One of the great classics of political philosophy and the clearest statement of the utilitarian ‘greatest happiness’ principle that actions are right in proportion to how much happiness they promote, attractively bound after two second editions of Mill’s political writings.
Originally printed across three issues of Fraser’s Magazine in 1861, Mill’s Utilitarianism “attempted to reaffirm the authority of Bentham’s formula by filling in the gap between the pleasure seeking of the individual and the greatest happiness of the greatest number. For if man is moved only by the pursuit of personal pleasure or the fear of personal pain: and if, as Bentham emphatically claimed, ‘quality of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry’, how could the existence of the higher virtues be accounted for, let alone encouraged? … The only way out was for Mill to say there was, after all, a difference in quality of pleasures; that the happiness derived from goodness outweighed all others, even life itself, and that the really virtuous man was also the most discriminating in his selfishness” (Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill, p. 420f).
MacMinn, Hainds & McCrimmon, Bibliography of the Published Writings of John Stuart Mill, p. 93.
