The happy fool
On the axis: The value of truth · a life
Is a lucid life better, even if troubled by what it discovers, than a happy life in ignorance? Is truth a component of living well, or an instrument worth only what it brings?
Justification
The refusal to exchange the higher faculties for an easier contentment suggests that human happiness includes a demand for dignity and development, even at the price of discontent; the preference for lucidity follows from this more than it is asserted in it.
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.Utilitarianism, ch. 2
Utilitarianism, ch. 2 (1861)
Justification
Against the old objection that brands a doctrine fit for swine, Mill replies that it errs not about pleasure but about man: our higher faculties demand a happiness of another kind. Hence his break with 's purely quantitative calculus: pleasures differ in quality as well, and those of the intellect, the feelings and the imagination intrinsically prevail, because whoever knows both would not consent for anything to sink to the lower. At the heart of the argument lies a sense of dignity that an existence confined to bodily satisfactions would wound, which tilts Mill's hedonism toward a flourishing close to .
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.Utilitarianism, ch. 2
Utilitarianism, ch. 2 (quality versus quantity of pleasures) · Utilitarianism, ch. 4 (happiness, the only thing desirable as an end)
Anchors: Voltaire · Mill
leads to: The highest good (The happy fool)