Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism

"The creed which accepts as the foundation of moral Ð''utility' or the Ð''greatest happiness principle' holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness (Sterba 226)." This is the basic foundation for John Stewart Mill's "the greatest happiness principle." This utilitarian principle is one that is prevalent in both Mill's The Subjection of Women and Harriet Taylor's The Enfranchisement of Women. Both philosophers had argued that we give full political and workplace rights to women and not just men. In The Subjection of Women Mill argued that woman should never be treated as lesser. He feels that this sort of subjection was wronging imposed upon women due to the fact that they were physically weaker than men and that later this subjection was confirmed by law (Sterba 220). Mill supported the notion that programs needed to be orchestrated in such as way that women were to be brought to the standard of men and treated as equals. However, he does not vouch for the importance of women being compensated for their "womanly duties," as Taylor does. She argues that "there is no inherent reason or necessity that all woman should voluntarily choose to devote their lives to one animal function and it's consequences." (Sterba 251). She blatantly points out that women become mothers due to a lack of choice presented to them and goes on to emphasize the role of the mother as being important and therefore should not only be compensated as such, but should also be made presented as a choice.

The utilitarian concepts as similar in the fact that both Mill and Taylor place great emphasis on self-determination (which they referred to as "self-dependence"). Self-determination is not necessarily essential to happiness, but any rational person would say that it is rarely found without it. The roots of self-determination can be described as being the ability to make one's own choices and as the well-known feminist Susan B. Anthony argued, to suffer the consequences. Also consider the remarks made by another famous female in history; Virginia Woolf has been quoted for saying that in order to write fiction, a woman needed a room of one's own and an independent income. In stating such is unfairly narrowed the scope