GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

OBJECTIVE UTILITARIANISM
as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical
impossibility/*
One more quotation from John Stuart Mill will clinch
the matter:
"Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things
desirable as ends; and ... all desirable things . . . are
desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves,
or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention
of pain."
The effect of the two passages from Mill is to abolish
the distinction which is commonly made between what is
desirable and what is desired. Most people, I think,
would distinguish between the meanings of these two
words broadly as follows. They would say that while
many things were desired, only some of these things were
desirable, since only some of them were meet or fitting to
be desired. In making this distinction they would be
passing a judgment of value. Some things, they would
be saying in effect, are such as ought to be desired, whether
in fact they are desired or not. Mill says that there is only
one thing which is such as ought to be desired, namely,
pleasure. As he further maintains, following Bentham,
that only pleasure is in fact desired, the distinction which
is ordinarily made between desired and desirable disappears.
I am proposing to examine in a subsequent chapter 1 the
doctrine that pleasure is alone desirable, and the allied
though different doctrine that only pleasure is in fact
desired. Here it will be sufficient to indicate some of the
difficulties in which Mill became involved, when he
endeavoured to work out his theory in detail. These
difficulties arise from the attempt to combine the utilitarian
doctrine that a right action is one which has the best
consequences with the hedonist contention that pleasure
alone is valuable, or, as it is generally put, that pleasure
alone is the good. The difficulties will be thrown into
relief, if we endeavour to answer two highly important
questions. The first question is, "Is there more than one
Li
*See Chapter XI, pp. 400-415.