, like money, power and fame, begins as a means and becomes a part of happiness. Will is distinguished from desire: will is a child of desire, and in a settled character it acts from habit. Chapter V surveys the conduct called just and unjust, finds the common element in a right residing in some assignable person, and resolves justice into the most important class of social utilities, guarded by the sentiment of security. The Project Gutenberg #11224 text is the one this page follows. Mill’s On Liberty is a different book on a different question, and Plato’s The Republic is the oldest argument about the good that stands behind the whole dispute.

Historical Context

The book is printed from the seventh edition, London, 1879, and its title page records that the text was reprinted from Fraser’s Magazine and published by Longmans, Green, and Co. The chapters carry numbers only; the titles usually given to them are not printed in the body of this transcription, which runs from the heading of Chapter I to the words THE END without preface, index or appendix. The four notes are marked A to D and are printed in two blocks, one after Chapter II and one after the words THE END, rather than at the foot of the page, so a reader who wants them must turn to the back of the chapter or of the book.

The opposition is named inside the text. Kant’s Metaphysics of Ethics is quoted for its formula and criticized for failing to derive the duties from it; Bentham supplies the name greatest happiness principle and the dictum that everybody is to count for one; Epicurus and the Stoics are called in on pleasure and on self-sacrifice; Carlyle’s taunt about the right to be happy and Novalis on suicide are both answered. Mr. Owen is brought in on punishment, Mr. Galt’s Annals of the Parish on the origin of the word utilitarian, and Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics in the last note. Mill’s own name for the doctrine in these pages is the utilitarian or happiness theory, and he says at the outset that he will contribute towards such proof as it is susceptible of, not towards a demonstration.

The notes show the book arguing with living critics. Note A explains that Mill adopted the word utilitarian from a passing expression in Galt, that he and others later abandoned it as a badge of sect, and that they may well resume it as the name for one opinion; note B answers the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davis, who had objected that the rightness of saving a drowning man depends on the motive, and the reply turns on the difference between motive and intention. Note C cites Professor Bain’s chapter on the moral sense, and note D answers Spencer’s charge that utility presupposes an anterior principle, and then records, in brackets, a private communication in which Spencer denies being an opponent of utilitarianism at all.

Key Ideas & Arguments

• The greatest happiness principle: Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness; happiness is pleasure and the absence of pain, unhappiness pain and the privation of pleasure. The standard is not the agent’s own happiness but the greatest amount altogether, and Mill requires him to be as strictly impartial between his own case and others as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.
• Quality of pleasure: Pleasures differ in kind as well as in degree, and the test of the difference is the decided preference of those who have experience of both, even when the preferred pleasure brings more discontent with it. The sense of dignity is what keeps a person from exchanging a higher life for a lower one, and Mill takes the verdict of the competent judges as final on the question.
• Sanction and conscience: The sanction of a standard is the motive for obeying it. External sanctions are the favour and displeasure of other men and of God; the internal one is a feeling in the mind, conscience, which rises in serious cases into a shrinking from the act as an impossibility. Mill argues that the social feelings give utility a natural basis, so that the sanction needs no transcendental origin to bind.
• The proof of utility: A first principle cannot be proved by reasoning, but the desirability of an end can be evidenced by the fact that it is desired. The only proof that a thing is visible is that people see it, and the only proof that happiness is desirable is that each person desires his own. Virtue, money, power and fame are means that become parts of happiness by association, so nothing is desired except happiness.
• Secondary principles: The principle is not applied afresh to every act. Mankind has spent its whole past learning the tendencies of actions, and the beliefs so formed are the rules of morality for the multitude and for the philosopher until he finds better. To acknowledge a first principle is not to forbid intermediate generalizations, and the received code admits of indefinite improvement as knowledge grows.
• Justice and rights: Justice is the name for those moral rules that concern the essentials of well-being, and its distinguishing mark is a right residing in some assignable person: a claim on society to protect him in the possession of something. To have a right is to have something society ought to defend, and the interest behind it is security, the most vital of all interests and the one no one can do without.

