John Stuart Mill

Who2 Biography: John Stuart Mill, Philosopher

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Born: 20 May 1806
Birthplace: London, England
Died: 8 May 1873
Best Known As: Author of 1859's On Liberty

John Stuart Mill was a key figure in the movement known as utilitarianism, and a proponent of the liberal philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. Mill was educated at home by his father, philosopher and economist James Mill, who had been a champion of Bentham's movement. After a career with the East India Company, John made his fame with the publication of 1843's A System of Logic. He went on to write several important essays and books that championed the idea that actions should be judged by the usefulness of their consequences. Central to Mill's philosophy was that "over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign," but that political philosophy should be guided by what is good for society as a whole. An early advocate of woman's suffrage, Mill co-wrote several essays with his friend and wife, Harriet Taylor. His best-known works are On Liberty (1859), Utilitarianism (1867) and The Subjection of Women (1869).

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5min Related Video: John Stuart Mill

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Biography: John Stuart Mill

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The English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was the most influential British thinker of the 19th century. He is known for his writings on logic and scientific methodology and his voluminous essays on social and political life.

John Stuart Mill was born on May 20, 1806, in London to James and Harriet Burrow Mill, the eldest of their nine children. His father, originally trained as a minister, had emigrated from Scotland to take up a career as a freelance journalist. In 1808 James Mill began his lifelong association with Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian philosopher and legalist. Mill shared the common belief of 19th-century psychologists that the mind is at birth a tabula rasa and that character and performance are the result of experienced associations. With this view, he attempted to make his son into a philosopher by exclusively supervising his education. John Stuart Mill never attended a school or university.

Early Years and Education

The success of this experiment is recorded in John Stuart Mill's Autobiography (written 1853-1856). He began the study of Greek at the age of 3 and took up Latin between his seventh and eighth years. From six to ten each morning the boy recited his lessons, and by the age of 12 he had mastered material that was the equivalent of a university degree in classics. He then took up the study of logic, mathematics, and political economy with the same rigor. In addition to his own studies, John also tutored his brothers and sisters for 3 hours daily. Throughout his early years, John was treated as a younger equal by his father's associates, who were among the preeminent intellectuals in England. They included George Grote, the historian; John Austin, the jurist; David Ricardo, the economist; and Bentham.

Only later did Mill realize that he never had a childhood. The only tempering experiences he recalled from his boyhood were walks, music, reading Robinson Crusoe, and a year he spent in France. Before going abroad John had never associated with anyone his own age. The year with Bentham's relatives in France gave young Mill a taste of normal family life and a mastery of another language, which made him well informed on French intellectual and political ideas.

When he was 16, Mill began a debating society of utilitarians to examine and promote the ideas of his father, Bentham, Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus. He also began to publish on various issues, and he had written nearly 50 articles and reviews before he was 20. His speaking, writing, and political activity contributed to the passage of the Parliamentary Reform Bill in 1830, which culminated the efforts of the first generation of utilitarians, especially Bentham and James Mill. But in 1823, at his father's insistence, Mill abandoned his interest in a political career and accepted a position at India House, where he remained for 35 years.

The external events of Mill's life were so prosaic that Thomas Carlyle once disparagingly described their written account as "the autobiography of a steam engine." Nonetheless in 1826 Mill underwent a mental crisis. He perceived that the realization of all the social reforms for which he had been trained and for which he had worked would bring him no personal satisfaction. He thought that his intellectual training had left him emotionally starved and feared that he lacked any capacity for feeling or caring deeply. Mill eventually overcame his melancholia by opening himself to the romantic reaction against rationalism on both an intellectual and personal level. He assimilated the ideas and poetry of English, French, and German thought. When he was 25 he met Harriet Taylor, and she became the dominant influence of his life. Although she was married, they maintained a close association for 20 years, eventually marrying in 1851, a few years after her husband's death. In his Autobiography Mill maintained that Harriet's intellectual ability was superior to his own and that she should be understood as the joint author of many of his major works.

"System of Logic"

The main purpose of Mill's philosophic works was to rehabilitate the British empirical tradition extending from John Locke. He argued for the constructive dimension of experience as an antidote to the negative and skeptical aspects emphasized by David Hume and also as an alternative to rationalistic dogmatism. His System of Logic (1843) was well received both as a university text and by the general public. Assuming that all propositions are of a subject-predicate form, Mill began with an analysis of words that constitute statements. He overcame much of the confusion of Locke's similar and earlier analysis by distinguishing between the connotation, or real meaning, of terms and the denotation, or attributive function. From this Mill described propositions as either "verbal" and analytic or "real" and synthetic. With these preliminaries in hand, Mill began a rather traditional attack on pure mathematics and deductive reasoning. A consistent empiricism demanded that all knowledge be derived from experience. Thus, no appeal to universal principles or a priori intuitions was allowable. In effect, Mill reduced pure to applied mathematics and deductive reasoning to "apparent" inferences or premises which, in reality, are generalizations from previous experience. The utility of syllogistic reasoning is found to be a training in logical consistency - that is, a correct method for deciding if a particular instance fits under a general rule - but not to be a source of discovering new knowledge.

By elimination, then, logic was understood by Mill as induction, or knowledge by inference. His famous canons of induction were an attempt to show that general knowledge is derived from the observation of particular instances. Causal laws are established by observations of agreement and difference, residues and concomitant variations of the relations between A as the cause of B. The law of causation is merely a generalization of the truths reached by these experimental methods. By the strict application of these methods man is justified in extending his inferences beyond his immediate experience to discover highly probable, though not demonstrable, empirical and scientific laws.

