On J·S Mill’s Utilitarian Justice

The dissertation aims to have a research on Mill’s theory of utilitarianjustice .It is a very important topic for philosopher to study justice all the time. Inthe history of the development of Western ethical thoughts,for justice study andexploration has a very rich content,as represented by the Mill’s utilitarian conceptof justice,is one of the most valuable and controversial one of the importantcontents. Through interpretation of Mill’s utilitarian theory which contains theconcepts of safe ,freedom and equality , a closer look at its utilitarian concept ofjustice. I think that，through the interpretation of Mill’s utilitarian thinking can bedrawn from Mill’s concept of justice is based on the utilitarian.The article is divided into four interrelated parts:The first part introduces the history of justice of the utilitarianism. Justice ofthe utilitarian can be traced back from Aristotle of ancient times to David Hume ofmodern times and tries to make clear the threads of development of utilitarianjustice .Mill＇s Utilitarian Justice is formed by inheriting, correcting anddeveloping these ideas.The second part describes Mill’s thoughts of justice through the two pairs ofrelationships between justice and moral obligation, legal justice and moral justice.And then I discussed Mill’s logic evolution. Based on the ethical principles ofcreative stratification, Mill provides theoretical space for the combination ofutility and justice .In addition, Mill put the utmost safety, freedom and equalityinto their own utilitarianism thought, and this provides the theoretical cornerstone for the combination of utility and justice.The third part is the central part of this paper. Mill pointed out that thegeneral principles of justice against the utilitarian is based on the concept ofindividual rights and equality. Then this part explains the concepts of individualrights, equality, freedom to illustrating the relationship of utility and justice issuesunder the framework of the theory of utilitarianism. The concept of justice and theconcept of the right is closely linked ,and The rights of the individual is the basisof justice. Mill’s utilitarian system of rights is based on the utility, through thepursuit of their own personal happiness of the right to banded together personalrights and social welfare . Social welfare is the ultimate goal of justice. In thisway we can see that the consistency between utilitarian principles and theprinciples of justice.The fourth part of the article makes a brief assessment on Mill’s utilitarianjustice .Mill’s theory is adapted to the social reality at that time and tries to solvethe existing social contradiction. In order to accommodate a variety of possibleproblems, he created the principle of justice advocating objective standard. Andthen he tries to make the theory more complete by correcting Bentham’s majordefect on ignoring moral right. Of course, the idea also has certain limitation, butthese limitations did not affect the consistency between utilitarian principles andjustice.In a word , Mill’s utilitarian justice has greatly influence .It is hard for Mill tofind the balance of justice and utility. Although it has receiving the dispute , thesedifferent ideas promote the development of his theory .