In “Utilitarianism,” Mill seeks to clarify the principles of utilitarianism and to rebut what he considers to be popular misconceptions about utilitarian ideas. In addressing critics of utilitarianism who characterize it as a joyless or merely instrumental school of philosophy, he makes allusions to previous philosophers whom he regards as his own philosophical forefathers:
Those who know anything about the matter are aware that every writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, who maintained the theory of utility meant by it, not something to be contradistinguished from pleasure, but pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain; and instead of opposing the useful to the agreeable or the ornamental, have always declared that the useful means these, among other things.
Here, Mill establishes a genealogy of utilitarian ideas, alluding first to the Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, who founded Epicureanism, a school of philosophy that valued pleasure as its highest value and ideal. He then alludes to Jeremy Bentham, a close friend of Mill’s family and the best-known utilitarian philosopher. Mill argues that these two figures, both of whom are associated with utilitarianism, understood “pleasure” as being closely related to “utility.” Utilitarianism, he claims, is not a pleasureless philosophy, but rather, one that conceives of “utility” or action that is oriented towards the “good” as being itself pleasurable.
In his sustained critique of popular notions of justice, Mill uses the common idiom “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Identifying the desire for vengeance as “primitive,” Mill writes that:
No rule on the subject recommends itself so strongly to the primitive and spontaneous sentiment of justice as the lex talionis, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Though this principle of the Jewish and of the Mohammedan law has been generally abandoned in Europe as a practical maxim, there is, I suspect, in most minds, a secret hankering after it; and when retribution accidentally falls on an offender in that precise shape, the general feeling of satisfaction evinced bears witness how natural is the sentiment to which this repayment in kind is acceptable.
Here, Mill alludes to the “lex talionis,” an ancient conception of law that is broadly known under the idiom “an eye for an eye.” This principle has a long history. It is often associated with the Bible, but similar ideas can be found in older sources, including the Code of Hammurabi, a Babylonian legal text. Mill claims that this “primitive” understanding of justice, which emphasizes proportionate revenge, has been “generally abandoned in Europe,” though he also acknowledges that many Europeans have “a secret hankering after it.” Mill’s use of the idiom “eye for an eye” underscores what he believes to be the overly simplistic and bloodthirsty nature of this common attitude. Against this, he proposes the utilitarian model of justice, which would imagine punishment only as a means of ensuring the common good rather than as the execution of revenge.
