Abstract
Rex Martin's 'A Defence of Mill's Qualitative Hedonism' (Philosophy, 47, No. i8o (April 1972), pp. I405') seeks to defend Mill against critics who have claimed that to be consistent he must either give up his hedonism or give up his distinction between 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. Underlying the posing of such a dilemma, Martin thinks, is an interpretation of Mill that for him kinds of pleasure when differing intrinsically as higher/ lower are not differing as more/less pleasant. If, however, Mill believed that kinds of pleasure do differ in their degree of being pleasant and that the higher or preferred kind is the more pleasant, then the critics would have no basis for saying that hedonism and Mill's qualitative distinction are in principle incompatible. Martin explores the possibility of just such an interpretation, but his final analysis is more complex. He makes a distinction between comparing pleasures and comparing kinds of life. The distinction is expressed in the following crucial passage:
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