Glossary
Utilitarianism
Theological
Utilitarianism
Satisfice
Rule-Utilitarianism
Restrictive
Utilitarianism
Psychological
Hedonism
Preference
Utilitarianism
Preference
Positive
Utilitarianism
The
Paradox Of Hedonism
Negative
Utilitarianism
Act-Utilitarianism
Indirect
Utilitarianism
Ideal
Utilitarianism
Hedonistic
Utilitarianism
Hedonism
Hedonic
Calculus
Eudaimonism
Consequentialism
Jeremy
Bentham (1748 - 1832)
John
Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873)
"A moral
theory according to which an action is right if and only if it conforms to the
principle of utility. Bentham formulated the principle
of utility as part of such a theory in Introduction to the Principles of
Morals and Legislation in 1789. An action conforms to the principle of
utility if and only if its performance will be more productive of pleasure or
happiness, or more preventive of pain or unhappiness, than any alternative.
Instead of 'pleasure' and 'happiness' the word 'welfare' is also apt: the value
of the consequences of an action is determined solely by the welfare of
individuals.
A characteristic
feature of Bentham's theory is the idea that the rightness of an action entirely
depends on the value of its consequences. This is why the theory is also
described as consequentialist. Bentham's theory differs from certain other
varieties of utilitarianism (or consequentialism) by
its distinctive assumption that the standard of value is pleasure and the
absence of pain; by being an act-utilitarian; and by
its maximising assumption that an action is not right unless it tends towards
the optimal outcome.
The view that
utilitarianism is unable to accommodate any values except the crass, gross or
materialistic ones is mistaken.
Since the 1960s,
many writers have used consequentialism instead of utilitarianism
for the view that the rightness of an action entirely depends on the
value of its consequences. Many writers now restrict the word utilitarianism to
denote certain kinds of consequentialism, especially Bentham's and Mill's.
Currently there is terminological diversity, and the varieties
of utilitarianism mentioned elsewhere are varieties of consequentialism."
"Theological
and non-theological varieties of utilitarianism
agree on the account of the rightness of an action: the rightness depends
entirely on the value of the consequences. But there is
a difference in respect of the notion of moral duty.
Although our
knowledge of God is very limited, we know that he is perfectly benevolent, so
there can be no doubt that he desires the maximum happiness for his creatures.
We can safely assume that he desires us always to act to promote this end. For
us, His desire is a command, and the actions commanded by God are our duties. In
this way, theological utilitarians (Paley, Austin) can explain why doing the
right thing is a duty. In their view that there can be no duty without a
command, they agree with Bentham and many earlier
writers on theology and jurisprudence. Bentham's own utilitarianism is
non-theological and therefore has no place for the notion of moral duty,
but only for the notions of right, wrong, ought, not, and others of that
kind."
vb
to obtain an outcome that is good enough. Satisficing action can be contrasted
with maximising action, which seeks the biggest,
or with optimising action, which seeks the best.
In recent decades
doubts have arise about the view that in all rational decision-making the agent
seeks the best result. Instead, it is argued, it is often rational to seek to
satisfice i.e. to get a good result that is good enough although not necessarily
the best.
The term was
introduced by Herbert A. Simon in his Models of Man 1957
"Instead of
looking at the consequences of a particular act, rule-utilitarianism
determines the rightness of an act by a different method. First, the best rule
of conduct is found. This is done by finding the value of the consequences of following
a particular rule. The rule the following of which has the best overall
consequences is the best rule. Among early proponents were John Austin (The
Province of Jurisprudence 1832) and John Stuart Mill
(Utilitarianism 1861).
One problem with
rule-utilitarianism is this: it invites us to consider the consequences
of the general following of a particular rule. Suppose the
consequences of the general following of rule R are optimal. We can say that
rule R is the best rule, and that everyone ought to follow that rule. But how
ought one to act if people are not generally likely to follow that rule? To
illustrate: suppose that for every country, the best traffic rule is to keep to
the right. According to rule-utilitarianism, I ought to keep to the right.
Suppose I am in Britain and know that people will generally keep to the
left...Ought I really to keep to the right?
Another problem
is that the best rules would not be simple. The best rule for promise-keeping
would be of the form: 'Always keep your promises except...'(where the list of
exceptions would be very long). This led the American philosopher David Lyons to
argue, in Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism 1965, that a plausible
formulation of rule-utilitarianism would make it recommend the same actions as act-utilitarianism,
so the two kinds are 'extensionally equivalent' and there is no practical
difference between the two. Currently, rule-utilitarian formulations seem to be
ought of favour, but there are attempts to rehabilitate them."
