Episode Details

If the consequences are good enough, Mill forces us to confront a disturbing possibility: sometimes breaking the rules may be the moral thing to do.

Topics Discussed

• American abolitionism and the competing religious and philosophical traditions that shaped it
• Frederick Douglass on recognition, racism, freedom, self-creation, and human flourishing
• The influence of the Radical Enlightenment, German Idealism, naturalism, socialism, and the revolutions of 1848 on American abolitionist thought
• John Stuart Mill’s development of utilitarianism beyond Bentham’s simpler pleasure-based model
• Moral naturalism and Mill’s attempt to ground morality in human nature, psychology, social life, and naturally sought ends
• Ethical hedonism, intrinsic and extrinsic goods, and Mill’s richer conception of happiness
• Mill’s rejection of psychological hedonism and psychological egoism
• Consequentialism, sentience, and the scope of moral consideration
• The Principle of Utility as an ultimate moral standard
• Mill’s use of subordinate rules and his distrust of everyday utility calculations
• Challenges to utilitarianism, including the Near and Dear Argument, Nozick’s Experience Machine, and the Organ Harvest case
• Civil War-era cases involving Abraham Lincoln, John Brown, and William Tecumseh Sherman as tests of consequentialist reasoning