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What is Mill's Principle of Utility?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

D. G. Brown
D. G. Brown*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Extract

In a recent article (1972) I gave reasons for attributing to Mill a restricted view of the demands of morality, according to which no conduct would be prima facie wrong unless it was harmful to others. This interpretation of Mill raises the problem of reconciling such a view of morality with the principle which Mill calls the Principle of Utility. I tried to show that a reconciliation was possible by invoking the reminder, for which we are indebted to Alan Ryan (1965, 1970) and D. P. Dryer (1969), that Mill conceived of the Principle of Utility as a very abstract principle, and said that it governed not just morality but the whole of the Art of Life. I concluded that, whatever the subject matter of Mill's Principle of Utility might be, it was not the rightness and wrongness of actions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , September 1973 , pp. 1 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1973

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References

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