"Restrictive
utilitarianism is the view that the right action
is the one which maximises objectively probable value. So when evaluating
an agent's decision, this is the criterion of rightness that should be applied.
But it does not follow that, when deliberating, the agent should engage
in a calculation in order to work out how to maximise objectively probable
value; that may indeed be counterproductive. The right decision may be reached
by not properly aiming at it. Instead, an agent in whom certain attitudes and
character traits have been developed (for instance, an immediate bent towards
honesty and fairness), and who acts in character, may be more likely to take the
right decision than an agent who engages in casuistic deliberation."
"The theory
that all action aims at attaining pleasure for the
agent. In a formulation of John Stuart Mill: all
actions are determined by pleasure and pain in prospect, pains and pleasures to
which we look forward as the consequences of our acts.
Mill held that this, as a universal truth, can in no way be maintained.) The
classical objections are those of Butler."
Moral theory
according to which the good consists in the satisfaction of people's preferences,
and the rightness of an action depends directly or indirectly on its being
productive of such satisfaction. Like other kinds of consequentialism,
the theory has satisficing and maximising variants.
The latter are the more common ones: the more people get what they want, the
better. Syn. preference consequentialism
According to preference-utilitarianism,
satisfaction of preferences is intrinsically good, and should be maximized. But
do all kinds of preferences deserve equally to be taken into account?
In Taking
Rights Seriously 1977 (2nd rev. edn 1978), Ronald Dworkin distinguishes personal
preferences from external preferences. A personal preference is a
preference about what I do or get; an external preference is a preference about
what other people do or get. Dworkin argues that the right of individuals to
equal consideration and respect concerning the assignment of goods and
opportunities means that their personal preferences are to be respected, but not
their external ones. External preferences should be ignored, in order to avoid
'double counting': in a utilitarian calculation in
which everyone is to count for one, my wish to be rich should be weighed in, and
so should another person's wish to be rich. But my wish that the other person be
poor should not be weighed in. In the debate, critics have voiced doubts about
finding a clear line of demarcation between the two kinds of preference.
"Positive utilitarianism
recommends the promotion or maximising of intrinsic value, negative
utilitarianism recommends the reduction or minimising of intrinsic disvalue.
At first sight, the negative kind may seem reasonable and more modest in what it
recommends. But one way of ending human misery is by putting all human beings
out of their misery. This course of action is usually considered unacceptable.
This has led to a search for reformulations of negative utilitarianism, or to
its rejection."
"The impulse
towards pleasure can be self-defeating. We fail to attain pleasures if we
deliberately seek them. This is what Sidgwick (The Methods of Ethics)
called the paradox of hedonism.
There is a
similar paradox concerning happiness. In order to be happy, an agent must aim at
things other than his own happiness. Some writers use the same label for this
paradox, somewhat inaccurately, since pleasure is not the same as
happiness."
"Positive utilitarianism
recommends the promotion or maximising of intrinsic value, negative
utilitarianism recommends the reduction or minimising of intrinsic disvalue.
At first sight, the negative kind may seem reasonable and more modest in what it
recommends. But one way of ending human misery is by putting all human beings
out of their misery. This course of action is usually considered unacceptable.
This has led to a search for reformulations of negative utilitarianism, or to
its rejection."
"According
to act-utilitarianism, it is the value of the consequences
of the particular act that counts when determining whether the act is
right. Bentham's theory is act-utilitarian, and so is
that of J.J.C. Smart.
One objection to
act-utilitarianism is that it seems to be too permissive, capable of justifying
any crime, and even making it morally obligatory, if only the value of the
particular consequences of the particular act is great enough. Another objection
is that act-utilitarianism seems better in theory than in practice, since we
hardly ever have the time and the knowledge to predict the consequences of an
act, assess their value, and make comparisons with possible alternative acts.
Modern
act-utilitarians think that these objections can be met. Others have developed
alternatives to act-utilitarianism, e.g. rule-utilitarianism,
and other forms of indirect utilitarianism."
