A felicidade utilitarista de John Stuart Mill

Abstract

For John Stuart Mill pleasure and happiness are not the same thing, because a certain amount of pleasure enjoyed does not necessarily mean that a person achieves happiness in the same proportion. Happiness would be a general overview of well-being present not only in the individual, but in the entire society in which he lives. In this way Mill understands that there cannot be a society where all individuals have an unlimited amount of pleasures and that therefore there are suffering and unhappy people within the society. However, this situation changes over time among individuals, and his point of view values the sum of the well-being present among all people, leading to his principle of greater happiness. This happiness is not equal to that present in the school of virtues or even in deontology, it differs by addressing other issues such as the reason to promote the good, the implementation of the principle of preventing harm, helping the innocent and the consideration that the numbers do count, that is, your concern goes beyond the individual aspect. Therefore, happiness cannot be separated from morality, so the analysis of the consequences of actions in favor of greater happiness should not contradict the moral principles of human society. These moral principles serve as a guide for the judgment of human actions, which in turn, if considered correct and good, tend to the path of pleasure and consequently of happiness from Mill's utilitarian point of view.