Abstract

This chapter begins with an overview of John Stuart Mill's life and philosophy. Mill's chief contributions to the history of ethics are two-fold. The first was to popularize utilitarianism: to present utilitarianism in a short text, written by a recognized great philosopher, which could be read with apparent understanding by an ordinary person. The second was to persuade academic philosophers to take utilitarianism so seriously that it could compete with Aristotle and Kant as one of the three greatest traditions in ethics. The discussions then turn to Mill's complex theory of morality and theory of justice.