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Does John Stuart Mill's View Of Morality Depend On The Consequences?

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Mill: Morality Depends On The Consequences

John Stuart Mill was an English philosopher in the 19th century who studied social theory, political theory and political economy. Along with those studieds Mill focused on his beliefs and findings of Utilitarianism within his lifetime. Utility can also be defined as a general well-being or happiness, along with that Mill viewed utility as the consequence of a good action. Utilitarianism relates to people who do certain actions in hopes of a good outcome. Mill says that good actions lead to pleasure and enhance good character. The founder of modern utIlitarianism is Jeremy Bentham. Mill had based his ideas and theories of utilitarianism off of Bentham’s to help him fully gather all of his thoughts on utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is the theory that actions are moral if they aim at the general good or the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. The aim that humans reach to get at is happiness or or pleasure there for utilitarianism is a category of hedonism. Hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure, the theory believed that pleasure is the highest good and the aim. (Petrik 289) Hedonists do not believe in …show more content…

Bentham also created “units of pleasure” to further show how each action of pleasure would bring one to happiness. (Petrik 290) For example one unit would not be beneficial at all to one's happiness compared to twenty units of pleasure. An example of something of one unit of pleasure would be eating a piece of chocolate. Eating one piece of chocolate does not bring long term happiness only very short term if any happiness at all. Where as reading a good book for educational purposes would be twenty units of pleasure due to the power of knowledge it will give you as the end result. The knowledge that you gain will turn into happiness since you will be a wiser person therefore the pleasure of knowledge is

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