"a kind of utilitarianism
which recognizes that an agent is more likely to act rightly by developing the
right attitudes, habits and principles, and acting on them, than by trying to
calculate the value of the consequences before deciding
to act. This indirect utilitarianism is so called because it bears on actions
only indirectly. See also restrictive utilitarianism."
"A utilitarian
theory which denies that the sole object of moral concern is the maximising of
pleasure or happiness. In G.E.
Moore's version of ideal utilitarianism in Principia Ethica 1903, it is
aesthetic experiences and relations of friendship that have intrinsic value, and
therefore ought to be sought and promoted, while consciousness of pain, hatred
or contempt of what is good or beautiful, and the love admiration or enjoyment
of what is evil or ugly are the three things that have intrinsic disvalue and
should therefore be shunned and prevented.
It was Hastings
Rashdall (1858-1924) in The Theory of Good and Evil 1907 who first used
'ideal utilitarianism' for non-hedonistic utilitarianism of this kind."
"n A utilitarian
theory which assumes that the rightness of an action depends entirely on the
amount of pleasure it tends to produce and the amount of pain it tends to
prevent. Bentham's utilitarianism is hedonistic.
Although he describes the good not only as pleasure, but also as happiness,
benefit, advantage, etc., he treats these concepts as more or less synonymous,
and seems to think of them as reducible to pleasure. John
Stuart Mill's utilitarianism, also described as hedonistic,
differs importantly from Bentham's
in taking some pleasures to be higher than other ones, so that when considering
the values of the consequences of an action, not only
the quantity but also the quality of pleasure has to be considered. This
complicates the summing up, or may even make it impossible."
(Gr. hedone
pleasure) "The thesis that pleasure is the highest good: that only pleasure
has value in itself. Among philosophers held to have advocated this view are Aristippus,
Epicurus, and Bentham. It is sometimes called ethical
hedonism, to distinguish it from psychological hedonism.
Pleasure is not
the same as happiness, so hedonism is not the same
as eudaimonism, the thesis that happiness is the
highest good."
"(Gr.hedone
pleasure) a method of working out the sum total of pleasure and pain produced by
an act, and thus the total value of its consequences;
also called the felicific calculus; sketched by Bentham
in chapter 4 of his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
1789. When determining what action is right in a given situation, we should
consider the pleasures and pains resulting from it, in respect of their intensity,
duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity (the chance that a pleasure is
followed by other ones, a pain by further pains), purity (the chance that
pleasure is followed by pains and vice versa), and extent (the number of
persons affected). We should next consider the alternative courses of action:
ideally, this method will determine which act has the best tendency, and
therefore is right. Bentham envisaged the calculus could be used for criminal
law reform: given a crime of a certain kind it would be possible to work out the
minimum penalty necessary for its prevention."
(Gr. hedone
pleasure) "The view that happiness is the highest good. Some writers take
this to designate the view that pleasure is the highest good, but that
view is more properly called hedonism.
Happiness and pleasure are distinct notions."
Kant was an
important opponent of eudaimonism. He rejected the view that happiness is the
highest good, and insisted that happiness can be an ingredient of the highest
good only if it is deserved.
"The term
was first used for (1) a theory concerning responsibility, but is now
commonly used for (2) a theory concerning right and wrong.
(1) the view that
an agent is equally responsible for the intended consequences of an act and its
unintended but foreseen consequences. Elizabeth Anscombe created the new term consequentialism
for this view in her article "Modern Moral Philosophy" (Philosophy
33 (1958), and often reprinted) and criticised Sidgwick and later
utilitarians for holding it. The view differs, according to her, from the
versions of utilitarianism proposed before Sidgwick.
These had not rejected the distinction between foreseen and intended
consequences as far as responsibility is concerned. Her objection to
consequentialism is that since it looks at consequences only, the character of
the act itself is left out of account, and this has the unacceptable consequence
that an agent is equally responsible for the foreseen but unintended
consequences of an act, no matter whether the act is courageous or cowardly.
(2) the view that
an action is right if and only if its total outcome is the best possible. This
is the basic form of consequentialism; there are, however, many varieties, a few
of which will be noted below. What they all have in common is that consequences
alone should be taken into account when making judgements about right and wrong.
