PART II: KANT vs MILL
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) first developed the philosophy called Utilitarianism. His position was hedonistic in that pleasure is regarded as the good, but he moves away from egoistic hedonism and the stress on our achieving pleasure (we are governed by the pleasure-pain principle) to a social kind of hedonism in which we are also to consider the pleasures of others. The principle of utility entails "the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people." And each person, with the help of Bentham's hedonic calculus, can quantitatively calculate which goods to choose. Philosophers were quick to point out the difficulty of any kind of quantitative analysis of pleasurable experiences. John Stuart Mill, Bentham's follower, felt the need to revise certain aspects of the position: in particular, because Utilitarianism was referred to as a "pig-philosophy" and that pleasure was viewed as purely quantitative. No doubt this led Mill to make perhaps the most often quoted statement from his work, Utilitarianism: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."