British Journal for the History of Philosophy ISSN: 0960-8788 (Print) 1469-3526 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbjh20 Mill on virtue as a part of happiness Roger Crisp To cite this article: Roger Crisp (1996) Mill on virtue as a part of happiness, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 4:2, 367-380, DOI: 10.1080/09608789608570946 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09608789608570946 Published online: 03 Jun 2008. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 176 View related articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rbjh20 Download by: [Radcliffe Infirmary] Date: 22 February 2016, At: 10:11 BJHP1996 Discussion Vol. 4/NO. 2 MILL ON VIRTUE AS A PART OF HAPPINESS Roger Crisp Downloaded by [Radcliffe Infirmary] at 10:11 22 February 2016 There are three stages to J. S. Mill's 'proof of utilitarianism.1 In the third paragraph of chapter IV of Utilitarianism, he attempts to show (i) that happiness is desirable, using the notorious analogy between Visible' and 'desirable', and (ii) that the general happiness is desirable. In the following five paragraphs he endeavours to prove (iii) that nothing other than happiness is desirable. In stage (i), Mill suggests that the sole evidence that anything is desirable is that people do in fact desire it. Since we each desire our own happiness, we must accept that happiness is desirable. Despite the fact that more ink has been spilled over this passage than over any other in Mill's writings, the conclusion of stage (i) is so plausible that one wonders why Mill even bothered to argue for it. The answer is probably that he depends on the same premise - that desire is the sole evidence for desirability - in stage (iii), the conclusion of which is far less plausible. In stage (iii), then, Mill has to show that we desire nothing as an end apart from happiness. He notes immediately in IV.4 that people do desire what is 'in common language' clearly distinguished from happiness. With his intuitionist opponents in mind, Mill gives virtue as an example. This poses an immediate problem for his account. For if we desire virtue as an end, and virtue is distinct from happiness, then our desire is evidence for the desirability of something other than happiness. Mill might have chosen to argue that we do not in fact desire virtue as an end, but only, perhaps, as a means to the end of happiness. In fact, however, in IV.5 he argues that utilitarians believe not only that people do desire virtue as an end, but that this is to be applauded. He continues, 1 J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. Mary Warnock (London: Fontana, 1962), chap. IV. References to this text are to chapters and paragraphs. 368 Roger Crisp This opinion is not, in the smallest degree, a departure from the Happiness principle. The ingredients of happiness are very various, and each of them is desirable in itself, and not merely when considered as swelling an aggregate . . . Virtue, according to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the end, but is capable of becoming so; and in those who love it disinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and cherished, not as a means to happiness, but as a part of their happiness. Downloaded by [Radcliffe Infirmary] at 10:11 22 February 2016 This paper is an attempt to understand Mill's claim that virtue is a part of happiness. I It might appear that Mill is using the concept of 'happiness' in the same formal way as Aristotle employs that of 'eudaimonia', to refer to those things, whatever they are, that constitute people's flourishing.2 Mill would then be taken in this context to be claiming that virtue is one of the constituents of human happiness or flourishing. An interpretation along these lines has been offered by Fred R. Berger in a detailed study of Mill's ethics and politics.3 As Berger notes,4 in 'Remarks on Bentham's philosophy', written long before Utilitarianism, Mill claimed that'an action performed from 'impulse' can be an end in itself and that 'there is nothing whatever which may not become an object of desire or of dislike by association';5 and in an article of 1838, he objected to Bentham that he failed to recognise that people can desire a virtuous character for its own sake.6 All that we can conclude on the basis of these passages, however, is that at times other than that at which he wrote Utilitarianism, Mill probably would have allowed that virtue and other things can be parts of happiness.7 They do not give us a great deal of guidance on what Mill meant by the idea. 2 3 4 5 6 7 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.4, 1095a17-20 and passim. F. Berger, Happiness, Justice, and Freedom (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984). Berger, 14-15. J. S. Mill, 'Remarks on Bentham's philosophy', in Collected Works, ed. J. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), vol. X, 12-13. 