Will, Pleasure, Happiness

Mill's attempt to reduce Kantianism--primarily its thesis that a rational being is an end-in-itself who deserves Happiness--to Utilitarianism suffers from an equivocation. For, what Kant means by 'Happiness' is a 'totality of satisfactions of need', whereas Mill's equation of 'happiness' and 'pleasure' implies that the former, like the latter, can obtain as a discrete localized experience. Furthermore, the distinction is not merely quantificational, for, while Happiness arrives as the moment of closure of a process, Pleasure, which, as previously argued here, is the feeling of Will, or, in Kant's system, of Freedom, occurs at a moment of experiential destabilization, i. e. at the moment of self-activation. So, sharpening the distinction between Pleasure and Happiness does not eliminate Consequentialism from Kant's doctrine, but it helps demonstrate that the latter is not Hedonist.