flâneur

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

aeon.co · 1,290 words · saved by 1 readers

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 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 son involved useful subjects subordinated to the utilitarian goal of bringing…

related reading