Philosopher Speak: A Stylistic Review of John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism

 By Draza Kolpack

When first reading Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill you might find yourself going back to read paragraphs multiple times in an attempt to grasp what the man is trying to argue or define, much like I did. It is hard to contextualize how this piece became so wildly popular in 1861 London, where only two thirds of men and half of women were literate at all, when we ourselves are trying to understand the content and implications of his lengthy sentences and use of evidently educated diction. I would argue that his jargonistic writing and flowery academic language was used simply because that style was expected in philosophical circles, but the issue of Utilitarianism being published in a popular London magazine calls to question if that was Mill’s true intended audience. With this in mind, it is my belief that this work was published for three reasons: to clear up misconceptions and provide counterclaims to other philosophers in the field, persuade the educated elite that had opportunities to incite change within the government and support new policies reflecting Mill’s views, and to garner support from the greater public following the principle of ‘I don’t understand this but I trust it’ by playing to his credibility through the use of the official style. However, this is not the only context in which this piece is viewed or understood; because modern philosophers and academics are taught Mill’s works alongside various other historical philosophers, we must also take into account this modern context.

To truly contextualize the contexts at play, however, I feel that it is best to have a greater understanding of the official style of writing this piece employs. The official style, often found in academic and bureaucratic writing, is characterized by the use of passive or impersonal voice, complex sentences, slow sentence openings, shapeless or ‘unspeakable’ form, excessive use of jargon, a bureaucratic tone, and higher levels of abstraction alongside a number of other nuances. Mill’s makes use of a number of these tools when writing Utilitarianism; I will exemplify these strategies and illustrate the implications of such stylistic choices by providing passages from the text. Furthermore, I will provide readability statistics that may grant a better frame of reference for the difficulty of the text.

Passage One:

“A PASSING remark is all that needs be given to the ignorant blunder of supposing that those who stand up for utility as the test of right and wrong, use the term in that restricted and merely colloquial sense in which utility is opposed to pleasure. An apology is due to the philosophical opponents of utilitarianism, for even the momentary appearance of confounding them with any one capable of so absurd a misconception; which is the more extraordinary, inasmuch as the contrary accusation, of referring everything to pleasure, and that too in its grossest form, is another of the common charges against utilitarianism: and, as has been pointedly remarked by an able writer, the same sort of persons, and often the very same persons, denounce the theory "as impracticably dry when the word utility precedes the word pleasure, and as too practicably voluptuous when the word pleasure precedes the word utility."”

This excerpt provides a great example of how the author tends to utilize slow sentence openings, essentially employing a long windup into an even longer and more complex sentence. These drawn-out sentence openings and the subsequent complex sentences utilized by Mill may just reflect the writing style expected of philosophy and academia in his time period, but these strategies serve to exclude the average reader; not only the diction but the addition of multiple concepts per sentence lends itself to unnecessarily complicated text that is not easily understood by those not in academic circles.

Passage Two:

“Utilitarianism, therefore, could only attain its end by the general cultivation of nobleness of character, even if each individual were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his own, so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction from the benefit. But the bare enunciation of such an absurdity as this last, renders refutation superfluous.”

There are countless examples of shapeless/unspeakable writing in this piece, of which the passage above is one. While this writing style was and continues to be common with philosophical works it still calls to question how the meaning on this work is understood by different audiences and what information is lost in translation.

Readability Statistics: (Pulled from a longer segment of passage two as listed above)

(Gunning Fog Index: estimated grade level required to understand text / Flesch Reading Ease: scale from 1-100, 1 being most difficult to read and 100 being the easiest)

Now that the groundwork has been set, we must discuss the significance of the strategies within the contexts, and the spheres of human activity, in which Utilitarianism is found. The first that I would like to focus on is the original context; Utilitarianism was a piece published in three issues by Fraser’s Magazine in 1861 aiming 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. The primary audience for this piece must have been other philosophers, Jeremy Bentham (another utilitarian philosopher) in particular, in order to provide criticisms to Bentham’s ideas and detail the “misconceptions” surrounding Utilitarianism. Mill’s use of the official style suits the purely academic nature of this piece well, but because this work was published in a public London magazine the audience, and consequently the implications of Mill’s style of choice, grew at an incredible scale. While it seems clear that this work was not meant for the eyes of the generally illiterate public, instead with the focus of countering Bentham’s ideas and persuading the educated elite that had the power or opportunity to incite change within the government regarding support for new policies reflecting Mill’s views, Utilitarianism became largely prolific with the masses as an articulation of liberal humanistic morality. The easiest implication of this to pinpoint, and a trend that I feel parallels but is not as prevalent in modern contexts of this piece, is that the use of the official style can effectively gatekeep information from a massive majority of the readership. While it is true that the arguments of Jeremy Bentham and other utilitarian philosophers may have been adequately countered and that the political elite may have been swayed by this presentation of ‘proper’ ethics, the public also played a massive role in this context; the recently formed republic in Britain at this time was meant to represent the will of its constituents (the public) through its policy. From a perspective outside of academia, a perspective shared by nearly all of the general public at this time, writing in this style would likely portray the author as intelligent and credible even though the content would be difficult for them to consume- support for these ethics based on the rule of ‘I don’t understand this but I trust it’ had a very real impact. As a double-edged sword of sorts, half rebuttal half persuasive argument, Utilitarianism accomplishes each goal through the establishment of perceived credibility to its numerous audiences.

Now we must discuss Utilitarianism’s modern context; in that scholars and philosophers have not stopped studying the work of John Stuart Mill even to this day. The sphere of human interaction in which this piece is consumed has changed to a degree, though the implications largely stay the same. The main difference lies in the fact that Mill’s work is not presented outside of an academic setting today, and beyond that, the persuasive element of this piece is not nearly as applicable in a modern setting (in that there are no century old British elites and citizens to sway). Once again, we face the fact that the official style gatekeeps information from those outside of academic circles, but I find that it has a very diluted impact; while the average reader would certainly have difficulty reading this piece, they also have very little opportunity to make the attempt. The gatekeeping element created by the use of the official style is of course still present but academic institutions are now becoming the focal point for this issue- this in of itself has implications. Because of the close ties between academic writing and the official style, Mill’s proposal for a whole branch of governing ethics goes largely unseen by the public; the constituency that had so much pull as support for this work grew in 1861 Britain is not reflected by members of the public in this modern model. One may argue that no one wants to read the work of an age-old philosopher regardless, but I find it important to recognize the official style and the strategies it utilizes to contextualize the true goal of an authors work and the implications that has on the applicable audiences.