On “Utilitarianism” Part I (475 words)

Assume that a choice is presented to you. It is a weekday morning and you were up late last night. You have a class to get to in a few hours and you know the material being covered is of a fair amount of importance. As your alarm is going off you think to yourself, “is it worth it? To get up, get ready and make the commute? I can probably miss today and just get the notes from someone tomorrow.” All the while, part of you knows you shouldn’t choose to miss class if you’re perfectly capable of going. What do you do?

You might choose to miss the class. Perfectly acceptable. We’ve all been there. No one can honestly say that they’ve never done this or something similar as far as trading a long term happiness for short-term pleasure. It happens.

John Stuart Mill would call this a mistake though.

In “Utilitarianism,” Mill concerns himself with that it means to be truly happy, and by extension, how one should act to behave as such. The conclusion he reaches is that happiness is pleasure, and that one should always pursue the outcome which provides the greatest amount of it. As such, the happiness of the individual comes from doing the thing which is correct by moral standards. It is the moral imperative of the individual to maximize pleasure.

Mill proposes what is called the “greatest happiness principle,” which reflects what he considers to be one’s duty to produce the greatest amount of happiness.

Mill goes on to refute the idea that utilitarianism is a “pig philosophy,” or rather, a philosophy which prompts individuals to find satisfaction in a kind of ignorance. He says that this interpretation of his ideas “confounds the two very different ideas, of happiness, and content,” meaning that this interpretation is a narrow-minded simplification of utilitarianism, and that happiness and content are two radically different states of being. Happiness stems from long term, maximized pleasure, whereas contentedness comes from having a low-threshold understanding of what it means to be happy.

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.”

All this being said, why would one choose to miss class? If happiness comes from long-term pleasure, why skip a class to begin with? Well for Mill, there is no reason to do so. He explains that the reason for which one chooses a short-term pleasure in favor of a long term pleasure is the instant gratification which a short-term pleasure provides. It’s a much better feeling to stay at home and sleep in than it is to go to a lecture, especially when you suspend from your mind the possible repercussions of missing a lecture.

So next time you think about skipping your ethics class, try thinking long-term about it. Consider which option produces the greatest happiness.