This is how the
term has been used since the late 1960s. Previously, "utilitarianism"
was the term commonly used for consequentialism, and that use remains; but many
writers now use the term "utilitarianism" to designate a kind of
consequentialism. Some of them reserve the term "utilitarianism" for
the view that combines consequentialism with the hedonistic
assumption that pleasure alone has intrinsic value. Others reserve the
term for the view that combines consequentialism with the eudaimonistic
assumption that happiness (welfare, well-being) alone has intrinsic
value. These two views are not always clearly distinguished. Others again use
"utilitarianism" for the kind of consequentialism that takes preference-satisfaction
alone to have intrinsic value.
Another way of
making a terminological distinction between utilitarianism and other kinds of
consequentialism is by reserving the label "utilitarianism" for those
consequentialist theories that include the maximising assumption: that
only the best is good enough.
A survey (no
doubt incomplete) of some of the varieties of consequentialism can be obtained
by starting with Bentham's principleA of
utility: an actB is rightC
if and only if itD tendsE
to maximiseF the net overbalancing sum
totalG of pleasure over painH
for all parties concernedI (superscript
letters refer to paragraphs below).
(a) Bentham's
principle can be understood in two distinct ways: as a guide for decision as to
what action to take, or as a guide for the evaluation of an action (one's
own or someone else's). If the principle is taken as a guide to decision-making,
it invites the objection that there is not enough time to consider all the
consequences and perform, for each set of possible consequences, all the
necessary calculations of their value. If the
principle is taken as a guide for evaluation, there may be less time-pressure.
(Even so, evaluating all the possible consequences will take a very long time.)
(b) Some versions
of consequentialism evaluate things other than acts -
attitudes, for instance, or rules.
(c) Some
formulations do not use "right" but introduce other words:
"ought", "obligation" or "duty".
(d)
Act-consequentialism considers the consequences of the act. Other theories
consider the consequences of adopting a rule under
which the act falls, or adopting an attitude that will result in acting in a
certain way. Again, does the rightness of my keeping a promise depend on the
fact that my adoption of the rule of promise-keeping tends to promote the good,
or on the fact that the adoption by people generally does?
(e) There is a
diversity of consequentialist theories as the actual, or the probably, or the
foreseen consequences are held to be the relevant ones. Moreover, the very
notion of a consequence varies. Some authors even include the very performance
of an action among its consequences and hold that one of the consequences of
performing an act of loyalty is the fact that an act of loyalty has occurred.
(f) Maximising
implies comparison with all relevant alternatives. Some criterion is needed to
tell which alternatives are relevant; different criteria can be devised.
Moreover, some versions of consequentialism reject maximising and settle for
less. They hold the view that not only the best is good enough and favour
satisficing. See also SATISFICE.
(g) In what way,
and to what extent, can one individual's goods be compared with one another? If
they can be compared, can they be added together, like financial assets and
liabilities? Answers to these questions differ. Again, to what extent are
interpersonal comparisons or summations possible? Can B's loss be outbalanced by
A's gain? In so far as we deny this we are insisting on the distinctness or
SEPARATENESS OF PERSONS. Distributive principles can also vary. Consider a
situation in which ten persons are all quite happy. Five of them enjoy 20 units
of the good, and the other five enjoy 60 units of the good. Compare this with a
situation in which, again, they are all quite happy, all ten enjoying 40 units
of the good. Is one of these situations preferable to the other? There are a
variety of answers to this, and to a vast number of similar questions of
distribution.
(h) The value to
be maximised was, in Bentham's hedonistic utilitarianism, pleasure and the
absence of pain. Moore's ideal utilitarianism takes
experiences of beauty and relations of friendship to have intrinsic value. The
most common present-day variety is preference-utilitarianism:
the good consists in the satisfaction of preferences,
i.e. in people having what they want. In other formulations welfare is
said to be the good.
(i)
Consequentialist theories also differ in yet another respect. On the "total
view", an increase of the total number of people is an improvement (other
things being equal), as long as the additional individuals have a positive
welfare or happiness score, however marginal. On the "average view",
the important thing is to seek to increase average pleasure, happiness, welfare,
or the like. A situation in which there are a larger number of people would not
be better (other things being equal) if the average welfare remained the
same."
"English
utilitarian philosopher and social reformer. He first attained attention as a
critic of the leading legal theorist in eighteenth century England, Sir William
Blackstone. Bentham's campaign for social and political reforms in all areas,
most notably the criminal law, had its theoretical basis in his utilitarianism,
expounded in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation,
a work written in 1780 but not published until 1789. In it he formulated the
principle of utility, which approves of an action in so far as an action has an
overall tendency to promote the greatest amount of happiness. Happiness is
identified with pleasure and the absence of pain. To
work out the overall tendency of an action, Bentham sketched a felicific
("happiness-making") calculus, which takes into account the
intensity, duration, likelihood, extent, etc of pleasures and pains.
