J. S. Mill's distinction between higher and lower pleasures is often thought to conflict with his commitment to psychological and ethical hedonism: if the superiority of higher pleasures is quantitative, then the higher/lower distinction is superfluous and Mill contradicts himself; if the superiority of higher pleasures is not quantitative, then Mill's hedonism is compromised.

This is a defense of John Stuart Mill’s proof of the principle of utility in the fourth chapter of his Utilitarianism. The proof is notorious as a fallacious attempt by a prominent philosopher, who ought not to have made the elementary mistakes he is supposed to have made. This book shows that he did not. The aim is not to glorify utilitarianism, in a full sweep, as the best normative ethical theory, or even to vindicate, on a more specific level, (...) Mill’s universalistic ethical hedonism as the best form of utilitarianism. The book is concerned only with Mill’s utilitarianism, and primarily with his proof of the principle of utility. The purpose is to show that Mill proceeds intelligibly and systematically in pursuing a well-defined project in the fourth chapter of Utilitarianism, and that he successfully defends what he sets out to establish in his proof of the principle of utility. (shrink)

Mill was receptive to all sorts of ideas, both plausible and implausible, which did not fit well with utilitarianism. He was, for example, inclined to think of equality, not just pleasure, as. He was able to think of himself as a utilitarian only by grossly expanding that notion to cover any doctrine which did not entirely rely, without the possibility of further explanation, on or God's commands. It is even doubtful whether he was a consequentialist in any sense. Mill's account (...) of moral obligation is not a maximizing, nor even a satisficing, one. And the account emphasizes the place of supererogation. There is no suggestion in Mill that one is obliged to do something merely because a teaching to that effect would be felicific. Far from there being an obligation to maximize, it would sometimes be wrong merely to make Pareto-improvements. Sympathetically understood, the account of obligation in Mill is more or less the same as one finds in Hobbes, with his theorems. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill's connection with the Irish question spanned more than four decades and embraced a variety of elements. Of his writings on Ireland, the best known are his forty-threeMorning Chroniclearticles of 1846–47 composed in response to the Famine, the section of thePrinciples of Political Economythat treats the issue of cottier tenancy and the problem of Irish land, and, most conspicuous of all, his radical pamphletEngland and Ireland, published in 1868. All of these writings take the land question as their (...) paramount concern. The fairly absorbing interest in the subject disclosed by Mill during the second half of the 1840s arose from the fortuitous conjuncture of the disaster unfolding in Ireland and his engagement with the principles of political economy. Between 1848 and 1871 Mill'sPrincipleswent through seven editions (excluding the People's edition) and the substantive revisions he made in the section on Ireland from one edition to the next illumine both the essence and the accidentals of his bearing towards that country. Mill's cogent and controversial advocacy of fixity of tenure inEngland and Irelandconstituted the heart of his answer to the Fenian challenge. The land question aside, Mill was drawn into the battle over the Irish university system in the 1860s largely through his friendship with John Elliot Cairnes, professor of jurisprudence and political economy at the Queen's College Galway. On this subject, however, Mill wrote almost nothing for publication. The longest single piece he ever drafted on Ireland was his first, an essay that predated theMorning Chroniclearticles by two decades. In his own bibliography this essay is referred to as ‘An article on the Catholic Question which appeared in the Parliamentary Review for 1825’. Although the essay of 1825 could justly have borne the same title as the pamphlet of 1868, the particulars of course differ markedly. Ireland never ceased to pose a question during the course of the nineteenth century, but the dynamics shaping that question changed much between the mid-1820s and the late 1860s. Even so, the 1825 essay prefigures something of Mill's later involvement with the Irish question, and also invites examination as a quite remarkable piece of political journalism from the pen of a young man not yet twenty, who would subsequently establish himself as the most influential thinker of his generation. (shrink)