Kant And Mill Vs. Mill

According to Mill’s arguments and views on happiness, it is convincing that happiness is good: that each individual’s happiness is a beneficial thing to them. As well as, the proof of happiness is when people actually desire it and feel like they have never desired anything else (44). Mill defines happiness as intended pleasure and freedom from pain. Utilitarianism and happiness are linked to each other because the morality of a human action should do the right thing that is useful or beneficial to the society, which happiness is involved. For example, a person sees an elderly struggling carrying the grocery bags, and then the person comes over and helps. The outcome makes both of the people feel happy and it constitutes the society a better place. When people want to break away from unhappy people will take other people’s happiness away to make them happy.

Mill continues by explaining that once this misunderstanding is corrected, those that comprehend utility, or ‘the greatest happiness principle’, appreciate that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Mill, Chapter 2). By this account, pleasure and the absence of pain are the only things desirable as ends in themselves; the only inherently “good” things. Consequently, all other experiences and situations are merely desirable to the extent that they provide a basis or springboard for such pleasures. However, it is still important to understand that utilitarianism doesn’t simply require people to follow what makes them happy in a personal sense. Instead, in Mill’s theory morality is determined by the greatest happiness principle: a moral act is that

After studying the scenario presented and factoring all the available choices of action, it becomes clear to see why the topic of morality has and always will be a complexity in differing schools of thought. In the scenario, we have Jim facing an undeniably stressful decision to make while being pressured from outside forces on all sides. The question is should he sacrifice one Indian inhabitant by murder in order to save the other 19 inhabitants? Or should he decline the captain’s offer and accept the deaths of all 20 Indian inhabitants as well as his own?

Therefore, when confronted with two pleasures or acts, one must choose the one that will create the most utility, or happiness and pleasure, for the largest number of people. One might contradict this by saying that men can do without happiness and that happiness isn't the purpose of human life. J.S. Mill rebuts by stating that when these critics talk about happiness, they mean a "continuity of highly pleasurable excitement," which is evidently impossible (600). To Mill, utility includes not only the pursuit of happiness, but the prevention of unhappiness and pain. this proves to be the truest theory of the purpose of human life because happiness is incorporated with the endless pursuit to prevent pain.

In this essay I will cover the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill. I will begin by covering Kant perspective of rational beings and his idea of a priori learning. I will then move on to his idea of categorical imparaitive. After Kant I will discuss Mill’s utilitarian theory regarding pleasure and pain. With a better understanding of those I will move to Mill’s idea of a posteriori and hypothetical imperative. Following the ideas of these philosophers I will attempt to depict their viewpoints of the issue of animal cruelty through experimentation. To conclude the essay I will state my stance and who’s side, if either, I take in the animal cruelty controversy.

Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill are two well-known ethical philosophers that came forward and shared their beliefs to the world. These two philosophers came about at roughly the same time, but both have different philosophies about what to do in an ethical dilemma. Kant focuses on the morality of duty and good will. On the other hand, Mill is dedicated to a utilitarian mindset, meaning that the greatest happiness for the greatest amount (Solomon & Murphy, 2000). In an ethical dilemma, Kant and Mill would have separate approaches to a situation.

2. Explanation: Mills innovates by prioritizing and connecting pleasure with happiness. Pleasure itself is a virtue. Utilitarianism acknowledges individual actions that benefit the greatest number. It affirms majority happiness and individual general happiness. In simple terms it affirms all actions need to be guided towards attaining happiness. As a result this keys this utilitarianism valid,because happiness is universally sought. 3.Quote: Robert. H.Hoag explains in Happiness and Freedom: Recent Work on John Stuart Mill “ Thus, on Mill's view, pleasures, virtue, money, fame, in- individuality, and power can be desired or desirable both as ends and as means to happiness, both as parts of and in relation to happiness.”(Pg. 6) 4. Analysis: “ Utilitarianism can be simply seen as maximizing happiness for the greatest number while mitigating pain. While valid, it affirms human desire. It shows that it's ok for people to desire grandoise. For anything is accessible to one's life. Thus utilitarianism remains valid because it promotes all human pursuits. As long as it's in relation to one's happyiness and generates minimal suffering. In effect your own happyiness should promote the happiness of others. Thus this will mill's theory valid. 5. Transition:() Utilitarianism is especially useful because it gives a clearly defined goal, maximize the good and minimize the

In his argument about the ultimate norm of morality, Mill claims that the utilitarian must claim that happiness happens to be the one and only thing that is desirable in itself. He also claims that the only proof of desirability is desire and goes ahead to give an argument that happiness happens to be the one and only thing that should be desired (Selling, 2016). Most importantly, Mill argues that an individual does desire his own happiness for its personal reasons and that makes happiness to be desired by and becomes desirable for its own sake as well as for humanity as a whole. Additionally, Mill goes ahead and tries to defend his postulation that happiness happens to be the only thing

Across the globe, freedom of speech has become a rather controversial issue. This is shown more and more every day, from the Charlie Hebdo incident, to North Korea’s reaction to the American film The Interview. Cases like these show that freedom of speech has come to be seen more as a political right rather than a moral right. The theories of Kant and Mill have varying views on such matter. Before we can conclude whether freedom of speech is a moral right or not, we must first understand what it is.

One of the first misconceptions of Utilitarianism that Mill addresses is that it is often interpreted as the opposition of pleasure. Mill corrects this falsehood by stating the following: “Those who know anything about the matter are aware that every writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, be contradistinguished from pleasure, but pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain; and instead of opposing the useful to the agreeable or the ornamental, have always declared that the useful means these, among other things” (Mill, 2007, p. 5). Utilitarianism is, in

Mill defines happiness as the production of happiness and the absence of pain. Unlike Kant's focus on the individual, Mill believed in considering the happiness of everyone that might be affected by the action. People should seek the greatest amount of happiness possible for all involved.

Mill disagreed that "it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied," meaning, human dissatisfaction is superior to animal satisfaction, or more clearer stated as "better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied". This means the fool would simply be of a different view because he did not know both sides of the question. This statement means that Mill has rejected the identification of the concept "happiness" and replaced it with "pleasure and the absence of pain" and rejected the concept "unhappiness" and replaced it with "pain and the absence of pleasure." Even though his point was based on the maximization of happiness, he showed the differences between pleasures that are higher and lower in quality.

Mill claims that morals find their root in Utility, otherwise called the Greatest Happiness Principle.(513) The essence of this is that actions are right in proportion to how much happiness results from them and wrong in proportion to how much they cause the reverse of it.(513) In defending this, he claims that

Mill writes of utilitarianism in the eponymous work Utilitarianism. According to his work utilitarianism is a means of deciding the moral value of actions. Mill’s theory takes a consequentialist view of actions, saying that the moral worth of an action is decided by the outcome, or consequence. This decision of moral worth is determined by whether the outcome maximizes happiness and minimizes the reverse of happiness. Mill writes that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” Happiness is defined as pleasure and the absence of pain according to Mill, and the action must be considered for the outcome it brings to the most people. This happiness, or pleasure and lack of pain,

Mill also states that an existence with the possibility of happiness must be “…to the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation (234)”. Utilitarianism not only focuses on the attainment of happiness, but the prevention of pain and unhappiness. (230)