John Stuart Mills a famous utilitarian obeyed Bentham’s idea of utilitarianism but he redefined this to iron out these objections and make the theory more acceptable to the Victorian middle classes. His father was a friend of Bentham’s and, like Bentham he was preciously bright, he was reading Greek by the age of three and by the age of ten he had read all the classical authors usually required of undergraduates. Unlike other Victorians he argued strongly for equal rights for women. As well as being one of the most important of all moral philosophers, then, Mill is also one of the great political theorists, and still valued by many as the father of modern political liberalism.
Mill’s theory originates from only part of Bentham’s theory which states that utilitarianism is a teleological theory, which involves looking at the future effects or consequences of an action, which therefore implies that it is the consequences which are right or wrong, not the actions or motives. This means that an action should be chosen because it creates the right consequences and not the wrong ones. Mill also agrees with the idea of hedonism, which refers to the idea that naturally everybody experiences pleasure or pain. It claims that pleasure should be maximised as it is intrinsically good where as pain is intrinsically bad and therefore should be minimised.
In addition to this the principle of Utility, also an idea of Bentham’s, judges an action by how useful it is in bringing about good consequences and not bad ones, again reinforcing which is the right action to take. It involves aiming to gain the greatest amount of happiness and identifies whose pleasure should be maximised in each situation. Everyone’s happiness should be taken into consideration equally, therefore an action is good if it produces the effect that the majority of people’s happiness is maximised and their pain is minimised within a situation, even if this means you will suffer, as Mill says ‘It is not the agent’s own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness overall.’ The reason for this is because it is believed that if the majority of people experience happiness you benefit others, and yourself as well as it being a social communal theory.
However where Bentham states that the right action to take is that which produces the most amount of pleasure and the least amount of pain, Mill criticises this by saying that it can be immoral if the suffering the minority is to the extreme.. To help understand the types of pleasure Mill describes higher pleasures as the mental pleasures and the lower pleasures as being the physical ones, with the higher pleasures being maximised. Yet this should only happen after an individual has their basic needs.
Furthermore Mill builds on this by stating that you cannot harm a minority in order to benefit the majority, because this would not necessarily be maximising the higher pleasures, this is known as the harm principle. The only time you can harm the minority is if in result of not harming them it will harm the majority, this looks at self-protection. Finally Mill includes a competent judge in his theory; this is an example of someone who is trying to achieve this life style and is someone who an individual can go to for guidance if they are unsure about what to do. These all help prevent the persecution of the minorities.
Mill also criticizes Bentham’s Act Utilitarianism which says that each situation is unique and therefore one should always use the Hedonic Calculus, a tool used to measure an action, as well as abandoning all rules of the land. Mill believes that this is unreasonable to humans and that not all rules should be abandoned. This is because rules generally make the majority of people happy as they create a better environment for the majority to live in. For example the rule ‘you are allowed an abortion up to 24 weeks’ should be kept as for those that gat unexpected pregnancies can abort creating happiness. However Mill finally explains that a rule can be broken if by keeping the rule it involves harming the minority
In conclusion, John Stuart mill obeyed many factors of utilitarianism that Bentham introduced, however believed that there should be some aspects that he could introduce to make this theory better. He mainly believed in ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ and focused on the individual alone where as Bentham believed in ‘the greatest happiness in the greatest number’ and was in search for the maximum happiness.