哈弗大学公开课(公正)课件.docVIP

　 J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism (1863) A brief overview of the reading:聽 Jeremy Benthams (1748-1832)聽principle of utility is open to the objection that it may well聽sacrifice the rights of the minority for the sake of the happiness of the majority. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), himself a utilitarian, sought to rescue utilitarianism from this and other objections. In his essay Utilitarianism,聽Mill argues that respect for individuals rights as the most sacred and binding part of morality is compatible with the idea that justice rests ultimately on utilitarian considerations. But is Mill right to be confident? Can the principle of utility support the notion that some rights should be upheld even if doing so makes the majority very unhappy? Chapter I. General Remarks.聽 THERE ARE few circumstances among those which make up the present condition of human knowledge, more unlike what might have been expected, or more significant of the backward state in which speculation on the most important subjects still lingers, than the little progress which has been made in the decision of the controversy respecting the criterion of right and wrong. From the dawn of philosophy, the question concerning the summum bonum, or, what is the same thing, concerning the foundation of morality, has been accounted the main problem in speculative thought, has occupied the most gifted intellects, and divided them into sects and schools, carrying on a vigorous warfare against one another. And after more than two thousand years the same discussions continue, philosophers are still ranged under the same contending banners, and neither thinkers nor mankind at large seem nearer to being unanimous on the subject, than when the youth Socrates listened to the old Protagoras, and asserted (if Platos dialogue be grounded on a real conversation) the theory of utilitarianism against the popular morality of the so-called sophist.聽 It is true that similar confusion and uncertainty, and in some cases similar discorda