Ethics research group

Speaker: Piers Turner

Title: Mill on Social Morality and Expediency

Abstract: A leading classical utilitarian, John Stuart Mill is an unlikely contributor to the public reason tradition in political philosophy. I do not mean to challenge the baseline utilitarian understanding of his moral and political framework. But I do want to explore the surprising ways in which he nevertheless works to accommodate the problems and insights of the public reason tradition, and the extent to which he makes arguments that can help those working within that tradition. This is important not only for a richer understanding of Mill’s utilitarian ethics and how consequentialists might address themselves to the public reason project, but also for those interested in the ongoing significance of Mill’s liberal principles after the turn to public reason in the work of Rawls, Larmore, Gaus, and others. In particular, Mill’s utilitarian theory incorporates the claim that the demands of social life require a publicly accepted set of normative expectations to govern judgments about when one has met one’s obligations and, relatedly, about the appropriateness of blame or punishment. For Mill, such a social morality properly regulates these judgments even if it is not ideal, that is, even if it is not the set of rules the adoption of which would collectively maximize utility. Seeing how Mill’s discussion of social morality fits within his overall ethical theory also helps to resolve debates about passages in which he seems to endorse an account of moral right and wrong at odds with act utilitarianism.

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Guy Fletcher