Study Questions for Mill, Utilitarianism, Chapter 5

 

1.  Chapter V aims to address what Mill thinks is “one of the strongest obstacles to the reception” of his doctrine: that what is just is (conceptually, at least) distinct from what is useful or expedient.  Think here of Kant’s insistence that the reason to execute a murderer is not that it is useful but that it is what he or she deserves.  Or think of his insistence that people have rights which may not be violated even in order to accomplish worthy goals, that people may not be used merely as means even to important and worthy ends. 

 

2.  Mill says that this objection to utilitarianism is grounded in “the subjective mental feeling of justice.”  He claims that people generally agree that “objectively the dictates of justice coincide with one part of the field of general expediency” – that is, what it is just to do is generally also useful or expedient.  For example, it is just to punish a criminal, and it is also useful (since it deters others from committing crimes).  Can you think of cases where the just thing to do would not be expedient or useful?

 

3.  Pp.42-46: Mill surveys the various sorts of things people have in mind under the heading of ‘justice’.  Has he left out anything important?

 

4.  P.46: acknowledging the difficulty of finding a common element among the diverse sorts of things called ‘just’, Mill turns to the etymology of the word for a clue to the origin of the concept.  What does he identify as the original meaning of the term?

 

5.  How does he then account for the somewhat broader meaning the term has now? (Bottom of p.46-p.47)

 

6.  What does he identify as the crucial difference “between morality and simple expediency”? (P.47-48) 

 

7.  How does he then distinguish justice from morality in general? (Pp.48-49)

 

8.  Notice Mill’s account (at the bottom of p.49) of where he is in his inquiry.

 

9.  What is Mill’s account of the origin of our sense of justice? (P.50)

 

10.  What is moral and what non-moral in the feelings at the root of our sense of justice?

 

11. How does Mill respond to the objection that his account of justice is wrong because it makes justice depend on what is good for society rather than what is just in the particular case (e.g., what a particular person deserves)? (P.51)

 

12.  How does he account for the “peculiar energy of the feeling” of justice?  (Pp.52-53

 

13.  How does he argue for the necessity of an appeal to the principle of utility to settle differences of opinion about what justice requires? (Pp.54-57)