ABSTRACT
Supposing that liberal utilitarianism (or, equivalently, utilitarian liberalism) is incoherent, many liberal philosophers have turned to some non-utilitarian form of reasoning to give suitable moral importance to individual rights in relation to competing considerations. Rawls (1971, 1993), for example, in his influential theory of justice, employs an ideal contractarian form of reasoning to give absolute priority to a first principle of equal basic rights over a second two-part principle. He imagines that Mill’s doctrine is really a close cousin to his own contract theory, to wit, a ‘mixed conception’ of justice, in which a liberal principle of equal basic rights is given absolute priority over the utility principle itself (1971, pp. 42-3, n. 23, 122-6, 315-16). That Rawlsian view, elaborated by Hart (1982), is perhaps the dominant reading of Mill’s liberalism today.