'Bentham', Collected Works X, 95-6. It should be noted that Mill says of this desire that it is 'without hope of good . . . from other source than [the agent's] own inward consciousness'. Berger argues as well that Mill's view appeared not to have changed after Utilitarianism, Mill on Virtue as a Part of Happiness 369 Adopting the formal understanding of'happiness', Berger is able to take Mill's thesis at face value: Though virtue would not be sought if, at some stage, it was not associated with pleasure, it does not follow that pleasure is the object of the desire for virtue . . . . When it is said that the person desires it as part of his or her happiness, this means the person desires it for itself, and would be unhappy without it.8 Downloaded by [Radcliffe Infirmary] at 10:11 22 February 2016 According to Berger, then, it is not just his formal conception of happiness that Mill has in common with Aristotle. Both philosophers believe that virtue is itself a constituent of happiness.9 As Berger realises, this interpretation runs into difficulties with Mill's important clarification in II.2 of the view that actions are right as they tend to promote happiness: By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. Berger argues that this passage is usually taken to be a straightforward expression of hedonism only because the sentence following it in the text is ignored:10 8 9 10 quoting a passage from a note to an 1869 edition of his father's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (London: Longmans, vol. II, 308). Berger claims that in this note Mill 'pointed out . . . how various things that are not themselves pleasures come to be desired "for their own sake, without reference to their consequences" '. In fact, however, Mill is claiming that it is his father who is pointing this out. That Mill speaks of 'pointing out' here might well be taken, of course, to suggest that he agrees with his father, but his main aim is exegesis of his father's argument, and for that reason I would advise against attaching importance to this passage in elucidation of Mill's considered views of the relation of desire and happiness. Berger also adduces a passage from A System of Logic (in Collected Works, vol. VIII, 1974, 842) to which Mill himself refers us in Utilitarianism. The passage in the Logic explicitly states that we continue to desire an action even when we have ceased to find any pleasure in it. I take it that Berger finds Mill's reference to this passage in UtilitarianismIV.11(he does not tell us; see Berger, 15; and note 15, 302). But the point Mill wishes to endorse in Utilitarianism is that the virtuous person can will virtuous action independently of any pleasure. Immediately after the reference to the Logic, however, Mill states that '[w]ill, the active phenomenon, is a different thing from desire, the state of passive sensibility'. This distinction is not drawn in the passage in the Logic, so that passage cannot plausibly be used to support the thesis that Mill allowed in Utilitarianism that we can desire objects independently of pleasure. Berger, 35-6. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1.7, 1098al6-17. Aristotle, of course, speaks of virtuous activity. On my reading of Berger, he would allow this at least to be consistent with Mill's view. See the discussion of hedonism in my text below. Berger, 37. 370 Roger Crisp Downloaded by [Radcliffe Infirmary] at 10:11 22 February 2016 To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. Berger argues that if Mill intended to define happiness merely as pleasure, it is not clear why he should wish to add anything to his initial statement. We know what pleasures and pains are, and Mill provides no philosophical analysis of these notions. Rather, Berger suggests, Mill goes on to analyse the idea of happiness, 'thereby indicating what, in the way of pleasures, was included in that idea'.11 Berger concludes that the paragraph in question is merely a preliminary outline of Mill's conception of happiness, and that his view is not that pleasure is the only thing of value, but that it is pleasure, 'in so far as it is a constituent of a person's happiness which has valué".n The view that Mill provides no philosophical analysis of pleasure can be correct only on a narrow understanding of the analysandum or what would constitute analysis of it. He does indeed fail in Utilitarianism to draw a sharp distinction between the notion of pleasure itself and that of activities which may be described as 'pleasures'. Nor does he consider the question of the nature of pleasure, whether it is, say, a sensation. On this latter issue he would probably have agreed with Berger that such consideration was not germane to his central topic. Surely, however, Mill does go on to say more about 'what things it [utilitarianism] includes in the idea of pain and pleasure' in the account of higher and lower pleasures which follows upon this introductory paragraph? Berger suggests that the sentence following the initial apparent statement of hedonism has been largely ignored in the literature. It is ironic, then, that he himself fails specifically to discuss the sentence which follows that which bears the weight of his own interpretation: But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded - namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other 11 12 Berger, 37. Berger, 38. Mill on Virtue as a Part of Happiness 371 scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain. Downloaded by [Radcliffe Infirmary] at 10:11 22 February 2016 This seems, if anything, an even clearer statement of hedonism. Berger, however, offers an account of Mill's discussion of higher and lower pleasures as being primarily an account of happiness, understood in the formal sense. His central claim is that, according to Mill, human happiness is not an open concept in the sense that it consists of pleasures completely unspecified. Mill's concept of happiness is partly determinate in the sense that there are particular elements requisite to it.13 Now Mill does indeed say: Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification. (II.4)14 The sentence before this, however, makes it clear that Mill is here speaking of our conception of happiness. We can therefore allow that lower pleasures constitute actual happiness, while claiming that a conception or account of happiness which excluded higher pleasures would be in that respect lacking.15 Berger claims that, as Mill continues the discussion of higher pleasures, he suggests that people are not happy without the fulfilment of these elevated faculties.161 take it that he is referring to the following sentence in II.6: 'A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy . . . than one of an inferior type'. Again, there need be no implication here that hedonism is false. Mill can be read merely as pointing out that, if one considers a being of elevated faculties and one of lower faculties, both of whom are happy, the happiness of the former will require more resources. There is no implication that, were the higher being to 'sink into a lower grade of existence', his life would contain no happiness. Indeed, Mill implies quite the opposite when he argues a few sentences later that the higher being is happier than the lower.17 13 Berger, 39. Quoted in Berger, 38. 15 I discuss Aristotle's use of similar 'more-is-better' arguments in 'Aristotle's indusivism', Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 12 (1994) 111-36. 16 Berger, 39; note 15, 306. 17 The notion of 'happiness' can, of course, be used in more than one way. On one 14 372 Roger Crisp Downloaded by [Radcliffe Infirmary] at 10:11 22 February 2016 I noted above Berger's suggestion that Mill's apparent definition of happiness in II.2 was merely a preliminary sketch. Berger claims that Mill's final definition comes after the discussion of higher pleasures, and that it shows clearly that 'the ultimate end sought is happiness, conceived as made up of pleasures, but not indiscriminately compounded':18 According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, as above explained, the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable . . . is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality; the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it against quantity, being the preference felt by those who in their opportunities of experience, to which must be added their habits of self-consciousness and selfobservation, are best furnished with the means of comparison. (11.10) Again, however, this passage does not imply that Mill's concept of human happiness is 'partly determinate'. Indeed, the final sentence of this paragraph shows that he saw his definition here applying also 'so far as the nature of things admits' to all sentient beings. So far, then, I have argued against Berger for the traditional view that Mill is an 'indiscriminate' hedonist. At this point I should clarify the nature of hedonism. Hedonism can be understood either as a view about what makes certain things good for people, viz. pleasantness (explanatory hedonism), or as a view about what things are good for people, viz. pleasurable experience or experiences (substantive hedonism). What one might call pure hedonism will combine both views: what is good for people is pleasurable experience alone, and what makes it good is its being pleasurable. understanding, happiness is just whatever is desirable in a being's life; on another, a happy life is a life that contains more than some reasonable amount of what is desirable (thus we may say, 'There were some good things in his life - but it wasn't happy overall'). Were Mill using happiness in the second way here, he might claim that higher pleasures are necessary conditions for happiness, while allowing that happiness in the first sense can nevertheless be found in the lives of lower beings. There is no sign in the text, however, that Mill is shifting from one sense to the other, and it is more charitable to interpret him as speaking only of happiness in the first sense throughout. Even if Mill is using a second sense, this need not be inconsistent with hedonism, as long as what makes a being happy in this sense is nothing other than pleasure (see below in the main text). I was helped in the writing of this note by a comment of Thomas Hurka on a previous draft. 