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Analysis Of John Stuart Mill Act Utilitarianism

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In this paper, I will argue that John Stuart Mill’s, act-utilitarianism (AU), does not fulfill the complexities of a person’s virtues and the influence it has on their motives. AU claims that an action is right if it brings the greatest amount of happiness for the general well-being. Furthermore, Mill believes that the concept of morality contains two of the main utilities in the Greatest Happiness Principle: a person’s actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. This means that all other desires a person has are to fulfill these actions. Mills acknowledges that the overly simplistic idea of the Happiness Principle may cause human happiness to seem no more sophisticated …show more content…
Bentham shares Mill’s theories of pleasure and pain. However, Bentham believed that all actions taken by individuals ought to be carried out with the intention of creating the greatest well-being for the largest possible quantity. One must assess the value of decisions and how it will serve as an instrument in the future in accordance with the given actions foreseeable intensity, duration, certainty, remoteness, its fecundity (the chances of an action yielding the same kind of pleasure or pain) and it purity (“the chance it has or not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind”) in addition to the extent of how many people are affected the action (Timmons 113). In evaluating the proper action to take, one must find the sum of the possible good outcomes versus the possible bad outcomes as applicable to the comprehensive nature of contributing greater pleasure than pain (or “evil tendency”). Bentham’s assertion that one can foresee far distant implications of a single action on the community as a whole is farfetched as society continues to evolve. Mill’s allowance of individuals’ to cater to their own happiness within the community allows the persons to serve their unique self-interest which may in turn lead to the happiness of others. Bentham’s quantitative approach would put too much pressure upon the decision making of an individual and deprive him of the liberty to pursue personal interests of happiness allowed by Mill. However, in both having AU philosophies, both theories show many

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