Utilitarianism John Stuart Mill Chapter 1: General Remarks Summary Mill begins his essay by observing that very little progress has been made toward developing a set of standards by which to judge moral right and wrong. For more than two thousand years, people have been attempting to determine the basis of morality, but have not come any closer to consensus. Mill acknowledges that in the sciences, it is common to have disagreement about such bases or …
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showed last 75 words of 558 total
…be proven to be valid are those statements that lead to other statements that we accept to be valid. However, this does not mean that we must judge first principles arbitrarily; we can still evaluate them rationally. This essay, then, will present and consider various arguments in support of utilitarianism. Also, since much of the opposition to utilitarianism issues from misunderstandings of the theory, Mill says he will also focus on what utilitarianism actually posits.