In Bentham's
theory, an action conforming to the principle of utility is right or at least
not wrong; it ought to be done, or at least it is not the case that it ought not
be done. But Bentham does not use the word 'duty'
here. For Bentham, rights and duties are legal notions, linked with the notions
of command and sanction. What we call moral duties and rights would require a
moral legislator (a divine being presumably) but theological notions are outside
the scope of his theory. To talk of natural rights and duties suggests, as it
were, a law without a legislator, and is nonsensical in the same way as talk of
a son without a parent. Apart from theoretical considerations, Bentham also
condemned the belief in natural rights on the grounds that it inspired violence
and bloodshed, as seen in the excesses of the French Revolution.
Bentham at first
believed that enlightened and public-spirited statesmen would overcome
conservative stupidity and institute progressive reforms to promote public
happiness. When disillusionment set in, he developed greater sympathy for
democratic reform and an extension of the franchise. He believed that with the
gradual improvement in the level of education in society, people would be more
likely to decide and vote on the basis of rational calculation of what would be
for their own long-term benefit, and individual rational decision-making would
therefore, in aggregate, increasingly tend to promote the greater general
happiness.
Bentham had
first-hand knowledge of the legal profession and criticised it vehemently. He
also wrote a highly entertaining Handbook of Political Fallacies 1824,
which deals with the logic and rhetoric of political debate.
Bentham figured
prominently among the small number of men who became known as phlosophical
radicals, but his utilitarianism was not much discussed until the latter
half of the nineteenth century. His prolific writings were published in part by
devoted disciples, but some were published for the first time in the 1940s and
after, and the publication of his complete works is still in progress. Among
these writings is an analysis of the logic of deontic concepts, and On Laws
in General contains a carefully elaborated theory of jurisprudence."
"Born in
London in 1806, son of James Mill, philosopher, economist and senior official in
the East India Company. Mill gave a vivid and moving account of his life, and
especially of his extraordinary education, in the Autobiography
1873 that he wrote towards the end of his life. Mill led an active career as an
administrator in the East India Company from which he retired only when the
Company's administrative functions in India were taken over by the British
government following the Mutiny of 1857. In addition, he was a Liberal MP for
Westminster 1865-8, and as a young man in the 1830s edited the London and
Westminster Review, a radical quarterly journal. He died at Aix-En-Provence in
1873.
Mill was educated
by his father, with the advice and assistance of Jeremy
Bentham and Francis Place. He learned Greek at three, Latin a little later;
by the age of 12, he was a competent logician and by 16 a well-trained
economist. At 20 he suffered a nervous breakdown that persuaded him that more
was needed in life than devotion to the public good and an analytically sharp
intellect. Having grown up a utilitarian, he now
turned to Coleridge, Wordsworth and Goethe to cultivate his aesthetic
sensibilities. From 1830 to his death, he tried to persuade the British public
of the necessity of a scientific approach to understanding social, political and
economic change while not neglecting the insights of poets and other imaginative
writers.
His System of
Logic 1843 was an ambitious attempt to give an account not only of logic, as the
title suggests, but of the methods of science and their applicability to social
as well as purely natural phenomena. Mill's conception of logic was not entirely
that of modern logicians; besides formal logic, what he called "the logic
of consistency", he thought that there was a logic of proof, that is, a
logic that would show how evidence proved or tended to prove the conclusions we
draw from the evidence. That led him to the analysis of causation, and to an
account of inductive reasoning that remains the starting point of most modern
discussions. Mill's account of explanation in science was broadly that
explanation seeks the causes of events where it is events in which we are
interested; or seeks more general laws where we are concerned to explain less
general laws as special cases of those laws. Mill's discussion of the
possibility of finding a scientific explanation of social events has worn
equally well; Mill was as unwilling to suppose that the social sciences would
become omniscient about human behaviour as to suppose that there was no prospect
of explaining social affairs at any deeper level than that of common sense.
