What is the greatest happiness principle?

John Stuart Mill, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

John Stuart Mill answers

The Greatest Happiness Principle holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, and wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.1 By happiness I mean pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.1 All desirable things — and they are as numerous within the utilitarian scheme as within any other — are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.2

The principle was not my invention. Bentham gave it its most systematic form, though the idea itself came to him through Helvetius.3 What I have urged, against a too mechanical reading of Bentham, is that utility is much too complex and indefinite an end to be sought except through the medium of various secondary ends — what Bacon called vera illa et media axiomata, the true and middle axioms.4

Those who attempt to apply the principle by direct reference to happiness, bypassing these intermediate principles, generally end by attaching most importance not to the effects that are really greatest, but to those most easily pointed to and individually identified.4 There is a further limitation in Bentham's own handling of the principle.

He did not demonstrate it so much as clear the ground for it, rejecting rival phrases — "law of nature," "right reason," "natural rights," "moral sense" — as covers for dogmatism, as contrivances for avoiding the obligation of appealing to any external standard.5 That critical work has real value; but it leaves the positive foundation still requiring construction.

The intuitionist who replies that moral sentiments are as much part of the original constitution of human nature as the desire of happiness is not simply to be dismissed — the honest answer is that no proof can be given that we ought to regulate conduct by utility, just as no proof can be given for any first principle; what can be said is that the pursuit of happiness is natural to us, and that the principle, once properly explained, commands the assent of those who examine it carefully.6

Sources

  1. The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.
    What Utilitarianism Is, pp. 262–263
  2. all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.
    What Utilitarianism Is, pp. 262–263
  3. The idea was given him by Helvetius, whose book, De l'Esprit, is one continued and most acute commentary on it; and, together with the other great idea of Helvetius, the influence of circumstances on character, it will make his name live by the side of Rousseau.
    BENTHAM 1838, p. 189
  4. we think utility, or happiness, much too complex and indefinite an end to be sought except through the medium of various secondary ends... the attempt to make the bearings of actions upon the ultimate end more evident than they can be made by referring them to the intermediate ends... generally terminates in attaching most importance, not to those effects which are really the greatest, but to those which can most easily be pointed to and individually identified.
    BENTHAM 1838, p. 189
  5. The principle of utility... stands no otherwise demonstrated in his writings, than by an enumeration of the phrases of a different description which have been commonly employed to denote the rule of life, and the rejection of them all, as having no intelligible meaning... Such are the phrases 'law of nature,' 'right reason,' 'natural rights,' 'moral sense.'
    ESSAYS ON ETHICS, RELIGION AND SOCIETY, p. 112
  6. No proof indeed can be given that we ought to abide by these laws; but neither can any proof be given, that we ought to regulate our conduct by utility. All that can be said is, that the pursuit of happiness is natural to us.
    ESSAYS ON ETHICS, RELIGION AND SOCIETY, p. 112