The Higher and Lower Pleasures in Mill's Utilitarianism1
In Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill outlines his belief that, contrary to Benthem's utilitarianism, there are actually variations not just in the quantity of pleasure an action produces, but also in the pleasure's quality. Mill finds two distinct pleasures: that of the "fool satisfied" (hereinafter referred to as "beast," "fool satisfied," or "lesser being") and that of the intelligent, instructed, person of feeling and conscience (hereinafter referred to as "human beings" or "Socrates dissatisfied") (9). The latter of the two is able to expand his mind and achieve the highest quality of pleasure, though he must also experience pain; the fool satisfied is of a lower grade of existence, his "capacities of enjoyment are low" (10) and thus has a much greater chance to become fully satisfied, but is unable to experience higher pleasure. Mill's addition to the utilitarian school of thought amounts to a modification of utilitarian writers who, Mill says, already "have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures" (8). Though Mill's distinction between the pleasure of humans and the pleasure of satisfied fools appears well-founded, the confinements and restrictions that such a distinction imposes on the beasts undermine his argument. Essentially, the satisfied fools lack both freedom and choice and, therefore, cannot achieve pleasure in a utilitarian world which, incidentally, would make living life as one of them unequivocally worse than as an intellectual, free, instructed human.
Mill states that, if all pleasures are equal and the only difference is in their quantities (basic utilitarianism), human beings and "swine" (8) would receive gratification from the same sources of pleasu ...