D17

Day 17翻译段落

【翻译划线部分】

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Higher pleasures

Mill’s response to

the second objection to utilitarianism—that it reduces all values to a single

scale— also turns out to lean on moral ideals independent of utility. In

Utilitarianism (1861), a long essay Mill wrote shortly after On Liberty, he

tries to show that utilitarians can distinguish higher pleasures from lower

ones. For Bentham, pleasure is pleasure and pain is pain. The only basis for

judging one experience better or worse than another is the intensity and

duration of the pleasure or pain it produces. The so-called higher pleasures or

nobler virtues are simply those that produce stronger, longer pleasure. Bentham

recognizes no qualitative distinction among pleasures. “The quantity of

pleasure being equal,” he writes, “push-pin is as good as poetry.”(Push-pin was achildren’s game.)

Part of the appeal ofBentham’s utilitarianism is this nonjudgmental spirit. It takes people’spreferences as they are, without passing judgment on their moral worth. Allpreferences count equally. Bentham thinks it is presumptuous to judge somepleasures as inherently better than others. Some people like Mozart, othersMadonna. Some like ballet, others like bowling. Some read Plato, others

Penthouse. Who is tosay, Bentham might ask, which pleasures are higher, or worthier, or nobler thanothers?

Therefusal to distinguish higher from lower pleasures is connected to Bentham’sbelief that all values can be measured and compared on a single scale. Ifexperiences differ only in the quantity of pleasure or pain they produce, notqualitatively, then it makes sense to weigh them on a single scale. But someobject to utilitarianism on precisely this point: they believe that somepleasures really are “higher” than others. If some pleasures are worthy andothers base, they say, why should society weigh all preferences equally, muchless regard the sum of such preferences as the greatest good? Think again aboutthe Romans throwing Christians to the lions in the Coliseum. One objection tothe bloody spectacle is that it violates the rights of the victims. But afurther objection is that it caters to perverse pleasures rather than nobleones. Wouldn’t it be better to change those preferences than to satisfy them?