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TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > Politics >John Stuart Mill and Isaiah Berlin The ends of life and the preliminaries of morality

• Isaiah Berlin view: though JSM avowed a commitment to utility, commitment not real. In support of the avowed commitment JSM was compelled to stretch the notions of happiness to the point of vacuity. His real commitment was to various distinct values such as indiv lib, variety, and justice. These values may in places make demands coinciding with utilitarianism, but they can’t be given a consistently utilitarian interpretation.

• Wollheim rejects Berlin’s reading of Mill accepts JSM’s claim about himself: i.e. believes that JSM did remain a utilitarian &, as he said, continued to think as utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions, but ‘in the largest sense’ of utility, ‘grounded in the permanent interests of man as a progressive being’. Central to Wollheim’s way of thinking about JSM that this significantly extends the notion of utility, but not to the point of vacuity – an imp qualification, which explains how JSM remained a utilitarian

• Wollheim argues that JSM made a shift in his utilitarian morality in 2 stages:
  1. A shift from a morality that employs a monistic conception of util’y → a pluralistic & hierarchical conception of utility.
  2. Shift from morality with a pluralistic & hierarchical conception of util → pluralistic but non-hierarchical conception of utility.

• Does the Shift in content succeed in restoring appeal to utilitarianism? First shift: primary principle hedonism/pleasure maximisation , secondary principles (e.g. education of mind, affection…) – they fix the agent’s ends. But at this stage they are subordinate to primary principle.

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