Pragmatism: Mill and the Ethics of Impact

Abstract

This chapter begins with the modern layering of utilitarianism where leaders use their powers to “lay down the law” when setting expected standards, entitlements, and obligations, including spelling out the expectations they have of their supporters and the expectations supporters should have of them. The focus is on Mill’s Utilitarianism which comprises nearly 70 pages of careful public advocacy in favor of a version of utilitarianism departing from earlier versions derived from Bentham and Mill’s influential British predecessors (Mill 1984, 1–67). Chapter 6 examines Kantian leadership ethics as an illustration of the powers available to leaders to settle disputes and clarify rights and wrongs in the landscape of leadership. The third chapter in this suite of chapters examines virtue ethics in terms of powers used to rule through a kind of exemplary political prudence. Each chapter models a distinctive type of rule or authority to be used by public leaders. Each rule has its own scheme of ethics. All three chapters examine valuable forms of leadership ethics, starting with the most conventional example in pragmatism, then the demanding ethics of high principle, concluding with the ethics of prudence which, I argue, blends many of the best elements of principle and pragmatism.