Personal happiness should not be compromised for the sake of greater happiness of maximum number of people when the one person who would be most affected by your decision is you. I feel that Mill's concept is workable when rights of other people are involved. For example Katie would not be hurting anyone's rights by choosing to become a doctor. But lets consider another example. Larry is in love with Susan while he is married to Anne. Susan wants Larry to seek divorce from his wife and abandon his three children in order to marry her. Though he doesn't love Anne anymore, they are both polite to each other. He often feels that his love for Susan grew out of boredom from his present marriage. Larry is utterly confused. He loves Susan but he is legally married to Anne and loves his children immensely. If Larry decides to marry Susan, he would definitely be hurting his kids as well as Anne. But if he decides to remain married to Anne, he might...
In this case, it would be ideal to take into consideration happiness of the greatest number of people. Even though this may appear like a matter of personal choice, it is not. In this case, rights of many people are involved. The rights of his first wife and their three children are just as important as Larry's right to choose and be happy. Mill's concept may help solve this dilemma.
For Singer, the human community must receive justice, not simply a society setting its own local standards of morality and justice, as in Mill's argument. For Singer there are no 'imperfect' obligations, rather all obligations are absolute. Someone who merely does no harm to others, or extends help only to family members and his or her immediate community is committing a moral wrong. Even someone who is 'good' but
Moreover, how does he justify saying one would rather be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool who is satisfied? His point is obvious - it is better to have brains and not achieve happiness than be dumb and be contented. But Socrates, brilliant as he was, chose death over exile from Athens, which it can be argued did not lead to happiness in Socrates nor in the students who admired
Personal usefulness or utility is not required to clash with public usefulness. Usefulness or Utility is often misguided for pragmatism. but, pragmatism is the affinity to encourage certain preferred objective, regardless of the consideration between what is correct and reasonable. Utility is the standard level of being practical, and hence it must take into account not just what would generate a preferred objective, but what would encourage the maximum
Utilitarianism In the opening remarks to Utilitarianism, Mill sets the stage for this discussion. He accepts that the idea of utilitarianism dates back two thousand years, and is part of a philosophical discourse that has never been resolved. He then explains the prevailing thought that moral laws are considered universal, deriving from the same source. Their evidence is a priori in that they are simply assumed to be correct. These laws,
Plato and John Stuart Mill Glaucon's challenge to Socrates at the beginning of Book II of Plato's Republic is to clarify in what sense justice is a human "good." Glaucon begins by separating goods into three categories: those which are harmless pleasures with no results, those things which are good in themselves but also lead to good results (like knowledge or health), and those which are unpleasant in themselves yet lead
Happiness The author of this report has been asked to answer a specific and thoughtful answer to a question about the greatest happiness principle and what it really means. Indeed, the question is how the principle is supposed to be useful and informative when it comes to guiding someone on what to do, what not to do and why. As the author expected, there is a strong correlation between this
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now