The Greatest Happiness
Bentham, Mill, and utilitarianism
The Greatest Happiness
Utilitarianism gives one rule: choose whatever produces the most happiness for the most people. Jeremy Bentham treated pleasure and pain as quantities to be added up, weighing everyone equally. John Stuart Mill agreed but insisted quality matters too: the deep satisfactions of the mind outrank simple pleasures. The good act is the one that maximizes wellbeing.
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
Where this sits in the course
“The Greatest Happiness” is lesson 2 of 5 in How Should We Act?, a course about turn from what is true to what should be done.. The lessons are sequenced rather than a menu, so this one assumes what came before it.
How Should We Act? is itself one of 18 courses in thinkr. The set opens with what philosophy is, moves through the Stoics and the Eastern traditions, then into what can be known, what exists, how to act and how power works — closing on practical reasoning you can use in an argument this week.
More from John Stuart Mill
“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”
“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction.”
“Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
In the app this lesson is followed by 3 exercises that check whether the idea actually landed — and every answer, right or wrong, is explained rather than scored. That is the part a written page cannot reproduce.