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The Utility of Religious Illusion: A Critique of J.S. Mill's Religion of Humanity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Lou Matz
Lou Matz
Affiliation:
University of the Pacific, [email protected]
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Abstract

In ‘Utility of Religion’, Mill argues that a wholly naturalistic religion of humanity would promote individual and social welfare better than supernatural religions like Christianity; in ‘Theism’, however, Mill defends the salutary effects of hope in an afterlife. While commentators have acknowledged this discrepancy, they have not examined the utilitarian value of what Mill terms ‘illusions’. In this essay, I explain Mill's case against the utility of supernatural religious belief and then argue that Mill cannot dismiss the utility of hope in an ultimate justice since it need not pervert the intellect or morality. There are thus utilitarian grounds to support some supernatural illusions, which undermines Mill's defence of an exclusively naturalistic religion. I conclude with the suggestion that while the utility of religious belief leads Mill toward William James's view, they disagree about whether supernatural religious sentiment has any unique, intrinsic force.

Type
Articles
Information
Utilitas , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , July 2000 , pp. 137 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

1 ‘Utility of Religion’, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1969–1984, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (CW), x. 403–28Google Scholar. Unattributed references in the text below are to this essay.

2 In his Autobiography, Mill says that Bentham's Analysis ‘contributed materially to my development’ and that it supplies ‘much good material for a more completely philosophic and conclusive treatment of the subject’ (Autobiography, CW, i. 73). On the circumstances of authorship and particular arguments of Bentham's Analysis, see Crimmins, James, Secular Utilitarianism: Social Science and the Critique of Religion in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham, New York, 1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 7.

3 In his review of Mill's essay, John Morley correctly observes that this phrase is ambiguous (Morley, John, ‘Mr. Mill's Three Essays on Religion’, The Fortnightly Review, xvii (1875), 112 f)Google Scholar. For whom is religion intellectually unsustainable? For philosophers but not believers? For believers? For both? Mill actually mentions unbelievers, semi-believers, and believers. See ‘Utility of Religion’, CW, x. 402.

4 The term is Auguste Comte's. Mill was critical of Comte's version of a religion of humanity but acknowledged that Comte's most important contribution was to put ‘an end to the notion that no effectual moral authority can be maintained over society without the aid of religious belief’ (Autobiography, CW, i. 221).

5 Commentators have rightly pointed out that Mill's defence of a limited theism in ‘Theism’ is inconsistent with his rejection of theism in his earlier essays ‘Nature’ and ‘Utility of Religion’. See John Morley, 113 f.; Rauch, Leo, ‘Mill's Secular Religion’, The Journal of Critical Analysis: The Official Journal of the National Council of Teachers for Critical Analysis, iii (1972), 178CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and McCloskey, H. J., John Stuart Mill: A Critical Study, London, 1971, p. 161CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Alan Millar observes that Mill's ‘remarks on hope come as a surprise. They do not follow from what has come before. Imaginative vision does not require, and need not pave the way for, speculative hope’ (Millar, Alan, ‘Mill on Religion’, The Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. Skorupski, John, Cambridge, 1998, p. 199)Google Scholar.

6 Diary, CW, xxvii. 642.

7 Mill clearly reduces the essence of religion to ideals of morality and personal excellence, and so the merits of his defence of a religion of humanity depend on the plausibility of his assumptions about the essence of religion. Whether the vital elements of religious feeling and longing can be so reduced is indeed open to doubt. While this is an important question, it is peripheral to my concern in this paper, which is to examine the internal consistency of Mill's arguments.

8 For a collection of the writings of religious utilitarians, see Utilitarians and Religion, ed. Crimmins, J., Bristol, 1998Google Scholar, pt. 1. On the tradition of theological utilitarianism, see Crimmins, , Secular Utilitarianism, pp. 67–98Google Scholar.

9 In ch. 1 of On Liberty, Mill observes that the great problem of democracy — the tyranny of the majority — is most oppressive in its social, not political or legal, form since ‘it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself’ (On Liberty, CW, xviii. 220)Google Scholar.

10 See ‘Utility of Religion’, CW, x. 416 and On Liberty, CW, xviii. 255. Mill says that Jesus must be placed in the ‘first rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast’, that he was ‘probably the greatest moral reformer, and martyr to that mission, who ever existed upon earth’, and that it would be difficult, ‘even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve our life’ (‘Theism, ’, CW, x. 488)Google Scholar.

11 On the relationship between reason and revelation, see Utilitarianism, CW, x, ch. 2.

12 Kant, Immanuel, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Greene, T. and Hudson, H., New York, 1960, p. 79Google Scholar and Feuerbach, Ludwig, The Essence of Christianity, trans. Eliot, George, Buffalo, 1989, p. 202Google Scholar, respectively.

