1. The principle of the greatest happiness
The core of utilitarianism is the principle of the greatest happiness, that is, the right or wrong of behavior lies in whether it can promote the greatest happiness, and happiness refers to the increase of happiness and the exemption of pain. Happiness is the only purpose of human behavior, the test standard for judging all behaviors, and also the moral standard.
happiness here refers to a feeling after one's desire is satisfied, that is, happiness. Because people's desires are high and low, happiness is divided into quality, and happiness can be distinguished. Low-level desire refers to the animal's physiological desire, which pursues physical satisfaction and pleasure, while high-level sense is unique to human beings, which pursues a sense of reason, emotion, imagination and moral happiness, which is related to human dignity, and it is the sense of dignity that makes people human. Therefore, there is also the famous sentence "being an dissatisfied person is better than being a satisfied pig;" Being an unsatisfied Socrates is better than being a contented fool. " Because, only those who have enjoyed two kinds of happiness can make a real comparison and choice, while pigs and fools obviously don't enjoy high-level happiness, while real wise people don't choose low-level happiness that is more easily satisfied because of the imperfection of high happiness, because they know that perfect happiness does not exist.
Here we can see that Mill and Bentham have fundamentally different views on happiness. Bentham did not agree that there is a qualitative difference between happiness. He proposed that "the pushpin game is as good as poetry." He even thinks that it is arbitrary to regard some happiness as superior to others in essence. For example, some people like Mozart, others like Madonna; Some people like golf, others like ballet; Some people like reading Utopia, while others like reading Water Margin. Who can say which happiness is more advanced, valuable and noble than others? Maybe everyone has a different answer to this question, but based on our own life experience, maybe everyone has their own answer. 2
Mill believes that "happiness does not refer to a carnival life, but refers to the fact that the pain in life is short and short, the happiness is constant, and the active things exceed the passive things." A happy life contains two elements: tranquility and excitement. In this imperfect world, only those who can consciously live a life without happiness have the best hope of getting happiness, because he knows that no matter how bad fate is, he can't knock himself down, and he cultivates the source of happiness that makes him satisfied in peace, regardless of how long this satisfaction can last or whether it will end, thus making himself detached from fate.
From Mill's view of happiness, we can even feel a stoic moderation and self-discipline. Happiness is more a kind of harmony, which is a person's internal harmony and external harmony with others, and this harmony constitutes the greatest happiness of all mankind. The greatest happiness includes the maximization of personal and public happiness. Therefore, Mill's utilitarianism requires the actor to be strictly impartial between himself and the happiness of others, "like an impartial and kind bystander." How can this be achieved? Mill believes that only through human conscience and social justice can we achieve the greatest happiness in the greatest scope.
second, conscience-the ultimate binding force of the utilitarian principle
Mill defined conscience as a moral emotion based on utilitarianism in our hearts. Different from external norms, conscience plays a role through people's hearts, thus becoming the final binding force of all morality. The essence of conscience is a sense of society, because people are born social animals. In social interaction, individuals realize that they are in harmony with their compatriots in goals and emotions. "He seems to be instinctively aware that he is a person who naturally cares about others."
In Mill's view, morality is developed from people's natural self-interest and sympathy, and it is a special emotion based on utility. People didn't want morality at first, but because virtue helps people get happiness and avoid pain, morality is desired by people as a means to pursue happiness, and eventually becomes a part of happiness itself, that is, morality becomes the end itself. Just as we initially pursued money and power in order to get happiness, gradually, we took pleasure in pursuing money and power itself.
Moral faculties, like other faculties, can develop at will in different environments. Therefore, we should pay special attention to moral education and the influence of environment on people. Mill also emphasized the important role of habit in the cultivation of virtue, because "whether it is emotion or behavior, only habit can make it certain."
This view of attaching importance to habits is similar to Aristotle's view of practical wisdom. Aristotle believes that rational virtue is generated by teaching and moral virtue is cultivated by habit. For example, a good teacher can teach you logical reasoning and mathematical argumentation, but it can't make you develop the virtues of honesty, temperance and courage. These beautiful moral virtues can only be cultivated in practice, and the habit of "the middle way" can be cultivated through each person's own moral choices again and again, so that he can choose the highest good that is closest to the middle way from many choices and make himself a person with practical wisdom, that is, a happy person.