18 Berger, 39. Downloaded by [Radcliffe Infirmary] at 10:11 22 February 2016 Mill on Virtue as a Part of Happiness 373 Because Berger argues that Mill believed that things other than pleasurable experience or experiences constitute the human good, he is committed to viewing Mill as a substantive non-hedonist. It is not sufficient to defeat Berger's interpretation to point to Mill's frequent reference to 'pleasures'. For there is a sense in English of'a pleasure' where this does not refer to a pleasurable experience. What we might call an activity pleasure is some activity in which I engage with enjoyment. Thus, my activity pleasures might include ski-ing or acting virtuously. These activities are not to be identified with the experiences I have and enjoy while engaging in them.19 Mill might, however, be taken to be referring to such pleasurable experiences {experience pleasures) when he speaks of 'pleasures'. Which of the two interpretations, the activity and the experience, is the more plausible? Several times, when speaking of pleasures, Mill contrasts them with 'pains' or sets them alongside the 'absence' of pain (see e.g. II.8; 12; IV.5; 10-11; see also the contrast between the pleasures of the intellect etc. and the pleasures of sensation in II.4). 'Pain', in English, cannot mean quite the opposite of 'activity pleasure'. If I enjoy punting, and hate housework, I may say that punting is one of my pleasures, but not that housework is one of my pains. I may indeed say that housework ÍS a pain, in the sense of a trouble to me, but I may not speak of 'pains' to mean things I dislike in the way that I can speak of pleasures as things I enjoy. Since Mill often speaks of pains, then, he must be understood to be referring to painful experiences. It is therefore both more charitable and more parsimonious to assume that, when he speaks of 'pleasures', he is referring to pleasurable experiences.20 This understanding of 'a pain' as 'a painful experience' was of course standard in the utilitarian tradition.21 19 20 21 Berger admits that Mill's discussion is unclear. But he claims that the use of 'pleasure* which predominates in Utilitarianism, and which is consistent with his own interpretation, is to refer to 'that which is a pleasure, e.g., intellectual activity, money, and virtue' (Berger, note 12, 305). I understand Berger to be speaking of activity pleasures in this passage. David O. Brink, in his non-hedonist interpretation of Mill in 'Mill's deliberative utilitarianism', Philosophy and Public Affairs 21 (1992) 67-103 (see esp. 72-9), neither distinguishes activity pleasures from experience pleasures, nor discusses Mill's view of pain as the opposite of pleasure. I assume, incidentally, that Mill understands happiness to consist in any kind of pleasurable experience, that is, any experience which is enjoyed. Likewise, any distressing experience will count as painful. See e.g. Bentham's claim that the pains (and pleasures) which 'issue from the physical, political or moral sanctions, must all of them be expected to be experienced, if ever, in 374 Roger Crisp Downloaded by [Radcliffe Infirmary] at 10:11 22 February 2016 So Mill accepts substantive hedonism.22 One can, however, be a substantive hedonist, and yet not an explanatory hedonist. One might hold, for example, that what makes things good for people is the satisfaction of desire. This, combined with the view that people desire only pleasurable experiences, will issue in substantive hedonism and explanatory non-hedonism. But Mill is clearly an explanatory hedonist. He ends the definitive statement of his position in II.2 as follows: . . . all desirable things . . . are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain. Mill is, then, a pure hedonist. Let me consider finally those passages which Berger adduces in support of a straightforwardly non-hedonistic interpretation. The first is that in which Mill attempts to explain why it is that higher beings will refuse to sink into a lower grade of existence (II.6). Mill offers the following options: the feeling of pride, or the love of liberty, power or excitement. He himself thinks it most appropriate to describe this unwillingness of the higher being as a sense of dignity . . . which is so essential a part of the happiness in those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire to them. Berger claims that in this paragraph Mill asserts that the requisites of happiness include a sense of one's independence and selfdetermination, of power, and of freedom, a measure of excitement and 'described generally, whatever is necessary to maintain human dignity'.23 We can leave aside the point that Mill speaks of a love of independence and so on, not a sense of them. For it is clear not only that Mill thinks it more appropriate to speak of the sense of the present life' (Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, repr. in J. S. 22 23 M i l l , Utilitarianism, ed. M . W a r n o c k , c h a p . III, p a r a g r a p h 7 , p p . 6 0 - 6 1 ; 'experienced' italicised by m e ) . In m y forthcoming b o o k , Mill's Utilitarianism ( L o n d o n : R o u t l e d g e , 1 9 9 7 ) , I claim t h a t , t h o u g h Mill is clearly committed t o hedonism b y I I . 