Abstract
John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham are often said to have held
opposed views concerning the way “the value” of different pleasures should be
estimated. Mill is accused of being an inconsistent utilitarian because he thought
that, when comparing the value of two pleasures, we should not forget to take their
“quality” into account. Bentham, on the other hand, is said to have believed that
we should take “only quantity” into consideration.
By verifying what they actually wrote, and reflecting on what they meant by words
like “value”, “quantity”, and “quality”, we find that these allegations are largely
imaginary and that the difference between Mill and Bentham on this question has (at least) been
exaggerated.
Bentham, for example, did not write that "quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry", as is so often reported. In his Principles of Morals and
Legislation he clearly tells us why he rejects the inaccurate word “quantity”, when
speaking of “the value of (a lot of) pain or pleasure”, and he explicitly introduces
“quality” – both the word and the concept – in his analysis of rewards and
punishments.
These clarifications allow us to sort-out a few other confusions concerning
utilitarianism. We explain, for example, why authors like Amartya Sen and Michael
Sandel are mistaken in believing that rights and freedoms have “no intrinsic
value” (only instrumental value) in utilitarian ethics.