Mill, on the other hand, believes that quality, not merely quantity, of pleasure matters and can therefore defend the claim that Socrates has the better life even by hedonistic standards.Īccording to Mill, higher pleasures are worth more than lower pleasures. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.īentham could not admit that the unhappy Socrates would be living a life with more value than the happier fool. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. However, Mill introduces a quality criterion for pleasure. If playing on a console affords you more pleasure than reading Shakespeare, then Bentham would view your life as going better if you play the console.
Thus, he says that “Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry”. All that matters for Bentham is producing pleasure and the way this is achieved is unimportant. Instead, Mill thought that quality of pleasure was also crucial to deciding what is moral.īentham’s Utilitarianism is quantitative in the sense that all Bentham focusses on is the maximisation of hedonically calculated quantities of total pleasure. In attempting to redraw Bentham’s Utilitarianism, Mill’s most substantial thought was to move away from Bentham’s idea that all that mattered was the quantity of total pleasure.
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