2 , there does remain a g a p in his account: if nobility, for e x a m p l e , can increase pleasurableness o r enjoyableness, w h y is it n o t a g o o d - m a k i n g p r o p e r t y in its o w n right? W e have t o assume t h a t for Mill its value is filtered t h r o u g h pleasurableness, as is t h a t of quantity (i.e. t h e length a n d intensity of the pleasure). But this is a sign of an excessive c o m m i t m e n t t o h e d o n i s m . Berger, p . 4 0 . Downloaded by [Radcliffe Infirmary] at 10:11 22 February 2016 Mill on Virtue as a Part of Happiness 375 dignity in this context, but that this is the only component of happiness he here mentions. Nor does he claim that happiness must include whatever is necessary to maintain this component. Indeed that would be for him to mistake means with ends.24 As Berger points out,25 Mill does claim in his discussion of justice that security is crucial to happiness. But Mill himself refers to it as a 'necessary', akin to food (V.25). Again, Berger is right to say that Mill speaks of disappointed expectation as an evil.26 We might even agree that this suggests that a sense of security is a part of happiness. But a sense of security can itself, of course, be understood to be an experience pleasure, and indeed to be valuable only because of the pleasure it instantiates. My arguments against Berger's view of Mill's conception of happiness in Utilitarianism as non-hedonistic and 'determinate', and especially the evidence of II.2, show that any such interpretation will fail. So we cannot answer the question of what Mill means by his claim that virtue is a part of happiness by arguing that, on a non-hedonistic and pluralistic conception of happiness, such a claim can be taken literally.27 II In a slightly more recent study of Mill, John Skorupski accepts that Mill is a hedonist.28 According to Skorupski, Mill uses the terminology of 'parts' of happiness to avoid the claim that because we desire, say, virtue only inasmuch as it is thought of as pleasant, virtue is therefore a means to happiness.29 24 In his conclusion on Mill's conception of the 'essential elements of human happiness' (Berger, 41-2), Berger indiscriminately runs together instrumental and non-instrumental goods. It cannot be that what are merely 'requirements' or 'requisites' for human happiness - such as the following by others of the rules of justice - can themselves be elements of human happiness. It should be noted that in his response to John Skorupski's review of his book, Berger speaks of 'whatever is requisite to "a sense of dignity" ' as one of the 'things in which we take pleasure by our natures' ('Reply to Professor Skorupski', Philosophical Books 26 (1985), 206). But Mill must surely be taken to be speaking of the (pleasurable) sense of dignity as the pleasurable component of happiness, not any pleasure we take in what is necessary for it. 25 Berger, 4 0 - 1 26 Berger, 4 1 . 27 O r almost literally. Even on Berger's view, despite his suggestion that virtue is a pleasure (Berger, note 12, 305), Mill must have meant that it is in fact being virtuous or exercising the virtues that is a constituent of happiness (cf. Berger's reference to 'virtuous activity', 'Reply to Professor Skorupski', 202). I shall return to this matter in my final section. 28 J. Skorupski, J. S. Mill (London: Routledge, 1989), 13 and passim. 29 Skorupski, 2 9 6 ; cf. 13-14. 376 Roger Crisp Downloaded by [Radcliffe Infirmary] at 10:11 22 February 2016 Virtue, on Skorupski's interpretation, is desired under the idea of it as pleasant. This enables Mill to distinguish the spontaneously or authentically generous person from the conscientious giver: The generous man desires to give because he takes pleasure in giving. It is just the unmotivated pleasure in giving others pleasure that constitutes him a generous man. Or consider a father playing with his children. He plays with them because he wants to; he wants to simply because he enjoys it. The act of giving is pan of the happiness of the generous man. Playing with his children is part of the happiness of the father. They do these things because they enjoy them - but we cannot say that they do them in order to get that pleasure or enjoyment. That would be to represent the motive involved as egotistic, which is just what it is not.30 Skorupski then discusses the passage I have already mentioned from 'Remarks on Bentham's philosophy', in which Mill distinguishes between action in pursuit of an 'interest' - a prospective pleasure or pain - and acting on an 'impulse' - a pleasure or pain felt at the prospect of the act itself.31 Skorupski understands Mill to be using the distinction between interest and impulse in an attempt to show that the view that all actions are determined by pleasure and pain does not imply the view that human action is self-interested. As Skorupski points out, since the selfish/unselfish distinction cuts across the interest/impulse distinction, Mill's argument so understood fails. 