Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Mill on Pleasure and Virtue

Book chapter

Crisp, Roger. (2019). Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Mill on Pleasure and Virtue. In In Varouxakis, Georgios and Philp, Mark (Ed.). Happiness and Utility : Essays Presented to Frederick Rosen pp. 98 - 117 University College London (UCL) Press.
AuthorsCrisp, Roger
EditorsVarouxakis, Georgios and Philp, Mark
Abstract

John Stuart Mill’s hedonism – in particular, his arguments for a qualitative distinction between pleasures and for virtue as a constituent of happiness understood hedonistically – has been subjected to a huge amount of scrutiny, especially since the publication of the monumental Toronto edition of his works under the general editorship of John Robson. I have already contributed a few pebbles to this mountain of scholarly exegesis, and do not intend to add to it in this paper. Rather, I propose to focus on two British moral philosophers whose works in the eighteenth century could be described as broadly hedonist and who, like Mill, engaged closely with the questions of the relation of virtue and pleasure, and the roles of each in human happiness or well-being. Especially significant, perhaps, is the fact that both distinguished between higher and lower pleasures, placed virtue in the former category, and saw it as an important constituent of happiness.

Keywordsutilitarianism; Professor Frederick Rosen; happiness; virtue ; hedonism ; John Stuart Mill; Shaftsbury; Hutcheson
Page range98 - 117
Year01 Jan 2019
Book titleHappiness and Utility : Essays Presented to Frederick Rosen
PublisherUniversity College London (UCL) Press
Place of publicationUnited Kingdom
Edition1
ISBN978-1-78735-048-9
Web address (URL)https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvf3w1s5
Open accessOpen access
Research or scholarlyResearch
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Output statusPublished
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Online2019
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Deposited08 Aug 2024
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Text © the authors, 2019
Collection © Georgios Varouxakis and Mark Philp

This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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