Utilitarianism (book)
Chapter 2

In response to the charge that utilitarianism is a doctrine fit only for swine, Mill abandons Bentham's apparent view that pleasures differ only in quantity, not quality. He notes that most people who have experienced both physical and intellectual pleasures tend to greatly prefer the latter. Few people, he claims, would choose to trade places with an animal, a fool, or an ignoramus for any amount of bodily pleasure they might thereby acquire. And since "the sole evidence it is possible to produce that something is desirable, is that people do actually desire it," it follows that intellectual pleasures (e.g., the pleasures of friendship, art, reading, and conversation) are higher and more desirable kinds of pleasures than bodily pleasures, and that a rational pursuit of one's long-term happiness requires development of one's higher faculties.
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