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This volume collects David Lyons' well-known essays on Mill's moral theory and includes an introduction which relates the essays to prior and subsequent philosophical developments. Like the author's Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism (Oxford, 1965), the essays apply analytical methods to issues in normative ethics. The first essay defends a refined version of the beneficiary theory of rights against H.L.A. Hart's important criticisms. The central set of essays develops new interpretations of Mill's moral theory with the aim of determining how far rights can be incorporated in a utilitarian framework. They Mill's analysis of moral concepts promises to accommodate the argumentative force of rights, and also provide a significant new reading of Mill's theory of liberty. The last essay argues that the promise of Mill's theory of justice cannot be fulfilled. Utilitarianism is unable to account for crucial features of moral rights, or even for the moral force of legal rights whose existence might be justified on utilitarian grounds.

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CHOICE Review

This book brings together six previously published articles along with a new introduction by Lyons. The unifying theme is that the conventional view of utilitarianism as being unable to accommodate rights is mistaken. Lyons uses John Stuart Mill's version of utilitarianism as a point of departure to show that utilitarianism is not inconsistent with a recognition of rights. Thus the book is partly an exposition of Mill's unique brand of utilitarianism, which Lyons refers to as indirect utilitarianism. But exposition is really secondary to the book's main function, which is to argue for the plausibility of indirect utilitarianism. Not just a collection of vaguely related essays, this book can and should be read as offering a unified account of rights within the context of utilitarianism. Lyons presents his ideas in a clear style, and he usually spends time filling in the background of whatever debate he is addressing. Consequently, the book is accessible to undergraduates, and will be very useful to graduate students or faculty members doing research either in Mill or in utilitarianism and the issue of rights.

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David Lyons is at Cornell University.