AN ESSAY ON GOVERNMENT

James Mill
 Based on Utilitarianism
 Happiness: When pleasure is high and pain is small.
o 2 sources of pleasure & pain
 Fellow Men
 Main cause (responsibility) of government:
o Maximize pleasure and minimize pain.
 Independent of other men (NATURE)
o Economics: Scarcity of resources. (We have government because there is scarcity)
 Scarcity = Pain
 There is competition between men.
 How to enforce Conformity = Obedience (To the government)
 Pleasure – Give Reward
 Pain -
 Representative Government
 Prevent bad government (self-interested)
o Community as the checking body
o Representative: Identity of interested (similar) to the
community
o Term limit (duration)
 Capabilities of representative
o Power (over the ruled)
o Others have exercise of power (the representative knows when
to rule and when to be ruled.)
 2 identities
o Representative
o Member of the Community

End of Government

 Happiness vs. scarcity

o A man is never satisfied with a smaller degree if he can obtain a greater one.
 The Value of a Representative System
o Utilitarianism
o Representative Government is the best.
 Vice Versa
 UTILITARIANISM
Jeremy Bentham
4 Key Assumptions:

Utility – Synonymous to Pleasure

 Pleasure is Quantifiable
 Guiding principle of action of both individuals & Government.
o Maximize pleasure and Minimize Pain
 On individual (man)
o Self-interested
o Goal: to reach maximum pleasure
 He is only capable of judging his own interest.
 On right and wrong: greatest happiness of greatest number.
o Right: Produces happiness
o Wrong: Produces Reverse (Pain)

J.S Mill

 Pleasure has different qualities.

o Higher Pleasure – Pleasure that are seeked by beings with higher faculties.
 Not contented of what they have.
o Lower Pleasure – Short term pleasure.
 Food & Material things.
 It is a better human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.
o It’s okay to have dissatisfaction on higher types of pleasure than be satisfied of (mall
things).
 Experience both pleasure and pain (experienced individual)
 Pleasure = Happiness of other people.
 Virtuous Pleasure
o Sacrifice your own pleasure for others happiness.
 How to achiever?
 Law & Social arrangement
 Strengthen through education & Opinion
 Bible Verse: Do to others what you would want others to do to you *Kindly Check
 Type of Government: Aristocracy
o Leaders are expected to be experienced especially in both pleasure and pain.
 What makes life unsatisfactory?
o Self-interested
 o Want of mental cultivation.
 Desire to seek more knowledge.

JUSTICE

 Justice exists when there is happiness for the greatest number of people; thus, that is the justice
under utilitarianism.
 Good of all: aligning your own happiness with that of the community.