Le grand principe, le principe dominant auquel aboutissent tous les arguments exposes dans ces pages, est l'importance essentielle et absolue du developpement humain dans sa plus riche diversite. (Wilhelm von Humboldt: De la sphere et des devoirs du gouvernement.) Je dedie ce volume a la memoire cherie et pleuree de celle qui fut l'inspiratrice, et en partie l'auteur, de ce qu'il y a de mieux dans mes ouvrages: a la memoire de l'amie et de l'epouse, dont le sens exalte du vrai et du juste fut mon plus vif encouragement, et dont l'approbation fut ma principale recompense. Comme tout ce que...

Why Getting and Being Happy Are So Awesome and Important



John Stuart Mills book Utilitarianism is a classic exposition and defence of utilitarianism in ethics. The essay first appeared as a series of three articles published in Frasers Magazine in 1861; the articles were collected and reprinted as a single book in 1863. Mills aim in the book is to explain what utilitarianism is, to show why it is the best theory of ethics, and to defend it against a wide range of criticisms and misunderstandings.



Though heavily criticized both in Mills lifetime and in the years since, Utilitarianism did...

"It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify.
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates...

"Mill's On Liberty remains the strongest and most eloquent defense of liberalism that we have." - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy