James and John Stuart Mill on The Felicific Calculus: Two Close Views?
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that intention finds exclusively its reference in the consequences of our acts. If our intention or calculation should guide our action, it is because it gives rise to either pleasurable consequences, or painful ones. This leads to consider more closely the relation between the two sovereign masters ― pleasure and pain ― and calculation.
The quality of pleasure and the moral calculation
Though all Classical Utilitarians acknowledged the important part pleasure plays in the decision process, John Stuart Mill's analysis of the higher and the lower pleasures has given rise to a long controversy regarding the question whether it is the quantitative or qualitative hedonism that is at stake in Classical Utilitarianism. The usual view of John Stuart Mill on this matter is that he distinguished different pleasures in nature, but not in degree, contrary to his predecessors. However, the fact that he saw his father’s hedonism close to his own encourages an analogy between both views. Here I argue that for both, the emergence of ideas, on which calculation rests upon, is what distinguished the higher from the lower pleasures. To do so, after having recalled that the Mills were in line with the principle of utility and psychological associationism, I will underline the fundamental distinction between a sensation and an idea, in order to show that the corporeal or animal or primitive pleasures rest upon sensations, whereas the mental pleasures rest upon ideas. This will then allow us to understand that the fact of performing the felicific calculus presupposes the formation of an idea and therefore of mental pleasure at least. In his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Jeremy Bentham (1781, p. 4) wrote “that which is used to prove everything else, cannot itself be proved”. We know that his sort of “Arkhè (ἀρχή)” is the principle of utility, which constitutes the foundation of everything, and therefore of morality. It seems that James and John Stuart Mill follow the same path emphasized by Bentham. James Mill underlined that “pleasure is an end, and generally speaking, the only end” (Mill 1835, p. 360). Of course, “(t)he pleasure may be in company or connection with things infinite in variety. But these are the accessories; the essence, is the pleasure” (Mill 1835, pp. 389-390). Though the matter is a much more delicate in John Stuart Mill, he makes clear in Utilitarianism that in the domain of morality, “pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends”, and that this does not affect his theory of life (John Stuart Mill 1861, p. 210). A clarification on their understanding of pleasure is still needed. The fact that pleasure is the end of action does not prevent them distinguishing different “species of pleasure”. Bentham already distinguished the following and well-known characteristics or qualities allowing to establish a numerical value to each pleasure: duration remoteness, purity, richness, intensity, certainty and extent. John Stuart Mill was not fully convinced by such classification which, according to him, does not include the idea that pleasures are different in kind. Yet, “(i)t is quite compatible with the principle of utility, he wrote, to recognise the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others” (John Stuart Mill 1861, p. 211). Here appears an important point: as Quincy points out, this quote shows that John Stuart Mill’s hedonism did not basically challenge the orthodox conception (Keith. H. Quincy 1980, p. 467-468). Especially when John Stuart Mill himself aknowledged
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that there are cases in which “a difference in degree (as is often the case in psychology) becomes a real difference in kind” (John Stuart Mill 1861, p. 251). 5 In other words, in terms of pleasure, this would mean that when two pleasures have attained a difference to such a degree, they become different in kind, thus putting into perspective the so-called “intrinsic differences” of pleasures in John Stuart Mill’s hedonism. 6 It remains to be seen how the difference emerges between pleasures. Here again, John Stuart is more close to his father than it seems to be. “It is well-known, James Mill wrote, how small is the value of all the merely corporeal pleasures, when taken nakedly by themselves”. 7 To the contrary, “the purely mental pleasures, those which begin and end in the existence of pleasurable thoughts, hold a high rank among the enjoyments of our nature” (James Mill 1836, p. 558). This makes echo to the well-known Epicurean tradition in Classical Utilitarianism. 8 A Utilitarian conception of happiness or pleasure is thus not construed narrowly in the sense of Cyreniacs, by focusing on corporeal and instantaneous pleasures, but rather on the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures. 9 John Stuart Mill was of course well aware of this, since he acknowledged that such a traditional connection in Utilitarianism allows easily to take into account the fact that “(H)uman beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites” (John Stuart Mill 1861, p. 210). After all, we find here the basic idea, though not necessarily true, that which fundamentally distinguishes animals from human beings is that the former focus on physical pleasures, whereas the latter can also have the possibility to be pleased mentally. But we still do not know on which theoretical grounds the distinction between pleasures rests upon. To do so, it is useful to reiterate that James and John Stuart Mill were associationists. In the way of those who formulated and re-formulated psychological associationism before him for instance, David Hume, David Hartley, James Mill, Alexander Bain, etc. , John Stuart Mill believed that there are no a priori truths. Contrary to the intuitionists, he viewed the matter of thruth as the result of the association of ideas derived from experience. Let us not forget, indeed, that he followed many of his father’s argument, the man he considered as one of the greatest names in that most important branch of speculation [analytic psychology]” (John Stuart Mill 1873, p. 213). And a lot of evidences show that John Stuart Mill held Alexander Bain in high regard, knowing that such an important figure of Associationism was also the author of the respective biographies on the two Mills. By 30 October 1843, John Stuart Mill declared “I see only Bain as the one, if I were to die tomorrow, in whom I would be sure of leaving a successor” (John Stuart Mill 5th October 1844, p. 638; my traduction; see also Cairns Craig 2015, p. 96). Some years later, Bain and John Stuart Mill will prepare a new edition of James Mill’s Analysis. As Cairns Craig say quite rightly: “John Stuart Mill believed that his father’s work had appeared too early to be properly appreciated, and that the reissue of the Analysis with new annotations would not only re-establish the reputation of his father’s work,
5 See also Ernest Sosa (1969, pp. 154-172) and Keith. H. Quincy (1980, p. 468). 6 In the same way, John Stuart Mill did not hesitate to acknowledge that he was agree with his father’s distinction between a quantity and a quality (John Stuart Mill 1869a, pp. 189-190). 7 What James Mill called a “corporeal pleasure”, his elder son named it a “pleasure of mere sensation”, or a “bodily” one, or an “animal”, or “primitive”, or “beast” one (John Stuart Mill 1861, pp. 210-211). 8 One can refer to Rosen (2003) on the relation between Epicureanism and Classical Utilitarianism. 9 For an interesting interpretation providing a more complex picture of the Cyreanic philosophers ― and therefore less caricatural ―, see Kurt Lampe (2015).
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