Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

he wrote prolifically, our knowledge of him mostly comes from later reports.
8. Marble head of Epicurus, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
A modern and more accessible theory of this type was propounded by John Stuart Mill (1806–73) in his famous essay Utilitarianism, where he cited Epicurus as one of his philosophical ancestors. Mill declared the one thing valuable in itself to be happiness—defining it as ‘pleasure and the absence of pain’ (though without holding, as Epicurus had, that the absence of all pain was itself the greatest pleasure). But there is a very significant difference between Mill and Epicurus. For whereas Epicurus seems to have been concerned to advise individuals how best to secure their own pleasure/tranquillity, Mill was a social reformer whose ethical principles aimed at the improvement of life (i.e. happiness) for everybody. (A similar division is found in the history of Buddhism: is the highest ideal the personal attainment of nirvana, or is it to bring all beings to nirvana, oneself included?) ‘Let everyone seek to be free from pain and anxiety’, says Epicureanism; though it may well add: ‘Helping those around you to do so will probably help you achieve it too—and if so, help them.’ For Mill, by contrast, the primary goal is, quite generally, happiness; so anyone else’s happiness is just as much your goal as is your own, and any person’s happiness is of equal value with anyone else’s.
Mill’s aspirations went beyond his own society—he even writes of improving the condition of the whole of mankind. This was Victorian Britain, and the British Empire pretty much at its zenith (Mill himself worked for the East India Company for over thirty years). But it would be unfair to think of him as an interfering moral imperialist. He didn’t want to tell anyone how to be happy; only that everyone should be provided with the material goods, the education, and the political and social liberties to work out their own happiness in their own way. Many will find this universality of Mill’s basic ethical principle admirable. Some may also wonder whether it can be realistic to ask human beings to spread their moral concern so widely and so impartially. Are we capable of it? And what would life be like if we really tried?
These questions, especially the second, have led some philosophers to think that Mill’s doctrine conflicts with another value which nearly all of us regard as very important to us. We have already seen it at work in the Crito.Integrity
One thing that weighed with Socrates, you remember, was the line he had taken at his trial. How could he now choose exile, having explicitly rejected that option when given the opportunity to propose an alternative to the death-sentence? ‘I cannot, now that this fate has befallen me, throw away my previous arguments.’ As a soldier, he told the court, he had faced death rather than do what was wrong; he will not now do what seems to him to be wrong just to prolong his life.
These thoughts capture a central aspect of the virtue of integrity. Integrity means wholeness, unity; the idea of integrity as a value is the idea of a life lived as a whole rather than as a series of disconnected episodes. So it includes steadfast adherence to principles, and to opinions unless new reasons or evidence appear. Relatedly (and equally applicable to Socrates’ case) it includes the value of consistent pursuit of those chosen projects which give purpose and meaning to one’s life. And it can also be taken to exclude self-deception and hypocrisy, states in which people are in one way or another at odds with themselves.
So how comfortably does the ideal of integrity fit with Mill’s utilitarianism? Not very comfortably at all, some think. For however sincere your commitment to some principle in the past, that fact by itself does not give you—if we take Mill’s position seriously and literally—any reason to follow it again now. If in the past your commitment to that principle has consistently led to good effects (measured in terms of happiness), then that fact gives you at least some reason to think that it will do so again—which is a reason to follow it now. But your commitment to it, however sincere, however much it has become a part of your personality, is not. Critics of utilitarianism question whether we can really live with that way of thinking.
You might like to consider whether Utilitarians can defend themselves against that charge. If they can’t, things look bad not just for them but for most other types of consequentialist too. For in the last paragraph it wasn’t important to think of effects being assessed in terms of happiness; I might have written almost anything instead of ‘happiness’ without affecting the argument. So really this is an attack on consequentialism—of which utilitarianism is only one variety. Anyone who feels that the attack succeeds must accept that the consequences of an action are (at most) only one aspect of its value, and that deciding whether it was right or not may involve a subjective compromise between factors of completely different types.Political authority—the contract theory
States make demands of their members which would be deeply objectionable if coming from a private person. Tax, for instance. Why is it permissible for the State to appropriate a certain proportion of my income when, if you were even to attempt it, you would be guilty of extortion or ‘demanding money with menaces’? Or is it just that the State gets away with it—by being easily the biggest menace around?
Now most political theorists hold that the State does have some legitimate authority, though there is less agreement about how much—in other words, about how far this authority can extend whilst remaining legitimate. Opinions range from totalitarian conceptions, which assign to the State power over all aspects of individuals’ lives, to minimalist conceptions, according to which it can do what is necessary to keep the peace and enforce any