Justification of Moral Duty in the Ethics of J.S. Mill

Abstract

The paper addresses John Stuart Mills’s ethics and specifically deals with the follow­ing question: “Is there some kind of justification of moral duty that is exclusively characteristic of utilitarian ethics?” In order to answer it, the author proposes a recon­struction of Mill’s proof of the principle of utility from the fourth part of “Unilitarian­ism”, demonstrates its links with empiricist (inductivist) foundations of Mill’s moral philosophy, and shows that the second part of the proof allows two interpretations. First, it can be understood as proving the utilitarian normative program to the indi­vidual that already has recognized the moral assumption. In this case, we have to seek the justification of moral duty somewhere beyond Mill’s proof, in the pas­sages of “Utilitarianism” about the interest of an agent to have benevolent people around him/her and about the role of opinions held by experientially privileged indi­viduals in the process of choosing a way of life by other people. Second, it can be considered as simultaneously proving the rational character of moral duty and the ne­cessity to understand it through the prism of utilitarianism. In the light of the first in­terpretation, Mill’s justification of moral duty resembles strategic egoism or intuition­ism of Sidgwick’s type. In the light of the second, it is closer to the Kantian tradition in moral philosophy. But, at any rate, the wide range of possible justifications of moral duty encapsulated in the text of “Utilitarianism’” provides convincing evi­dence that utilitarian ethics is not connected with some exclusively utilitarian justifi­cation of moral duty.