13 See On Liberty, CW, xviii. 254–6.

14 Dewey, John, A Common Faith, New Haven, 1934, p. 27Google Scholar.

15 Auguste Comte and Positivism, CW, x. 333 f.

16 Diary, CW, xxvii. 646 (24 January).

17 A central aim of utilitarian moral education is to strengthen the ‘powerful natural sentiment.… to be in unity with our fellow creatures’ (Utilitarianism, CW, x. 231). In his famous final chapter in The Essence of Christianity, entitled ‘The Contradiction of Faith and Love’, Feuerbach argues that Christian faith cannot really embrace all of humanity since it is ultimately conditional and partisan. If God is something other than the love of humanity, then believers' ultimate allegiance will be to their particular god and not to love.

18 On Liberty, CW, xviii. 255.

19 See ‘Nature’, CW, x. 388–91 and ‘Theism’, CW, x. 482.

20 This is the conclusion of Mill's essay ‘Nature’, which echoes Philo's view in David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion that of the four possible hypotheses concerning first causes of the universe, the most probable is that the cause is neither good nor bad. See Hume, David, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 2nd edn., Indianapolis, 1998, p. 75Google Scholar.

21 Diary, CW, xxvii. 662.

22 See Philip Kitcher's discussion of Huxley's Credo in his 1998 Presidential Address to the Pacific Division of the APA, entitled ‘Truth or Consequences?’, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, lxxii (1998)Google Scholar. Kitcher explores the merits of Huxley's Credo by pitting what he calls the ‘Gnostics’ (those who accept Huxley's view) against the ‘Romantics’ (those who reject it). Not surprisingly, he argues that the issue ends in a stalemate but that while ‘Huxley's Credo may not admit convincing justification, we may find ourselves able to live with it’ (61).

23 Roger Hancock's claim that Mill ultimately was not prepared to embrace a religion of humanity — and not merely Comte's particular conception of it — since it involved a total commitment is based on his mistaken assumption that individuality and the collective worship of humanity are in irreconcilable tension (Hancock, Roger, ‘A Note on J. S. Mill and the Religion of Humanity’, Mill News Letter, Winter 1983, 13)Google Scholar.

24 John Morley acknowledges that this issue is ‘one of the most important subjects of discussion raised in the third of the Essays’, but he does not examine it. See Morley, 131.

25 ‘Theism’, CW, x. 483.

26 Cf. ‘Utility of Religion’, CW, x. 426.

27 Ibid., p. 485.

28 The Later Years 1849–1873, CW, xvi. 1414.

29 Ibid.

30 ‘Theism’, CW, x. 481.

31 See Matthew 6:33: ‘you are to seek [God's] domain, and his justice first, and all these things will come to you as a bonus’ (The Complete Gospels: Annotated Scholars Version, ed. Miller, Robert J., Sonoma, 1994, p. 69)Google Scholar.

32 This is Kant's idea of the complete or highest good, which is in some a priori way necessarily connected to the idea of the supreme good or moral law. See The Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Beck, Lewis White, New York, 1993, pp. 116–19Google Scholar. In ‘Theism’, Mill discusses Kant's a priori argument but apparently misunderstands the basis for the postulate of God. It is not based on the need for an external lawgiver of the moral law but on the conditions necessary to realize the highest good. See ‘Theism’, CW, x. 445 f.

33 ‘Nature’, CW, x. 389.

34 See Feuerbach, pt. i. In different ways, later theorists such as Nietzsche and Freud employ a similar ‘geneaological’ method to expose the true basis and reality of traditional religious beliefs.

35 On Liberty, CW, xviii. 256.

36 See Utilitarianism, CW, x. 219.

37 See Camus, Albert, The Plague, trans. Gilbert, Stuart, New York, 1991, pp. 243–57Google Scholar.

38 System of Logic, CW, viii. 949.

39 Crisp, Roger, Mill on Utilitarianism, New York, 1997, p. 122Google Scholar.

40 Wright, T. R., The Religion of Humanity: The Impact of Comtean Positivism on Victorian Britain, New York, 1986, pp. 43 and 45, respectively.Google Scholar

41 On Liberty, CW, xviii. 257.

42 Mill provocatively uses the phrase ‘wish to believe’ in the second paragraph of ‘Utility of Religion’.

43 ‘The Will to Believe’, ed. McDermott, John, Chicago, 1977, The Writings of William James, p. 734Google Scholar.

44 Ibid., p. 627.

45 Ibid., p. 628.

46 I would like to thank a referee at Utilitas for helpful suggestions while revising this essay.