There are few circumstances among those which make up the present condition of human knowledge, more unlike what might have been expected, or more significant of the backward state in which speculation on the most important subjects still lingers, than the little progress which has been made in the decision of the controversy respecting the criterion of right and wrong. From the dawn of philosophy, the question concerning the summum bonum, or, what is the same thing, concerning the foundation of morality, has been accounted the main problem in speculative thought, has occupied the most gifted...

Utilitarianism is a classic exposition and defense of utilitarianism in ethics. Written by political economist and civil servant John Stuart Mill, the essay first appeared as a series of three articles published in Fraser's Magazine in 1861; the articles were collected and reprinted as a single book in 1863. The essay provides support for the value of utilitarianism as a moral theory and defends it against a wide range of criticisms and misunderstandings. Though heavily criticized both in Mill's lifetime and in the years since, Utilitarianism has been credited with...

For just over fifty years John Stuart Mill contributed articles and letters to the newspapers, setting before the public a radical position on contemporary events. From 1822 to 1873, in newspapers as widely read as The Times and the Morning Chronicle, and as narrowly circulated as the True Sun and the New Times, he praised his friends and damned his opponents, while commenting on a while range of issues at home and abroad, from banking to Ireland, from wife-beating to land nationalization.

His main series of newspaper writings concerned France...