ABSTRACT
The final chapter examines Mill’s perception of the role played by the ‘moral sense’ in ethical evaluation and its relation to the ‘happiness’ criterion of utilitarian ethics, taking us full circle back to the primary issues discussed earlier in this book. Mill is shown to engage in a reconciliation of utilitarianism with the moral sense by adopting the notion that conscience prioritizes other-regarding sentiment such that the dictates of conscience relate specifically to the intended consequences of actions for the ‘greatest happiness’ rather than any other end. In this manner Mill was unwittingly adopting the stance of Hutcheson, a linkage which is not surprising if the proximity of Bentham to Hutcheson is accepted. For Mill came finally to appreciate that Bentham himself had diluted the ‘ratiocinative’ dimension to his system and contributed meaningfully to utilitarian ethics pertaining to the individual. The evidence I bring here and in earlier chapters points away from the view that any history of the social sciences must confront the discontinuity marked by the transition from Scottish moral philosophy to Benthamism.
