Rights, Welfare, and Mill's Moral Theory

David Lyons's well-known essays on Mill's moral theory are collected in this volume, with an introduction which relates the essays to prior and subsequent philosophical developments. The first essay defends the beneficiary theory of rights. The central set of essays develop new interpretations of Mill's moral theory with the aim of determining how far rights can be incorporated in a utilitarian framework. They also provide a new reading of Mill's theory of liberty. The last essay argues that the promise of Mill's theory of justice cannot be fulfilled, as 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.