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Study Questions
1. Do you agree with Mill that “a being of higher faculties requires more to make him
happy . . . than one of an inferior type”?
2. What might be Ayn Rand’s comment on the excerpt?
3. What does Mill mean by “the whole sentient creation”?
4. Comment on the meaning of this passage: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied
than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” What does
Mill mean? Do you agree? Why or why not?
5. In the acclaimed television series The Wire, Season 4, a high school teacher takes three
of his students to an expensive steak restaurant so they can be exposed to the “finer
things in life.” For the first time in their lives they’re seated by a hostess, and the wait-
ress recites information about the specials of the evening from memory. In the end,
they have ordered and eaten items that turned out to be completely different from what
they expected, and nobody except the teacher seems to have had a good time. The stu-
dents ask if they can stop at a McDonald’s afterward so they can get something they
actually like. But already next day in school, there is an air of confidence about them,
and they joke about the dinner based on experience rather than ignorance. Suppose we
now were to ask them what they prefer, a fancy steak house or a fast food burger joint?
Suppose they say the burger joint? What would Mill respond? Would you agree? Why
or why not?

Narrative

The Blacksmith and the Baker

JOHANN HERMAN WESSEL

Poem, 1777. Loosely translated from Danish, from verse to prose, by Nina Rosenstand.
Summary and Excerpt.
Wessel is famous in his own country of Denmark for his satirical verses. This story (here
retold in prose) may have been inspired by a real newspaper story or possibly by British fables.
Once upon a time there was a small town where the town blacksmith was a mean
man. He had an enemy, and one day he and his enemy happened to meet at an inn. They
proceeded to get drunk and exchange some nasty words. The blacksmith grew angry and
knocked the other man out; the blow turned out to be fatal. The blacksmith was carted off
to jail, and he confessed, hoping that his opponent would forgive him in Heaven. Before
his sentence was pronounced, four upstanding citizens asked to see the judge, and the
most eloquent of them spoke:
“Your Wisdom, we know you are thinking of the welfare of this town, but this wel-
fare depends on getting our blacksmith back. His death won’t wake up the dead man, and
we’ll never find such a good blacksmith ever again.”
The judge said, “But a life has been taken and must be paid for by a life. . . .”
 N arrative : T he B lacksmith and the B aker 259

“The Blacksmith and the Baker,” illustration by Nils Wiwel, 1895. Utilitarianism taken to an extreme:
The baker is led away to be executed for what the blacksmith has done, because that is more useful to
society. The policeman’s belt reads “Honest and Faithful,” and the building in the background is the old
Copenhagen courthouse with the inscription “With Law Must Land Be Built.”

“We have in town an old and scrawny baker who’ll go to the devil soon, and since
we have two bakers, how about taking the oldest one? Then you still get a life for a life.”
“Well,” said the judge, “that is not a bad idea, I’ll do what I can.” And he leafed
through his law books but found nothing that said you can’t execute a baker instead of a
blacksmith, so he pronounced this sentence:
“We know that blacksmith Jens has no excuse for what he has done, sending Anders
Petersen off to eternity; but since we have but one blacksmith in this town I would be
crazy if I wanted him dead; but we do have two bakers of bread . . . so the oldest one must
pay for the murder.”
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The old baker wept pitifully when they took him away. The moral of the story: Be
always prepared to die! It comes when you least expect it.

Study Questions
1. Do you think this is a fair picture of a utilitarian judge?
2. How might the utilitarian respond to this story?
3. Return to this story after reading Chapter 6 and consider: How might a Kantian respond?

Narrative

The Brothers Karamazov

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

Novel, 1881. Film, 1958. Summary and Excerpt.

(This excerpt should be read in conjunction with the narrative “The Ones Who Walk
Away from Omelas,” which follows.)
The story of the brothers Karamazov, one of the most famous in Russian literature, is
about four half-brothers and their father, an unpleasant, old, corrupt scoundrel. The broth-
ers are very different in nature; the oldest son, Dmitri, is a rogue and a pleasure-seeker; the
next son, Ivan, is intelligent and politically engaged; the third son, Alyosha, is gentle and
honest; and the fourth son, Smerdyakov, was born outside marriage and never recognized
as a proper son. When a murder happens, each son in turn finds himself under suspicion.
Here, Ivan is telling Alyosha a story:
It was in the darkest days of serfdom at the beginning of the century. . . . There was in
those days a general of aristocratic connections, the owner of great estates, one of those
men—somewhat exceptional, I believe, even then—who, retiring from the service into
a life of leisure, are convinced that they’ve earned absolute power over the lives of
their subjects. There were such men then. So our general, settled on his property of
two thousand souls, lives in pomp, and dominates his poor neighbors as though they
were dependents. He has kennels of hundreds of hounds and nearly a hundred dog-
boys—all mounted, and in uniform. One day a serf boy, a little child of eight, threw
a stone in play and hurt the paw of the general’s favorite hound. ‘Why is my favorite
dog lame?’ He is told that the boy threw a stone that hurt the dog’s paw. ‘So you did
it.’ The general looked the child up and down. ‘Take him.’ He was taken—taken from
his mother and kept shut up all night. Early the next morning the general comes out
on horseback, with the hounds, his dependents, dog-boys, and huntsmen, all mounted
around him in full hunting parade. The servants are summoned for their edification, and
in front of them all stands the mother of the child. The child is brought forward. It’s a
gloomy cold, foggy autumn day, a perfect day for hunting. The general orders the child
to be undressed. The child is stripped naked. He shivers, numb with terror, not daring