Throughout the System of Logic Mill attacked the "intuitionist"
philosophy of William Whewell and Sir William Hamilton. This was the view that
explanations rested on intuitively compelling principles rather than on general,
causal laws, and that ultimately the search for such intuitively compelling
principles rested on understanding the universe as a divine creation governed by
principles that a rational deity must choose. Mill thought that intuitionism was
bad philosophy, and a comfort to political conservatism into the bargain. His Examination
of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy 1865 carried the war into the enemy
camp with a vengeance; it provoked vigorous controversy for some twenty years or
so, but is now the least readable of Mill's works.
To the public at
large, Mill was better known as the author of Principles of Political Economy
1848, a work that tried to show that economics was not the "dismal
science" that its radical and literary critics had supposed. Its
philosophical interest lay in Mill's reflections on the difference between what
economics measured and what human beings really valued: leading Mill to argue
that we should sacrifice economic growth for the sake of the environment, and
should limit population as much to give ourselves breathing space as in order to
fend off the risk of starvation for the overburdened poor. Mill also allowed
that conventional economic analysis could not show that socialism was
unworkable, and suggested as his own ideal an economy of worker-owned
cooperatives. Commentators have argued inconclusively over whether this is a
form of socialism or merely "workers' capitalism". Mill remains most
nearly our contemporary in the area of moral and political philosophy, however.
His Utilitarianism 1861 remains the
classic defence of the view that we ought to aim at maximizing the welfare of
all sentient creatures, and that welfare consists of their happiness. Mill's
defence of the view that we ought to pursue happiness because we do pursue
happiness, has been the object of savage attack by, among others, F. H. Bradley
in his Ethical Studies 1874 and G. E. Moore in Principia Ethica 1903. But
others have argued that on this particular point, Mill was misinterpreted by his
critics. His insistence that happiness was to be assessed not merely by quantity
but by quality - the doctrine that a dissatisfied Socrates is not only better
than a satisfied fool, but somehow happier, too - has puzzled generations of
commentators. And his attempt to show that justice can be accounted for in
utilitarian terms is still important as a riposte to such writers as John Rawls
(A Theory of Justice 1971).
During his
lifetime, it was his essay On Liberty 1859 that
aroused the greatest controversy, and the most violent expressions of approval
and disapproval. The essay was sparked by the feeling that Mill and his wife,
Harriet Taylor, constantly expressed in their letters to one another: that they
lived in a society where bold and adventurous individuals were becoming all too
rare. Critics have sometimes thought that Mill was frightened by the prospect of
a mass democracy in which working-class opinion would be oppressive and perhaps
violent. The truth is that Mill was frightened by middle-class conformism much
more than by anything to be looked for from an enfranchised working class. It
was a fear he had picked up from reading Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in
America 1836, 1840; America was a prosperous middle-class society, and Mill
feared that it was also a society that cared nothing for individual liberty.
Mill lays down
"one very simple principle" to govern the use of coercion in society -
and by coercion he means both legal penalties and the operation of public
opinion; it is that we may only coerce others in self-defence - either to defend
ourselves, or to defend others from harm. Crucially, this rules out
paternalistic interventions to save people from themselves, and ideal
interventions to make people behave "better". It has long exercised
critics to explain how a utilitarian can subscribe to such a principle of
self-restraint. In essence, Mill argues that only by adopting the self-restraint
principle can we seek out the truth, experience the truth as "our
own", and fully develop individual selves.
Of Mill's shorter
works, two others deserve mention. The Subjection of Women 1869 was
thought to be excessively radical in Mill's time but is now seen as a classic
statement of liberal feminism. Its essential case is that if freedom is a good
for men, it is for women, and that every argument against this view drawn from
the supposedly different "nature" of men and women has been
superstitious special pleading. If women have different natures, the only way to
discover what they are is by experiment, and that requires that women should
have access to everything to which men have access. Only after as many centuries
of freedom as there have been centuries of oppression will we really know what
our natures are. Mill published The Subjection of Women late in life to
avoid controversies that would lessen the impact of his other work. He chose not
to have his Three Essays on Religion 1874 published until after his
death. They argued, among other things, that it is impossible that the universe
is governed by an omnipotent and loving God, but not unlikely that a less
omnipotent benign force is at work in the world. They thus tended to disappoint
those of Mill's admirers who looked for a tougher and more abrasive agnosticism,
while doing nothing to appease critics who deplored the fact that he was any
kind of agnostic. But they remain models of the calm discussion of contentious
topics, and highly readable to this day."
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