Hume, Bentham and Mill 89better to be Socrates dissatisfied, than a fool satisfied.”
This statement not only makes clear the belief in the superi
ority of intellectual pleasures, but also indicates who can make
the determination. If we have a fool who can enjoy all the
physical pleasures but is too ignorant to enjoy those intellectual
pleasures, the fool only knows part of the experience. An
intelligent person, however, can experience both, and therefore
can be the judge of which is better. A fool and a wise man can
enjoy a good meal, but only the wise man can enjoy the
intellectual pleasures of art, literature, music, dance, poetry, and
the like. The implications of this concept for M ill’s political
philosophy are as interesting as they are profound.
Mill also differs with Bentham’s view that one’s nature
requires that he seek happiness/pleasure as an individual and
similarly seek happiness/pleasure as a socially aware being. Not
so, says Mill. True, we seek happiness/pleasure for ourselves. It
is our nature. But the fulfilling of our social obligations Mill sees
as something we ought to do, i.e., it is a moral imperative, not a
natural drive. This concept leads Mill to what he calls the
“internal sanction.”
While Bentham had four sanctions to insure acceptable be
havior in the social sense, Mill sees but two. The first, which is
simply “hope of favor, fear of displeasure,” is the external
sanction. But even the external sanction is in a real sense, self
imposed— we choose what will bring favor or displeasure. So,
the second, the internal sanction is the more important one. Mill
claims that all men have a “feeling for humanity,” and this
feeling becomes the basis for the internal sanction. The intelli
gent man knows that however different the opinions of others
might be in contrast to his own, all our basic aims and desires are
the same. This is what “makes any mind of well-developed
feelings, work with, and not against, the outward motives to care
for others...”
Thus John Stuart Mill developed, expanded, and completed
the task of explaining the utilitarian philosophy he learned at his
father’s knee.