It’s all about pleasure?

The ultimate end [of utilitarianism] … is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments.~ John Stuart Mill

Today’s column continues my review of Dr. Benjamin Wiker’s attractive opus, “10 Books that Screwed up the World and 5 others that didn’t Help” (Regnery, 2008). My critique will be on the British philosopher John Stuart Mill’s treatise on ethical theory titled, “Utilitarianism” (1863).

John Stuart Mill (1806-73), a well-known British philosopher and intellectual, is more famously known for his book “On Liberty,” which considers utility as the final appeal on all ethical concerns. Mill is best-known for the fact that he distilled and synthesized to the masses the ideas of the father of utilitarianism, British jurist and legal philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832).

Mill inherited his atheism from his father, James Mill, a philosopher in his own right and a social reformer who, according to Wiker, felt that he was “liberated from the ‘irrationalities’ of faith [and] believed with immoderate intensity that the entire destiny and happiness of humanity rested upon his own efforts. A very dangerous man indeed.”

Like many modern-day atheists, James Mill makes a fatal philosophical error: “He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author [God] combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness.”

James Mill would test his atheist theories upon his young, precocious son, John Stuart, who claims in his own autobiography that his father made him learn Greek at age 3, Latin at 8 and forbade him to play with other children, especially other boys. Thus young Mill was robbed of the stabilizing qualities of parental love, either from of his domineering father or from his aloof, Victorian mother.

These traits are present in Mill’s treatise “Utilitarianism” where he sought to expand upon the work of his mentor, Bentham, who Wiker said was “another atheist [who] gave the world the notion that morality didn’t need God; it needed only a good ledger to balance out pleasures and pains. Morality was merely a matter of calculating the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number.”

Regarding young Mill’s bizarre background and the extent his overbearing father would shape his son’s mind, in an earlier column on Rousseau I noted the common traits shared among the world’s most noted philosophers and intellectuals. I made the following connections:

Interestingly, many of the worlds’ great philosophers and intellectuals were atheists and crafted a quasi-autobiographical philosophy based on their own horrific childhood, life experiences and personal policy prejudices. Some of the commonalities among the leading philosophers are these: an absent, cruel or weak father, a predilection toward atheism, materialism, humanism, naturalism, but most notably, an irrational and visceral hatred of the Judeo-Christian traditions of intellectual thought.

James Mill and his young genius experiment, John Stuart Mill, embody these traits to the letter.

Wiker quotes Mill: “From the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, I had what might truly be called an object in life; to be a reformer of the world. My conception of my own happiness was entirely identified with this object.” This object was “Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle.” Since Bentham and Mill didn’t believe in original sin, the happiness principle was what they invented to take the place of morality, Christianity and truth.

Wiker called Bentham, Mill and other utilitarians “comfortable atheists in that they wanted all the moral benefits of Christianity, except without the Christianity part … who took the fruits of centuries of Christian moral formation for granted even as they cheerfully chopped down the tree that had born them.”

Mill admits that utilitarianism was not unique. It originally came from the Greek Sophist philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.). Of this Greek philosopher from classical antiquity Wiker commented, “Epicurus was an atheist convinced that all the world’s evils were caused by religion, and therefore religion needed to be swept like rubbish off the historical stage.” (Can you say separation of church and state?)

Epicurus believed that since the world existed from eternity, there is no need for gods to create it. All is material, which was due to random forces – thus Epicurus was the real father of evolution, not Darwin. Epicurus synthesized his philosophy with this double equation Wiker cited: Good = Pleasure, Evil = Pain.

Bentham and later Mill (James and John) borrowed heavily from Epicurus’ ideas on atheism, materialism and pleasure, and despite the myriad of errors in logic of the above equation, repackaged them under the rubric of utilitarianism. Moreover they applied the philosophical speculations of Epicurus to every conceivable aspect of culture and society, which Wiker contends has had disastrous consequences upon Western Civilization. On this point, the hippies, anarchists and radicals of the countercultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s come to mind.

“If morality is reduced to pleasure and pain,” Wiker noted, “anything that experiences pleasure and pain must be included in the moral calculation. But here’s the contradiction in logic. Once we add the entire sentient population of every fish, fowl, reptile, amoeba, gorilla and so forth, the task of ranking and balancing pleasures and pains becomes impossible.” (Can you say radical environmentalism and animal rights?)

Wiker ended his analysis of Mill in this manner: “The problem is that Mill, being an atheist, did not see how deep evil runs. He believed his declaration of war on merely natural evils was enough to rid the world of all evil. Preventing heart attacks is all well and good, but there is more that ails the human heart.”

This characterization created a foreseeable dilemma that Mill seemed oblivious to but which Wiker skillfully delineated in this manner: “Mill, however, was too short-sighted to see it [the nature of evil]. He could not envision, for example, the most likely outcome of utilitarianism: that it would lead to a society addicted to ever more intense, barbaric and self-destructive pleasures, and that its members would be gibbering cowards in the face of even the smallest pains.”

Mill’s obscure little book with the funny title has done much harm to society in modern times by reviving the ancient Greek philosophy of Epicureanism. While I am not a prude and I enjoy pleasurable pursuits just like any normal person, obsessively seeking pleasure above God, above family, above rational impulses has and will continue to lead to the destruction of once-great nations. I hope America will return from the precipice of the abyss before it is too late.

Ellis Washington, former editor at The Michigan Law Review and law clerk at The Rutherford Institute, is a graduate of John Marshall Law School and a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history, political philosophy and critical race theory. He has written over a dozen law review articles and several books, including “The Inseparability of Law and Morality: The Constitution, Natural Law and the Rule of Law” (2002). See his law review article “Reply to Judge Richard Posner.” Washington’s latest book, “The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust,” can be pre-ordered by calling 800-462-6420, promotion code “UPREPUB.”
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