Suffering, not just happiness, weighs in the utilitarian calculus | Aeon Ideas

A utilitarian machine with a suicidal ghost inside. J S Mill (1873) by George Frederick Watts. Photo courtesy Wikipedia by Scott Samuelson + BIO is associate professor of philosophy and the humanities at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa. His latest book is Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering: What Philosophy Can Tell Us about the Hardest Mystery of All (2018). Edited bySam Haselby Published in association with The University of Chicago Press, an Aeon Strategic Partner A utilitarian machine with a suicidal ghost inside. J S Mill (1873) by George Frederick Watts. Photo courtesy Wikipedia In 1826, at the age of 20, John Stuart Mill sank into a suicidal depression, which was bitterly ironic, because his entire upbringing was governed by the maximisation of happiness. How this philosopher clambered out of the despair generated by an arch-rational philosophy can teach us an important lesson about suffering. Inspired by Jeremy Bentham’s ideals, James Mill’s rigorous tutelage of his

A utilitarian machine with a suicidal ghost inside. J S Mill (1873) by George Frederick Watts. Photo courtesy Wikipedia by Scott Samuelson + BIO is associate professor of philosophy and the humanities at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa. His latest book is Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering: What Philosophy Can Tell Us about the Hardest Mystery of All (2018). Edited bySam Haselby Published in association with The University of Chicago Press, an Aeon Strategic Partner A utilitarian machine with a suicidal ghost inside. J S Mill (1873) by George Frederick Watts. Photo courtesy Wikipe