Everybody has their own ideas of what is right and wrong how a person should live. For some, the way to live your life and live a good life is to live totally for yourself, to do everything solely on the basis that what you do is good for you and the only person that matters in yourself. This not the right moral way to live according to John Stuart Mill. Mill believes that the proper moral ethics is Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is based largely on what is known universally as the golden rule, that is do unto others as you would have them do to you, love your neighbor as yourself. Mill believes that rightness or wrongness of an act depends on its consequences and that there are both qualitative and quantitative pleasures. Utilitarianism's other main belief is in the Greatest Happiness Principle, which is defined by Mill as "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness", he goes on to explain "By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure". Like a true philosopher, Mill realized there would be objections to his ideas and often answered these objections by pointing out what was wrong with the objection or simply brushed them off as nonsense. Mill's belief in the greatest good for the greatest number comes off as a very good idea because it takes into account the happiness of all people, not just the individual. I think that in theory utilitarianism is a good, but it also has its shortcomings. Seeing as how people have different views of what is good and what would be the best for the greatest number, utilitarianism is not a perfect moral ethics and when followed by the wrong people it can lead to disastrous consequences. It also does not take into account a person's individual rights. .
Mill's "principle of utility" seeks for the logical rationality of ethics through the consequences of actions as the consideration determining their morality, thus the acquisition of happiness as opposed to the avoidance of pain.