'The point that ought to be emphasised', Skorupski continues, 'is that even when a person does something because he thinks it will be pleasant - like the generous man who gives a present - it still does not follow that he is acting selfishly.' And this point which Mill ought to have emphasised is the one Skorupski interprets him as making in Utilitarianism with the distinction between parts of happiness and means to happiness. When considering whether a writer commits himself to a particular position in a particular work, it is probably best to adduce evidence first from within that text. Does the text of Utilitarianism itself suggest psychological egoism? That view is usually taken to be that people act only to further what they take to be their own good. In this sense, Mill is clearly not a psychological egoist. He allows for genuine self-sacrifice, in which 30 31 Skorupski, 296. J. S. Mill, 'Remarks on Bentham', 12-15; discussed in Skorupski, 296-7. Mill on Virtue as a Part of Happiness 377 Downloaded by [Radcliffe Infirmary] at 10:11 22 February 2016 a person knowingly gives up his or her own happiness for the sake of others (II.15-16). 32 But Mill does accept a narrower, desirecentred account of psychological egoism (we might call it desire egoism), according to which human beings desire only their own pleasure.33 In IV.9, Mill sums up his proof: if human beings desire only happiness and the means to it, it will have been proven that happiness is the only thing desirable. He goes on, in the following paragraph: And now to decide whether this is really so; whether mankind do desire nothing for itself but that which is a pleasure to them, or of which the absence is a pain. [Italics mine.] It might be objected that this passage does not in itself commit Mill to desire egoism. I might, say, desire a pleasure of yours. This will be desiring something that is a pleasure to mankind, since you are one of mankind. The passage in IV.10, however, harks back to stage (i) of the proof. And there Mill leaves us in little doubt: No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good. (II.3) [Italics mine.] Why is it not possible to require a proof grounded on the claim that human beings desire the happiness of others? The reason must be that Mill thinks it impossible. Each of us desires only his or her own happiness. Desire egoism may cause problems for Mill in stage (ii) of the proof, and indeed in his general project. But it is his stated position. Skorupski's example of the generous man, quoted above, strongly suggests that he allows Mill to claim that a person can desire to give pleasure to others, as an end in itself. This, then, is the first problem with Skorupski's interpretation, its inconsistency with Mill's desire egoism. 32 33 The use of 'genuine' is to mark the distinction between Mill's view and that of, say, Aristotle, in which apparent self-sacrifice always turns out in fact to be in the agent's best interests; see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I X . 8 , 1168b23-31. Self-sacrificial action is best understood, then, to be motivated not by desire, but by will; see IV.11. Downloaded by [Radcliffe Infirmary] at 10:11 22 February 2016 378 Roger Crisp It also runs into trouble with the logic of the first stage of the proof. Recall that, according to the central premise of that first stage, the sole evidence of an object's being desirable as an end in itself is the fact that people desire it as such. On Skorupski's interpretation, people do indeed desire virtue as an end in itself. This would commit Mill to the view that virtue itself is desirable, a view which we have already seen, in the discussion of Berger, is inconsistent with pure hedonism. Like Berger, Skorupski understand's Mill's talk of pleasures to refer to activity pleasures (i.e. certain activities conceived of independently from the experiences of them). Since the evidence of pure hedonism is so strong, we must conclude that Skorupski's interpretation of Mill's claim that virtue is a part of happiness also fails. Ill Any interpretation of Mill's view about the parts of happiness must be shaped in the light of his pure hedonisn and his desire egoism. According to the substantive component of his pure hedonism, happiness is constituted by experience pleasures alone. So when Mill speaks of virtue as desirable in itself, he must be understood to be speaking of the pleasure of virtue. He cannot mean by this the pleasure that follows from being virtuous, the enjoyment of the person surveying his past virtuous actions. For virtue would then clearly be a means, and Skorupski is certainly right to say that his view is one that Mill is keen to avoid. In the central discussion of virtue as a part of happiness in chapter IV, Mill offers as examples of objects that can become parts of happiness 'music' and 'health'. He explicitly refers to these as 'pleasures' (IV.5). What are the pleasures of music and the pleasures of health? Surely these can be understood only as the pleasures of listening to or playing music, and of being healthy. 