J.S. Mill on Calliclean Hedonism and the Value of Pleasure

Abstract

Maximizing Hedonism maintains that the most pleasurable pleasures are the best. Francis Bradley argues that this is either incompatible with Mill’s Qualitative Hedonism, or renders the latter redundant. Some ‘sympathetic’ interpreters respond that Mill was either a Non-Maximizing Hedonist or a Non-Hedonist. However, Bradley’s argument is fallacious, and these ‘sympathetic’ interpretations cannot provide adequate accounts of: Mill’s identification with the Protagorean Socrates; his criticisms of the Gorgian Socrates; or his apparent belief that Callicles is misguided to attempt to show that the pleasures of the intelligent can be more valuable than the pleasures of fools without also being more pleasurable.

J. S. Mill on Higher Pleasures and Modes of Existence

“…The full hedonist view is also compatible with internalist or externalist conceptions of pleasure (Miller 2010: 35). This paper remains agnostic regarding these other debates concerning the character of Mill's hedonism (but see Beaumont (2019) for further discussion).…”

“…Mill's Utilitarianism (1861) is generally taken to defend a hedonistic axiology according to which all and only pleasurable and painful experiences are bearers of final (or non-instrumental) value and disvalue respectively (X: 209 ;Beaumont 2018aBeaumont , 2019. 1 It is also usually interpreted as rejecting a form of quantitative hedonism that takes the final value of a pleasure to be proportional to its "quantity", where this quantitative value is constituted by the product of two sub-values: intensity and duration (X: 213, 236;Crisp 1997: 32;Wilson 1990: 277-8).…”

“…Non-hedonists may be correct to think it is necessary to appeal to non-hedonic value-bearers to explain the comparative value of such lives (Schaupp 2013: 267;Skorupksi 1989: 299-303). However, this paper assumes that Mill is a consistent hedonist (see Beaumont 2019). Moreover, since it is designed to explore Mill's qualitative hedonism rather than question hedonism as such, it will assume that when two lives differ in final value, Mill is right to think it is in virtue of differences in the value of their pleasures.…”