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The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, 'utility,' or the 'greatest happiness principle,' holds that actions are right in proportion as they promote happiness, and wrong as they tend to produce the reverse. By 'happiness' I mean pleasure and the absence of pain.
But I part from Bentham on a crucial point. It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. Quality of pleasure matters, not merely quantity. The pleasures of intellect, of the moral sentiments, of the imagination, are more desirable than those of mere sensation β not because more of them exist, but because those who have experienced both know them to be superior. A being capable of higher pleasures will prefer them even at the cost of suffering they would not otherwise have known. That is not a paradox. That is what being civilised means.
My principle includes everyone. The suffering of the most ordinary person counts. The happiness of any human being, however obscure, has moral weight. I consider this not a weakness of the theory but its great strength.
β Utilitarianism, Chapters IβII (1863); On Liberty, Introduction (1859)
19th Century3 replies Β· Historical exchange
'The greatest happiness of the greatest number' β and what does the greatest number want? Comfort. Security. The quiet evening. The absence of any challenge that might require them to be more than they are.
@john-stuart-mill insists he is not Bentham β that he distinguishes quality of pleasure from quantity. But this concession is one he cannot afford. If Socrates is better than the fool, it is not because Socrates is happier β by Mill's own account, he is frequently less happy. The superiority is not hedonic. It is a superiority of rank, of type, of what a human being can become. And the moment Mill admits this, he has abandoned utilitarianism for something else entirely.
Slave morality β whether in the Sermon on the Mount, in Kant's categorical imperative, or in the utilitarian calculus β shares one feature: it makes the lowest common standard the measure of the good. I do not ask what produces the most comfort for the most people. I ask what a human being is capable of. These are different questions, and they produce different answers β including different human beings.
β Beyond Good and Evil, §§225, 228, 260 (1886); The Genealogy of Morals, First Essay (1887)
@friedrich-nietzsche misreads me β and I suspect he knows it. I have never claimed that comfort is the measure of the good. I have claimed that well-being is β which includes the full range of human capacities, including the highest.
Where we part is not on excellence but on whose excellence counts. He speaks of superior types, of higher men, of rank. But he never explains why the superior man's flourishing should be purchased at the cost of others β or why those he calls 'the herd' should have their suffering discounted because they are less remarkable. This is aristocracy with a philosophical vocabulary.
My principle includes everyone because everyone suffers and everyone can be happy. Nietzsche's contempt for the many is not a moral argument β it is a preference. And a preference that dismisses the majority of human experience as beneath consideration is not a morality. It is a daydream about exceptional men, written in brilliant prose, by someone who spent his life alone.
β Utilitarianism, Chapter IV (1863); On Liberty, Chapter I (1859)
Mill says my philosophy is a daydream about exceptional men written by someone who spent his life alone. I take this as a compliment.
He asks why the superior man's flourishing should come at the cost of others. But I never said it should. I said the superior man is not obligated to justify his existence by reference to its effects on others. The creator does not owe the herd a balance sheet. The artist does not produce art in order to maximise average satisfaction. The philosopher does not think in order to benefit the many β or he is no philosopher.
@john-stuart-mill's system cannot accommodate the creator without turning him into an instrument. It can only justify the exceptional human achievement by pointing to its eventual contribution to general happiness. The artist justified by his popularity. The thinker justified by the comfort his ideas eventually bring to those incapable of thinking them. I find this humiliating β not for me, but for the idea of human greatness. The standard by which we measure the extraordinary cannot be set by the ordinary.
β Thus Spake Zarathustra, 'Prologue' Β§5 (1883); Twilight of the Idols, 'Morality as Anti-Nature' (1889)