What John Stuart Mill Knew About Happiness

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Are you a liberal? I mean it not in the modern political left-right sense but under the post-Enlightenment philosophical definition of standing for the rights of individuals, consent of the governed, political equality, private-property rights, and equality before the law. If you are this kind of liberal, you have been influenced by the 19th-century English philosopher John Stuart Mill, who was principally responsible for elucidating the ideas of classical liberalism. Arguably, Mill remains the most influential thinker about the relationship between citizens and government in a democratic society.

Mill’s philosophical journey did not begin with these questions about politics and citizenship. It started when he was 20 with what he called a “mental crisis” about happiness. As he tells it in his autobiography, he discovered then a fundamental truth about finding satisfaction in life that most people never learn.

“Suppose that all your objects in life were realized,” he asked himself. “Would this be a great joy and happiness to you?” His honest answer was no, leaving him with the apprehension that if he lived the way most people did—chasing worldly ambitions—he would never find satisfaction.

Mill’s crisis sent him on a lifelong search for the true sources of happiness. The philosophy he developed over the next 46 years until his death gave him a guide to living. And it might just help you find what you’re seeking too.

[From the November 1900 issue: In praise of the eighteenth century]

Mill’s philosophy of happiness starts with his formula for a good society: “The general principle to which all rules of practice ought to conform, and the test by which they should be tried, is that of conduciveness to the happiness of mankind.” In other words, the good society is one in which all people are as happy as possible. Before you say, “Well, duh,” note that this was—and is—quite radical. To some, pursuing happiness has always sounded self-indulgent or even sinful. Further, in today’s hyper-partisan political climate especially, a commonly held, usually implicit goal is for unhappiness to be visited on the millions of people considered bad for their wrong opinions.

Mill proves the validity of his formula in three steps. First, he notes that trying to be happier is a reasonable objective for every person. Second, he argues that if your happiness is good for you and my happiness is good for me, then the general well-being is the sum of all of our “happinesses.” Third, he reasons that maximizing this aggregate happiness should determine how we make public decisions and judge our actions.

You are probably thinking exactly what many did in Mill’s own time: that this notion doesn’t make sense, because my happiness might be at odds with yours. For example, if I grab the reins of government power and tax your earned income to give to my friends, your unhappiness results from my happiness, so this summation of bliss does not compute.

[Brenda Wineapple: The monumental discovery that changed how humans see themselves]

Mill would disagree. To begin with, if you have proper morals, your happiness should not depend on harming another person. More generally, if we are talking about the good of society, and not your good alone, we are trying to find the path that permits the highest-possible total happiness. You should want to be happier individually, but you should also care about others’ happiness and act in a public-spirited way that, for the good of the whole, minimizes any individual harm.

Of course, Mill had to define happiness and tell us how to realize it. And this made him sound like a proto-hippie. “By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain,” he wrote. “By unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.” He gets even groovier: “All desirable things,” he says, “are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.” You do you! No judgment!

On its face, this argument is consistent with the utilitarian philosophy of Mill’s friend Jeremy Bentham, who famously wrote: “Quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry.” (Push-pin was an English child’s game in the 19th century.) But in his thinking, Mill can’t help but add to Benthamite pragmatism with a loud stage whisper: “Choose poetry!”

Mill discriminates among pleasures as being higher or lower in quality (and thus in their effectiveness to deliver happiness). The higher pleasures he classifies as those “of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments,” as opposed to those that give in to animal desires or fritter away our time. Maximum happiness, then, comes not just from finding any sort of pleasure, but from refining what brings you pleasure through study, thought, and contemplation. It is even, he said, “better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

Mill’s characterization of such higher pleasures lead to his third argument about happiness: that it requires “a decided predominance of the active over the passive.” What he means by this is that to refine your pleasure necessitates effort and a serious investment in self-improvement. Push-pin is easy; poetry is hard. But poetry rewards the effort with deeper, longer-lasting satisfaction.

[From the November 1865 issue: Jeremy Bentham]

Mill’s philosophy of happiness suggests four very sound rules that you can adopt in your own life.

1. Desire to be happy.
To want to be happier is an entirely legitimate, natural, healthy, and worthwhile goal. Don’t feel guilty or selfish for seeking higher life satisfaction and greater well-being.

2. Bring happiness to others.
You are not an island, as the English poet John Donne observed, and working for your own happiness should be part of a bigger project to build a better world. That means thinking about the well-being of others. So you should engage in acts of charity and kindness, and fight the zero-sum mentality that regards someone else’s happiness as being at the expense of your own. Especially in these times, you should resist the corrosive schadenfreude of taking pleasure in the misery of others.

3. Elevate your pleasures.
Choose enjoyment over base pleasures by uplifting your interests and improving your character. One way to do this is by identifying how you tend to fritter away time on mind-numbing trivialities and thinking about how this behavior makes you feel about yourself. Before sitting down for an hour of scrolling through social media, consider the feeling of emptiness this will most likely evoke. Keep around the house a stack of books that you want to dip into instead. And in accordance with rule No. 2, don’t push trivialities on others.

4. Do the work.
Remember that happiness is an active pursuit, not a passive one. Don’t wait around for circumstances to change for your well-being. And don’t make yourself dependent on others to pursue a higher pleasure. Make a plan to improve your life—and get started.

[Franklin Foer: Why liberalism disappoints]

Mill’s life offers us one more rule. As great a liberal as he was, you might have found his philosophical prescriptions a bit dry: Happiness can seem too impersonal, even theoretical, in his writings. Behind the scenes, though, Mill’s experience of happiness and unhappiness was all heart, rich in passionate engagement. He spent a good deal of his adult life in love with a woman, Harriet Taylor, who was already married—an obstacle that was a source of deep and lasting frustration for him. But when at last Harriet was widowed, and she was free to remarry, the couple was wed—and that brought Mill his deepest satisfaction: “My wife and I are one,” he wrote, invoking the Bible.

Only seven years later, however, she herself died, possibly of tuberculosis, or “consumption” as it was then known, at the age of 49. On Harriet’s grave, Mill had inscribed the ultimate truth he’d learned from his life: “She was the sole earthly delight of those who had the happiness to belong to her,” his tribute ran. “Were there but a few hearts and intellects like hers this earth would already become the hoped-for heaven.”

This was Mill’s one rule to rule them all: Happiness is love.