III. Utilitarianism and Justice
Justice, as a kind of moral emotion, is characterized by the absoluteness of its moral command, which stems from people's consideration of their own security, that is, to protect their own interests and to retaliate or retaliate against those who harm their own interests. "A sense of justice is an animal desire for revenge. Because a person or the object he sympathizes with is hurt, he wants to fight back. Because of his broad sympathy ability and wise concept of self-interest, this desire for revenge extends his sympathy to all people." The emotion of justice is thus moral and mandatory, and it requires giving people "deserved". "Deserve" makes the concept of "justice" contain the requirement of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth", while "good for evil" is considered to have rejected the order of justice for other factors.
Justice not only has the nature of absolute command, but also has the color of obligation, and obligation naturally has rights. Therefore, another feature of justice is that it is closely related to individual rights. Rights have also become the key to distinguish virtues such as justice and kindness. Having a right means that society should protect something that someone has. Because it is these things that we have that form the basis of our survival. We ask our compatriots to unite and defend this survival foundation, and the feelings thus condensed transcend ordinary utilitarian feelings, constitute the distinction between right and wrong, favorable and unfavorable, and sublimate into a deep concern and sincere care for others and the public.
this sense of justice based on utilitarianism has also become the most basic and reliable emotional bond in the development of social economy, politics, culture, law and morality, which links people into a close unity of interests and plays a substantial role in all aspects of human life as a basic norm.
iv. Criticism of utilitarianism
Two famous criticisms of utilitarianism came from Sidgwick, the most famous utilitarianism in the late 19th century, who himself made a very detailed critical analysis of utilitarianism. The first criticism is that what is actually desired cannot be inferred from what is actually desired. That is, we can't infer that people should want happiness from the fact that they want it, let alone that happiness is the standard to measure all behaviors. The second criticism is that it is impossible to infer that individuals actually pursue public happiness from their pursuit of their own happiness.
The first problem is actually the naturalistic fallacy of "what should not be deduced", but from the fact that fact judgment and value judgment are inseparable in real life, we can have a deeper understanding and thinking about it. It is an isolated and one-sided approach to demonstrate people's happiness with pure abstract logic-a personal subjective feeling, although happiness also has its objective content because of its historical background. For the second criticism, in fact, Mill has given an answer. When public happiness has become a part of personal happiness, the pursuit of personal happiness is naturally the pursuit of public happiness. In fact, in Mill's works, we have seen that he pursues not only "the greatest happiness of the most people", but "the greatest happiness of everyone." There is such a point in his thought that the public interest that conforms to the social and historical laws cannot really contradict the personal interest. Even if there is a contradiction, it must not be irreconcilable. This can also respond to the famous contemporary American political philosopher Sandel's attack on utilitarianism. He took the ancient Romans as an example to throw Christians into the Colosseum, questioned the principle of justice of utilitarianism, and put forward whether utilitarianism would achieve the greatest justice of the most people at the expense of the happiness of a few people. From the perspective of Mill's quality division of happiness, this kind of happiness of the Romans is perceptual low-level happiness, which has been eliminated by the long river of history with the development of society, proving that it is a real public interest that does not conform to the objective laws of society. From Mill's protection of everyone's rights, we can also fundamentally reject Sandel's criticism.
Everyone has equal rights to happiness and all the means needed to obtain happiness. This idea is contained in the principle of utilitarianism, or this is the principle of utilitarianism itself. One person's happiness has exactly the same value as that of others, and society should treat all people who deserve it equally. Mill's utilitarianism started from the self-interest of human nature, combined with everyone's natural sympathy, and moved from the practical practice of experience life to the transcendence and sublimation of spirit, realizing the real transformation from material to human, that is, from material to spirit, from individual to human, which is a qualitative change from happiness to happiness.
from utilitarianism, what we read more is the cry for equal rights of individuals, the defense of social justice and the eternal pursuit and hope for human happiness.
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