A New Interpretation Of Mill's Utilitarianism

This paper mainly tries to sort out Mill's utilitarianism thought in his book Utilitarianism and his other related works by taking the relationship between utilitarianism and fraternity as a clue,and then tries to dig out a theory about fraternity.Mill's utilitarianism is formed on the criticism of Benthamism,inherits the latter's characteristics of consequentialism,modifies the concept of utility and its application,and shifts the focus from self-interest to public happiness.Mill believes that the key to personal happiness is to cultivate a social emotion,so utilitarianism's behavior standard is the maximum happiness of all relevant persons rather than maximum happiness of oneself.He faced up to the phenomenon of rights and the importance of the concept of justice to people's happiness,and from the perspective of utilitarianism put forward an explanation by connecting the sense of justice and human ability of sympathy together.In the proof of utilitarianism,Mill depends on a foundation of humanity about fraternity.From the whole context of Mill's utilitarianism thought we can find that the value of universal love is everywhere.Therefore,it can be reasonably concluded that fraternity constitutes the overall orientation of value behind utilitarianism.At the same time,in Mill's argument,there is a dimension of ontology which he himself did not realize,which makes the understanding of fraternity rise to the level of ontology,and then dominate all utilitarianism thinking.The liberty to personality and other values which seem to violate the value of fraternity on intuition,can get a consistent explanation.As a result,fraternity has become a powerful theoretical element,and with utilitarian principle is just like two sides of a coin,and is even more complex,profound and fundamental,so we can reasonably call Mill's theory as utility-fraternity theory.Through the comparison with Stephen's thoughts,we can find that the greatest significance of this theory is to successfully transform the religious value of fraternity into a secular value of modern society.Because it cares about the lasting topic of human happiness,for modern society it is still full of inspiration.Especially in the moment when the value of fraternity is underestimated,Mill's theory deserves special attention.There are five parts in this article,including an introduction and four chapters.The introduction briefly reviews Rawls' discussion of fraternity in his theory of justice,and raises the question,then puts forward the necessity of reinterpreting Mill's utilitarianism,and tries to dig out a theory about fraternity.The first chapter begins with Mill's criticism of Bentham's doctrine,and with the relationship between fraternity and utilitarianism as the main clue,sorts out Mill's utilitarianism thought from three aspects:the concept of utility,the behavior standard of utilitarianism and the justice theory of utilitarianism.The second part discusses Mill's theory of fraternity.First of all,from his argumentation of utilitarianism it finds a foundation of humanity about fraternity,and then reveals that fraternity is the overall value orientation behind Mill's utilitarianism,and finally discusses the relationship between fraternity and the freedom of personality,thus sums up three meanings of fraternity.In the third part,I answers Stephen's criticism of Mill's theory of fraternity,clarifies the general misunderstanding of mill's theory and points out the unique meaning in Mill's theory which regards fraternity as a secular value.The fourth part mainly discusses the contemporary significance of Mill's utility-fraternity theory in three aspects:ethics,political philosophy and legal philosophy.