John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism Essay

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In “Utilitarianism” John Stuart Mill makes a distinction between lower and higher pleasures he explains that they are not equal and pleasure should be ranked not only on quantity but also on quality. I believe Mill is correct about this claim because some types of pleasures are more valuable and desirable than others. Higher pleasures are pleasures that require having cognitive capacities to experience. These are things like intellectual pursuit, being valuable to society, using ones’ imagination, gaining wisdom, moral sentiment, acts of altruism, and exploring our emotions. In contrast, lower pleasures are physical pleasures such as sensibility, sleep, sex, drinking, and eating; basically, things that animals can do. These pleasures are instant …show more content…
This makes me think of an episode of the Simpsons where Homer Simpson learned that he had a crayon stuck in his brain. Once the crayon was removed, Homer turned out to be a genius, but he decides that he was happier when he was foolish and had the crayon placed back into his brain. In this circumstance, it appears that the pleasure Homer encounters from not knowing his higher faculties is more significant than the pleasure he experienced when he had them. This concept confuses pleasure with contentment. Individuals who have higher pleasures often struggle more, because they have a more profound sense of the obstacles in life. Mill says, that individuals whose capacities of satisfaction are low have the highest chance of them being fully satisfied and a highly gifted individual will continually feel any happiness which he can look for is flawed.
Nevertheless, their pleasure is of a higher appeal than that of an animal or a basic human. Mill provides an interesting analogy to further demonstrate his theory "it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied and if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.”
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