Mill on virtue as a part of happiness

British Journal for the History of Philosophy

Volumn 4, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 367-380

  Crisp, Roger ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61249339287     PISSN: 09608788     EISSN: 14693526     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09608789608570946     Document Type: Note

References (12)

1. J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. Mary Warnock (London: Fontana, 1962), chap. IV. References to this text are to chapters and paragraphs
2. F. Berger, Happiness, Justice, and Freedom (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984)
3. J. S. Mill, 'Remarks on Bentham's philosophy', in Collected Works, ed. J. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), vol. X, 12-13
4. 'Bentham', Collected Works X, 95-6. It should be noted that Mill says of this desire that it is 'without hope of good . . . from other source than [the agent's] own inward consciousness'
5. David O. Brink, in his non-hedonist interpretation of Mill in 'Mill's deliberative utilitarianism', Philosophy and Public Affairs 21 (1992) 67-103 (see esp. 72-9), neither distinguishes activity pleasures from experience pleasures, nor discusses Mill's view of pain as the opposite of pleasure. I assume, incidentally, that Mill understands happiness to consist in any kind of pleasurable experience, that is, any experience which is enjoyed. Likewise, any distressing experience will count as painful
6. In his conclusion on Mill's conception of the 'essential elements of human happiness' (Berger, 41-2), Berger indiscriminately runs together instrumental and non-instrumental goods. It cannot be that what are merely 'requirements' or 'requisites' for human happiness - such as the following by others of the rules of justice - can themselves be elements of human happiness. It should be noted that in his response to John Skorupski's review of his book, Berger speaks of 'whatever is requisite to "a sense of dignity" ' as one of the 'things in which we take pleasure by our natures' ('Reply to Professor Skorupski', Philosophical Books 26 (1985), 206). But Mill must surely be taken to be speaking of the (pleasurable) sense of dignity as the pleasurable component of happiness, not any pleasure we take in what is necessary for it
7. J. S. Mill, 'Remarks on Bentham', 12-15; discussed in Skorupski, 296-7
8. The use of 'genuine' is to mark the distinction between Mill's view and that of, say, Aristotle, in which apparent self-sacrifice always turns out in fact to be in the agent's best interests; see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, IX.8, 1168b23-31
9. See H. R. West, 'Mill's "proof of the principle of utility', in The Limits of Utilitarianism, ed. H. B. Miller and W. H. Williams (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 28. West says that the ultimate ends of desires can be seen as 'experiences . . . with a pleasure component'. Unfortunately, he goes on to allow that virtue can be said to be desired as an end, apparently because he sees this as the sole interpretative alternative to the view that what is desired ultimately is only the 'pleasure component' of the state of consciousness of being virtuous. There is, of course, a third option, that it is the pleasurable experience of being virtuous that is desired. (II.2 might be taken to suggest that West's rejected alternative is anyway correct. But Mill is too unclear about the distinction between pleasure and a pleasurable experience for this interpretation to be accepted.)
10. G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1903), 72. I was pleased to find that Moore was similarly blunt about his own earlier views, in his later preface recently published in a Revised Edition of Principia Ethica, ed. T. Baldwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993), 2-27
11. Moore, Principia Ethica, 1st edn., 71
12. Cf. H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (London: Macmillan, 7th edn, 1907), note 1, Sidgwick's interpretation in this note is I think close to mine