La tension entre el principio de mayor felicidad y la libertad individual en el pensamiento de John Stuart Mill

Abstract

This Dissertation presents and analyses the concepts of greater happiness and individual liberty in John Stuart Mill’s Ethical Theory, critically evaluating the tension between them and between Utilitarianism and liberal rights. When greater happiness conflict with individual liberty, should a consistent utilitarian sacrifice liberty? Many think yes, and so, think utilitarianism and liberal rights would not be mutually supportive. Individual liberty within the larger context of utilitarianism and its hedonistic foundation, was analyzed before the principle of greatest happiness as the moral bases for liberal rights. We reviewed the elements of personal rights and their value as such for human wellbeing, analyzing a number of considerations for assessing the tension between utility and liberty in the thinking of John Stuart Mill. We present then a defense of the consistency between these two concepts and a defense of Mill Utilitarianism as liberal theory of individual rights taking Mill's theory of Justice. The field in which this research was conducted is Normative Ethics, and was based mainly on the two texts representative of the thought of John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism and On Liberty. The principle of Greater happiness is a rational basis for rights, and Mill defends that respecting individual liberty and liberal rights is what best serves our human flourishing.