26 pages 52 minutes read

John Stuart Mill

Utilitarianism

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1861

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Chapters 3-4

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 3 Summary: “Of the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility”

In the Chapter 3, Mill describes the “sanction” by which individuals are obligated to follow the principle of utility. Because moral philosophers are often called upon to provide a justification for any moral code they propose, Mill explains the reasons for following the principle of utility, describing it as a “moral standard.” Individuals who follow the specific moral laws they learned as a child are often immediately skeptical when a philosopher attempts to propose a general principle that underlies moral actions. For this reason, Mill feels he must provide a description of the sanction, or, the “binding force,” by which individuals are expected to follow utilitarianism.

For Mill, the sanction for any moral code can be divided into two groups: external and internal. External sanctions refer to the sense of obligation one feels towards a moral code in order to appease the members of one’s community or God. Internal sanctions refer to an individual’s conscience, which Mill defines as “a [painful] feeling in our own mind” (141) that arises whenever an individual acts immorally. While some individuals do not have a conscience, Mill argues that the vast majority of individuals obey a moral code due to this “subjective feeling in our own minds” (142).