Açıklama
The ultimate end of human action and the fundamental criterion of morality, understood as a state of pleasure and the absence of pain. Mill begins from the empirical observation that human beings in fact desire happiness and concludes that happiness is the “only ultimate good”; all other goods are valuable only insofar as they contribute to it. His conception of happiness encompasses not only sensory pleasures but also higher intellectual and moral pleasures, whose qualitative superiority makes them more valuable. Thus, happiness becomes the central concept both of individual ethical life and of utilitarian political theory.