Philosopher Profiles

One of John Stuart Mill's more famous theories is that pleasure alone is intrinsically good and pain by itself is intrinsically bad (clearly he had never met Foucault). He also held that there are different degrees of pleasure: there were the lower pleasures, such as eating chocolate; then the higher pleasures, such as listening to music; and finally the highest of all pleasures (which he called the über-pleasure): having your toes licked by a small puppy.

Mill's other famous theory was that society should only interfere with an individual's liberty for self-protection (this is, of course, the chosen system of governance for The People's Republic of China). Mill would often go round pulling faces, swearing at people, and defecating in public; and then, when he was asked to stop, loudly moan “Hey man, stop infringing on my liberty.”

Mill was also a Member of Parliament and an advocate of womens suffrage. Many see him as forward-thinking in this respect; however one contemporary account claims that Mill was once overheard saying: “Suffrage? Yeah, I just use that one to pull the birds mate.”

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