January 3, 2009

mill on the ability to be happy

Whoever supposes that this preference take place at a sacrifice of happiness - that the superior being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior - confounds the two very different ideas of happiness and content. It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect.
-john stuart mill's utilitarianism 1861

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