Mill's utilitarianism and its view of Nature
Often the work of Mill (1874) is seen to be representative of utilitarian philosophy. Human beings were at the centre of the world, as was clearly reflected in Collingwood’s Hegel-inspired Idea of Nature, which held that ‘mind makes Nature; Nature is ... a by-product of the autonomous and selfexisting activity of mind’. (Collingwood, 1945, p. 7). Instrumentalism was evident in John Stuart Mill’s essay ‘Nature’ (Mill, 1874, pp. 4-69).2 For Collingwood and Mill, the maxim to ‘follow Nature’ sounded like a return to an animistic ethic. For Mill, the injunction to follow Nature is ambiguous since humanity had the capacity to master it. Mill argued:
Everybody professes to approve and admire many great triumphs of Art over Nature: the junction by bridges of shores which Nature had made separate, the draining of Nature’s marshes, the excavation of her wells, the dragging to light of what she has buried at immense depths in the earth; the turning away of thunderbolts by lightning rods, of her inundations by embankments, of her ocean by breakwaters. But to commend these and similar feats, is to acknowledge that the ways of Nature are to be conquered, not obeyed: that her powers are often towards men in the position of enemies, from whom he must wrest, by force and ingenuity, what little he can for his own use, and deserves to be applauded when that little is rather more than might be expected from his physical weakness in comparison to those gigantic powers.
(Mill, 1874, pp. 20-21)
According to the above argument, Nature was not only a barrier but actually humanity’s antagonist.3 To say the least, modern environmental theorists are more aware of the dangers of instrumentalism and anthropocentrism. Although modern environmental theorists are more aware of the dangers of instrumentalism and anthropocentrism, one can still find echoes of Mill’s views among modern ‘shallow green’ theorists who are sceptical of radical and deep-green ecology. It is easier to talk about the interests of non-humans; and the question of interests which is the stock intrade of utilitarians. Indeed, Peter Singer, one of the most famous exponents of animal liberation, uses utilitarian reasoning and so does Robert Goodin, prominent among philosophers who have studied environmental related issues (see also Cullitty, 2004; Dryzek, Goodin, Tucker, & Reber, 2009, pp. 263-288).
If Mill’s (1874) essay ‘Nature’ deprecated the notion of ‘following Nature’ and advocated humans dominating it, humans also possessed the ability to improve it. Robert Goodin agrees with the irrelevance of the maxim ‘follow Nature’, but he is less sanguine than Mill about the consequences (Mill, 1874, pp. 18-19). Seeing Nature’s intrinsic role, Goodin (1992) notes that value in Nature is created by processes which are larger than, and thereby necessarily beyond, humanity’s comprehension. Human intervention may detract from Nature’s value with the effect that an object loses ‘that value-imparting property once it has been restored, replicated or recreated through human interventions’ (Mill, 1874, pp. 18-19). It is no longer authentic.
