The Good and the Right

A sure route to philosophic immortality is to produce a work both too important to ignore and too enigmatic to understand. Whether J.S. Mill consciously elected this strategy or not, his Utilitarianism is destined to enjoy a very long life indeed. Utilitarian theories still define one of our principal options in moral philosophy and Mill remains a major figure in the utilitarian tradition. Although the principle of utility was the centrepiece of Mill's normative system of ethics and politics, he devoted only this slender volume to the nature and implications of that principle. And we are still not sure Just what he said.