"Utilitarianism" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mill John Stuart)

misapprehensions of utilitarian ethics, even those which are so
obvious and gross that it might appear impossible for any person of
candour and intelligence to fall into them; since persons, even of
considerable mental endowments, often give themselves so little
trouble to understand the bearings of any opinion against which they
entertain a prejudice, and men are in general so little conscious of
this voluntary ignorance as a defect, that the vulgarest
misunderstandings of ethical doctrines are continually met with in the
deliberate writings of persons of the greatest pretensions both to
high principle and to philosophy. We not uncommonly hear the
doctrine of utility inveighed against as a godless doctrine. If it
be necessary to say anything at all against so mere an assumption,
we may say that the question depends upon what idea we have formed
of the moral character of the Deity. If it be a true belief that God
desires, above all things, the happiness of his creatures, and that
this was his purpose in their creation, utility is not only not a
godless doctrine, but more profoundly religious than any other. If
it be meant that utilitarianism does not recognise the revealed will
of God as the supreme law of morals, I answer, that a utilitarian
who believes in the perfect goodness and wisdom of God, necessarily
believes that whatever God has thought fit to reveal on the subject of
morals, must fulfil the requirements of utility in a supreme degree.
But others besides utilitarians have been of opinion that the
Christian revelation was intended, and is fitted, to inform the hearts
and minds of mankind with a spirit which should enable them to find
for themselves what is right, and incline them to do it when found,
rather than to tell them, except in a very general way, what it is;
and that we need a doctrine of ethics, carefully followed out, to
interpret to us the will God. Whether this opinion is correct or
not, it is superfluous here to discuss; since whatever aid religion,
either natural or revealed, can afford to ethical investigation, is as
open to the utilitarian moralist as to any other. He can use it as the
testimony of God to the usefulness or hurtfulness of any given
course of action, by as good a right as others can use it for the
indication of a transcendental law, having no connection with
usefulness or with happiness.

Again, Utility is often summarily stigmatised as an immoral doctrine
by giving it the name of Expediency, and taking advantage of the
popular use of that term to contrast it with Principle. But the
Expedient, in the sense in which it is opposed to the Right, generally
means that which is expedient for the particular interest of the agent
himself; as when a minister sacrifices the interests of his country to
keep himself in place. When it means anything better than this, it
means that which is expedient for some immediate object, some
temporary purpose, but which violates a rule whose observance is
expedient in a much higher degree. The Expedient, in this sense,
instead of being the same thing with the useful, is a branch of the
hurtful. Thus, it would often be expedient, for the purpose of getting
over some momentary embarrassment, or attaining some object