Happiness does not make you moral

John Stuart Mill makes many great points about the idea of happiness in “Utilitarianism”. He states that “happiness is a most material and even pre-dominant consideration in many details of morals, however unwilling to acknowledge it as the fundamental principle of morality, and the source of moral obligation (7).” I completely agree with Mill’s point. I think that happiness motivates us to live our lives. Some may consider this a selfish act; however I do not think there would be a point to living without fulfilling this self-happiness. In order to be able to fulfill all the things you desire in life, you must be alive to do so. I believe a dominant factor of keeping ourselves alive is due to happiness. For example, depression is a mental state of unhappiness which in many cases leads to ending one’s life.

Mill also says “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness (10).” As I mentioned earlier, I think as a human being we base our morals and obligations based on the amount of happiness it will bring us. However, I do not think that this implies that our morals will be “good”. For example, a serial killer could gain pleasure and happiness in murdering people, embedding those ideas into his morals. Whereas someone could gain happiness by volunteering and promoting peace and embed those ideals into their morals. I think that there are multiple factors which influence morals, but also what gives someone pleasure.