Core Arguments & Influence

• Proving a first principle: Mill does not claim to demonstrate the principle of utility, and says at the start that questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof. What he offers instead is a consideration able to determine the intellect, and the fourth chapter supplies it: happiness is desirable because it is desired, and nothing else is desired except as part of it. The move has been much disputed, and it is the book’s most original step, since it turns a question of morals into a question of fact about human nature, to be settled by self-observation and the observation of others.
• The happiness of all concerned: The standard is not each man’s own happiness. Utilitarianism requires the agent to be as strictly impartial between his own case and that of others as a disinterested and benevolent spectator, and Mill finds the spirit of the ethics of utility in the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth. He then asks what institutions would follow: laws and social arrangements should place the interest of every individual as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole, and education should bind the two together in the mind of every person.
• Sanction, conscience and social feeling: The third chapter answers the question a new standard always provokes: why am I bound to obey it? Mill’s answer is that the sanction of utility is the same as that of any other morality, the conscientious feelings of mankind, together with the external hopes and fears that attach to any rule. What is distinctive is the ground he gives the internal sanction, the social feelings, which grow with civilization and would make a person unable to conceive of a life of total disregard for others. He allows that the sanction has no hold on those who do not have the feelings it appeals to, and that such persons are reached by the external sanctions only, but he adds that no other moral principle has a stronger hold on them.
• Justice inside utility: The last chapter takes the objection Mill thinks the real one, that justice is a standard above utility. He answers by analysis: the things called unjust all involve a hurt to an assignable person and a demand for punishment, and the sentiment is resentment moralized by sympathy and by a conception of social good. Justice is then not a rival to utility but its most important part, since the rules that protect persons from harm are the ones on which all the rest of social life depends.
• The objections answered: Most of Chapter II is given to objections, and Mill’s replies set the pattern the rest of the book follows. He separates the rule of action from the motive for acting, so that a man who saves a drowning stranger for pay still does what is right; he distinguishes utility from expediency, which he says is a branch of the hurtful; he denies that the standard is godless, since a good God must will the happiness of his creatures; and he answers the want of time for calculation by pointing to the secondary rules that experience has already supplied.

Why Download Our Custom E-Reader Edition of Utilitarianism?

The download is the whole book, not a digest of it. All five chapters are here in the order Mill wrote them, from the statement of the problem in Chapter I to the analysis of justice that closes Chapter V, with the four notes he attached to the argument. Nothing is summarized in place of itself, so an objection can be followed from the page where it is raised to the page where Mill answers it, and the sentences quoted in the summaries above can be read in their place.

The page is arranged to be read beside the text. Ten groups follow the chapters and stop where each chapter stops, splitting the long chapters at the point where Mill changes ground. Six notes explain the ideas the argument turns on, and five themes follow it from the definition of happiness to the place of justice. A short historical section names the writers Mill is answering and the notes in which he answers them, so the polemic can be read as a polemic.

The files come in three formats with the same text and the same divisions. The EPUB opens in Apple Books, Calibre and most Android readers; the AZW3 is the file for a Kindle; the KEPUB is the one Kobo devices read best. No account is needed for any of them, and nothing in the downloads is locked, watermarked or time limited, so a passage found here can be checked against any printing of the seventh edition.

• Project Gutenberg transcription, via Project Gutenberg #11224 — the complete text of the seventh edition, with all five chapters and the four notes, unabridged.
• Five chapters in ten groups Every chapter has its own summary, and the two longest are divided where Mill turns from one question to the next, so that each group covers a single stretch of the argument and stops where that stretch stops.
• The objections kept in view The summaries say which objections Mill is answering and which of his answers belongs to which objection, since much of the book is written against named critics rather than as a statement of the doctrine alone.
• EPUB, AZW3 and KEPUB files The same text in three formats, for Apple Books, Kindle and Kobo, with the chapter divisions intact and nothing to install beyond the reading app you already use.

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