Alex Thorn
PHIL-105 § 8
09.07.04
The Higher and Lower Pleasures in Mill’s Utilitarianism[1]
In Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill outlines his belief that, contrary to Benthem’s utilitarianism, there are actually variations not just in the quantity of pleasure an action produces, but also in the pleasure’s quality. Mill finds two distinct pleasures: that of the “fool satisfied” (hereinafter referred to as “beast,” “fool satisfied,” or “lesser being”) and that of the intelligent, instructed, person of feeling and conscience (hereinafter referred to as “human beings” or “Socrates dissatisfied”) (9). The latter of the two is able to expand his mind and achieve the highest quality of pleasure, though he must also experience pain; the fool satisfied is of a lower grade of existence, his “capacities of enjoyment are low” (10) and thus has a much greater chance to become fully satisfied, but is unable to experience higher pleasure. Mill’s addition to the utilitarian school of thought amounts to a modification of utilitarian writers who, Mill says, already “have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures” (8). Though Mill’s distinction between the pleasure of humans and the pleasure of satisfied fools appears well-founded, the confinements and restrictions that such a distinction imposes on the beasts undermine his argument. Essentially, the satisfied fools lack both freedom and choice and, therefore, cannot achieve pleasure in a utilitarian world which, incidentally, would make living life as one of them unequivocally worse than as an intellectual, free, instructed human.
Mill states that, if all pleasures are equal and the only difference is in their quantities (basic utilitarianism), human beings and “swine” (8) would receive gratification from the same sources of pleasure. Whereas Benthem’s utilitarianism makes no distinction between different beings and assigns the same pleasure to all members of the community, Mill strives to separate human beings and lesser beings (animals, etc.), which, he says, have pleasure that is both of a different type and value. Because a beast’s pleasure could not always fulfill a human’s thirst for happiness (a cat may get great pleasure out of eating a mouse, but a human certainly would not), Mill arrives at the conclusion that there are certainly “some kinds of pleasure that are more desirable and more valuable than others.” (8) He continues to assert that even within the community of human beings there are pleasures of different values.
It
is in the disparity between the two types of pleasure that Mill departs most
from basic utilitarianism. Essentially, Mill describes a simple trade off. On
one hand, one can be a satisfied fool and live with a constant, lower level of
ignorant bliss, or he can live as a human being satisfied and have the ability
to achieve much greater gratification while being more susceptible to pain. Of
course, this isn’t to say that there is a choice made by human beings and animals
at some indiscriminant point as to how they obtain their pleasure, but rather
that each is born into one form of
pleasure. Mill states that any being with equal knowledge of both would
naturally and unequivocally chose the higher being, despite the fact that he
would be susceptible to pain. However, because those satisfied fools to whom
Mill refers do not have equal knowledge of both, they suffer a much more
devastating sentence: though they are mostly exempt from experiencing pain,
they remain ignorant to the possibilities and higher pleasures of the world,
locked out forever. In effect, they do not have a choice.
A
distinct and pivotal piece of utilitarianism that both Benthem and Mill believe
is the notion that without freedom or choice, pleasure is unattainable. Yet,
Mill’s theory leaves the beasts without freedoms or choices in a way that is
contrary to that pivotal benchmark of utilitarianism. By distinguishing the
difference(s) between the pleasures of man and beast, and then by awarding the
pleasures of man more value than the pleasures of beasts, Mill creates a system
with two distinct classes: man and beast. Whenever there are distinct inferior
and superior classes in a community or society, there is always a desire to
move up in rank. In our modern American society, the opportunity to move up in
class is one of the freedoms that make the
The
foundation of Mill’s assertion – that pleasure is measurable in quantity and quality – is the entirely
well-founded understanding that it’s too much of a stretch to consider the
pleasure of man and beast as the same pleasure. And, he makes the valid point
when he avers that what gratifies a beast certainly doesn’t always gratify a
human, as it would if the two found pleasure from the same source. However,
while the basis and motivation behind his theory may in fact be justifiable,
the theory itself cannot function as utilitarian, for the satisfied fools lack
freedom and choice entirely (and, as Mill himself says on page 18, “motive has
nothing to do with the morality of the action… it’s only [the] consequence of
the action [that] matters”). And, one of the most basic utilitarian principles
is the notion that without choice, there is no pleasure. Thus, Mill’s argument
in favor of higher and lower pleasures is inherently flawed because,
essentially, it’s not possible to be what he calls a “fool satisfied” and be
anything more than a heartless machine, for life as a fool satisfied is one devoid
of entirely all pleasure.
[1] Mill,
John Stuart. Utilitarianism and the 1868
Speech on Capital Punishment. 2nd Ed. George Sher.