'Virtue', then, as a pleasure, can be understood only as the pleasure of being virtuous (which we may take to include acting virtuously).34 This, then, is what Mill's claim that virtue is a part of 34 See H. R. West, 'Mill's "proof of the principle of utility', in The Limits of Utilitarianism, ed. H. B. Miller and W. H. Williams (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 28. West says that the ultimate ends of desires can be seen as 'experiences . . . with a pleasure component'. Unfortunately, he goes on to allow that virtue can be said to be desired as an end, apparently because he sees this as the sole interpretative alternative to the view that what is desired ultimately is only the 'pleasure Mill on Virtue as a Part of Happiness 379 Downloaded by [Radcliffe Infirmary] at 10:11 22 February 2016 happiness amounts to: that happiness can be constituted partly by the enjoyable experience of one's being virtuous. The main disadvantage - if it can be described as such - of this interpretation is that this is not exactly what Mill says. After all, he says that it is virtue that is desirable in itself. But no reasonable interpretation can take Mill's claim at face value. For that would be to turn that claim into the 'contemptible nonsense' G. E. Moore attributed to him in his dyspeptic discussion of Mill in chapter III of Principia Ethica.35 Another of Mill's examples of objects that can come to be desired as ends in themselves is money (IV.6). Of this, Moore says: Does Mill mean to say that 'money', these actual coins, which he admits to be desired in and for themselves, are a part either of pleasure or of the absence of pain? Will he maintain that those coins themselves are in my mind, and actually a part of my pleasant feelings? If this is to be said, all words are useless: nothing can possibly be distinguished from anything else; if these two things are not distinct, what on earth is? We shall hear next that this table is really and truly the same thing as this room; that a cab-horse is in fact indistinguishable from St Paul's cathedral.36 Mill believed that it was only in 'common language' that virtue is distinguished from happiness. In more precise language, virtue can be seen to be a part of happiness in the sense that the pleasure of being virtuous or acting virtuously can be desirable, qua pleasure, as an end in itself. Mill's own language, unfortunately, is not very precise.37 One consequence of this, whether intended or not by Mill we cannot know, has been that the vast gap between the view of the intuitionist opponents Mill is attempting to pacify and his own has been papered over by confusion.38 The 35 36 37 38 c o m p o n e n t ' of the state of consciousness of being virtuous. T h e r e is, of course, a third o p t i o n , t h a t it is t h e pleasurable experience of being virtuous t h a t is desired. (II.2 might be taken t o suggest t h a t West's rejected alternative is anyway correct. But Mill is t o o unclear a b o u t the distinction between pleasure a n d a pleasurable experience for this interpretation t o be accepted.) G . E . M o o r e , Principia Ethica ( C a m b r i d g e ; C a m b r i d g e University Press, 1 9 0 3 ) , 7 2 . I w a s pleased t o find t h a t M o o r e w a s similarly blunt a b o u t his o w n earlier views, in his later preface recently published in a Revised Edition of Principia Ethica, ed. T . Baldwin ( C a m b r i d g e : C a m b r i d g e University Press 1 9 9 3 ) , 2 - 2 7 . M o o r e , Principia Ethica, 1st e d n . , 7 1 . Cf. H . Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics ( L o n d o n : M a c m i l l a n , 7 t h e d n , 1 9 0 7 ) , n o t e 1 , Sidgwick's interpretation in this n o t e is I think close t o m i n e . I myself suspect t h a t it w a s u n i n t e n d e d , a n d n o t just because Mill w a s a b o v e such tactics. H e t h o u g h t t h a t it w a s 'obvious' t h a t desire c a n n o t be 'directed t o anything ultimately 380 Roger Crisp 'opponents of the utilitarian standard' (IV.4) believed that being virtuous is an end desirable in itself independently of its being a pleasure, and that it could be desired by people independently of their own happiness. 'Whether it is or not must now be left to the consideration of the thoughtful reader' (IV.12.)39 Downloaded by [Radcliffe Infirmary] at 10:11 22 February 2016 St Anne's College Oxford except pleasure and the exemption from pain' (IV.11) and 'that to desire anything, except in proportion as the idea of it as pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical impossibility' (V.10). Perhaps, then, he never properly understood his opponents' views in the first place. It should be noted that I am placing little interpretative weight on that latter claim that desiring x and finding x pleasant are the same. After all, this analysis of desiring would allow the possibility of finding pleasant something which was not in fact a pleasurable experience. My imputation of hedonism to Mill depends primarily on II.2, and of desire egoism on the substantive claims he makes here about what we desire. 39 I am grateful to Professors Hurka and Skompski for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and to the latter also for enlightening discussion.