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Essay on Utilitarianism by Mill
Mill states the essential difficulty of ethics, discusses the history and nature of this problem, and distinguishes the conventional types of answers given to the problem. Subsequently, Mill classifies utilitarianism as a react and then raises the additional problem of how one can prove utilitarianism. The oldest and most significant problem in philosophy is that concerning the norm of right and wrong (the summum bonum, the basis of morality). Right through history, this problem has attracted the greatest attention and the efforts of some of the supreme minds. However, the dilemma has never been solved. This complexity of finding a solution is due to the nature of moral theory or morals.
Mill defined utilitarianism as "the statement of belief which accepts as the basis of principles, usefulness, or the supreme contentment Principle," and which "holds that actions are right in share as they be inclined to prop up happiness wrong as they tend to create the reverse of happiness." Happiness is defined as "pleasure, and the absence of pain." Unhappiness is defined as "pain, and the privation of pleasure." The theory of life implied by the definition of utilitarianism is that "pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things enviable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain."
In a science, fastidious truths lead the common theory. In an art, we continue in a contradictory manner. That is, we need a general theory first in order to judge individual cases. Morality is an art and not a science. "A test of right and wrong must be the resources, one would think, of ascertaining what is right or wrong, and not a consequence of having by now ascertained it."..............
