Wendy Donner

_John Stuart Mill_ investigates the central elements of the 19th century philosopher’s most profound and influential works, from _On Liberty_ to _Utilitarianism_ and _The Subjection of Women_. Through close analysis of his primary works, it reveals the very heart of the thinker’s ideas, and examines them in the context of utilitarianism, liberalism and the British empiricism prevalent in Mill’s day. Presents an analysis of the full range of Mill’s primary writings, getting to the core of the philosopher’s ideas. Examines the central elements of Mill’s writings in easily accessible prose Places Mill’s work and thought within the larger cultural and social context of 19th century Britain Illustrates the continued relevance of Mill’s philosophy to today’s reader.

This book contains the 1992 Tanner Lectures on Human Values delivered by Christine M. Korsgaard at Cambridge University, along with commentaries by G. A. Cohen, Raymond Geuss, Thomas Nagel, and Bernard Williams, as well as a reply by Korsgaard. The theme taken up in these lectures is the source and authority of norms, what Korsgaard calls “the normative question,” which asks “what justifies the claims that morality makes on us”. With clarity and elegance, she examines four proposed answers to this question: voluntarism, realism, reflective endorsement, and the appeal to autonomy.

John Stuart Mill's commitment to liberty and individual development is one of the most exoteric themes of his moral and political philosophy. But the linkages between this commitment to liberty and development and Mill's conception of utility and principles of the good are not as commonly recognized. As part of a more general transformation of his utilitarianism, Mill repudiated Bentham's principles of the good and instead adopted a more sophisticated form of hedonism. While Bentham admits only the total quantity of pleasure as contributing to value, Mill expands the circle to admit quality or kind of pleasure as well into the value reckoning. I have elsewhere interpreted and defended Mill's qualitative hedonism, and in this paper I can offer only a brief overview of that account and must largely assume its plausibility. Bentham and Mill agree that only pleasurable experiences and the absence of painful experiences have value and so both are called hedonists. But they have very different views about what properties of pleasures makes them valuable, or in other words what are the good-making properties of pleasure. Bentham thinks that only intensity and duration, or quantity, are good-making properties of pleasures, and thus he includes only these properties in measuring value. As a consequence, in the context of value measurement he is not interested in the kinds of things in which people take pleasure. But Mill is a qualitative hedonist, and thinks that the quality or kind of pleasure is also a good-making characteristic and thus should be included in value measurement. The things that are sources of pleasure matter to Mill.

I argue that Mill's view of individuality also plays an important role in promoting social pluralism and respect for difference. Firstly, I argue that in Mill's theory individuality is not merely an individual good but also a social good. Secondly, I argue that by expressing his appreciation of diversity, Mill's liberalism goes beyond tolerating difference and pluralism. His position is that pluralism should be appreciated rather than merely tolerated. Mill's appreciation of difference resonates with Iris Marion Young's ideal of the unoppressive city. However the structure of Mill's theory does place limits on the exercise of individual liberty. These limits are set down by the Liberty Principle in the essay On Liberty. I look at some cases. First, I examine the tensions between individuality and autonomy as they bump up against the needs of human connection. Second, I look at moral progress, for example the recognition of same‐sex marriage.

I offer here an interpretation and defense of John Stuart Mill's qualitative hedonism. One of the results of Mill's well-known mental crisis was a concept of utility substantially different from the orthodox Benthamite quantitative hedonism which Mill came to regard as being fraught with difficulties. He saw Bentham's concept as being excessively narrow, and he sought to overcome its limitations by enlarging his own concept of utility. He did this by including the quality of pleasures along with the quantity in the estimation of their worth. At the same time, Mill was highly critical of the intuitionist ethical theories of his day, and propounded utilitarianism as the rational, objective, and scientific alternative. So if Mill is to succeed in his enterprise of countering intuitionism while avoiding the pitfalls of Benthamite utilitarianism, he must retain the objectivity of Benthamism while repudiating its narrowness. Mill's critics have argued that when he opened up his concept of utility to include quality, he modified his theory so radically that he can no longer be called a hedonistic utilitarian, and that he relinquished the consis- tency and objectivity of Benthamite utilitarianism along with its weak- nesses. I argue here that Mill abandons neither hedonism nor utilitarianism, and that the objectivity and consistency of his theory are not undermined.