Mill's logic culminates with an analysis of the methodology of the social sciences since neither individual men nor patterns of social life are exceptions to the laws of general causality. However, the variety of conditioning factors and the lack of control and repeatability of experiments weaken the effectiveness of both the experimental method and deductive attempts - such as Bentham's hedonistic calculus, which attempted to derive conclusions from the single premise of man's self-interest. The proper method of the social sciences is a mixture: deductions from the inferential generalizations provided by psychology and sociology. In several works Mill attempted without great success to trace connections between the generalizations derived from associationist psychology and the social and historical law of three stages (theological, metaphysical, and positivist or scientific) established by Auguste Comte.

Mill's Reasonableness

The mark of Mill's genius in metaphysics, ethics, and political theory rests in the tenacity of his attitude of consistent reasonableness. He denied the necessity and scientific validity of positing transcendent realities except as an object of belief or guide for conduct. He avoided the abstruse difficulties of the metaphysical status of the external world and the self by defining matter, as it is experienced, as "a permanent possibility of sensation," and the mind as the series of affective and cognitive activities that is aware of itself as a conscious unity of past and future through memory and imagination. His own mental crises led Mill to modify the calculative aspect of utilitarianism. In theory he maintained that men are determined by their expectation of the pleasure and pain produced by action. But his conception of the range of personal motives and institutional attempts to ensure the good are much broader than those suggested by Bentham. For example, Mill explained that he overcame a mechanical notion of determinism when he realized that men are capable of being the cause of their own conduct through motives of self-improvement. In a more important sense, he attempted to introduce a qualitative dimension to utility.

Mill suggested that there are higher pleasures and that men should be educated to these higher aspirations. For a democratic government based on consensus is only as good as the education and tolerance of its citizenry. This argument received its classic formulation in the justly famous essay, "On Liberty." Therein the classic formula of liberalism is stated: the state exists for man, and hence the only warrantable imposition upon personal liberty is "self-protection." In later life, Mill moved from a laissez-faire economic theory toward socialism as he realized that government must take a more active role in guaranteeing the interests of all of its citizens.

The great sadness of Mill's later years was the unexpected death of his wife in 1858. He took a house in Avignon, France, in order to be near her grave and divided his time between there and London. He won election to the House of Commons in 1865, although he refused to campaign. He died on May 8, 1873.

Further Reading

Information on Mill from primary sources is in his Autobiography, four volumes of letters in his Collected Works, and John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor: Their Correspondence, edited by F. A. Hayek (1951). Biographies of Mill are M. J. Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill (1954), and a brief, sympathetic treatment by Ruth Borchard, John Stuart Mill, the Man (1957). Maurice Cowling, Mill and Liberalism (1963); Ernest Albee, A History of English Utilitarianism (1902); Leslie Stephen, The English Utilitarians (3 vols., 1900); and Élie Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism (1928; new ed. 1934; repr. with corrections 1952), are excellent studies.

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: John Stuart Mill

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(born May 20, 1806, London, Eng. — died May 8, 1873, Avignon, France) British philosopher and economist, the leading expositor of utilitarianism. He was educated exclusively and exhaustively by his father, James Mill. By age 8 he had read in the original Greek Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, and all of Herodotus, and he had begun a study of Euclid's geometry; at age 12 he began a thorough study of scholastic logic. In 1823 he cofounded the Utilitarian Society with Jeremy Bentham, though he would later significantly modify the utilitarianism he inherited from Bentham and his father to meet the criticisms it encountered. In 1826 he and Bentham cofounded London University (now University College). From 1828 to 1856 he was an assistant examiner in India House, where from 1836 he was in charge of the East India Company's relations with the Indian states. In the 1840s he published his great systematic works in logic and political economy, chiefly A System of Logic (2 vol., 1843) and Principles of Political Economy (2 vol., 1848). As head of the examiner's office in India House from 1856 to 1858 he wrote a defense of the company's government of India when the transfer of its powers was proposed. In 1859 he published On Liberty, a trenchant defense of individual freedom. His Utilitarianism (1863) is a closely reasoned attempt to answer objections to his ethical theory and to address misconceptions about it; he was especially insistent that "utility" include the pleasures of the imagination and the gratification of the higher emotions and that his system include a place for settled rules of conduct. In 1869 he published The Subjection of Women (written 1861), now the classical theoretical statement of the case for woman suffrage. Prominent as a publicist in the reforming age of the 19th century, he remains of lasting interest as a logician and ethical theorist. See also Mill's methods.

For more information on John Stuart Mill, visit Britannica.com.

Columbia Encyclopedia: John Stuart Mill

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Mill, John Stuart, 1806-73, British philosopher and economist. A precocious child, he was educated privately by his father, James Mill. In 1823, abandoning the study of law, he became a clerk in the British East India Company, where he rose to become head of the examiner's office by the time of the company's dissolution (1858). During this period he contributed to various periodicals, becoming a popular journalist, and met with discussion groups, one of which included Thomas Macaulay, to explore the problems of political theory. His A System of Logic (1843) was followed in 1848 by the Principles of Political Economy, which influenced English radical thought. In 1851, two years after the death of her husband, he married Harriet Taylor, whom he had loved for 20 years. She died in 1858, and Mill, profoundly affected, dedicated to her the famous On Liberty (1859), on which they had worked together. His Utilitarianism was published in 1863, and Auguste Comte and Positivism appeared in 1865. From 1865 to 1868 Mill served as a member of Parliament, after which he retired, spending much of his time at Avignon, France, where his wife was buried and where he died. His celebrated Autobiography appeared during the year of his death.

John Stuart Mill's philosophy followed the doctrines of his father and his father's mentor, Jeremy Bentham, but he sought to temper them with humanitarianism. At times Mill came close to socialism, a theory repugnant to his predecessors. In logic, he formulated rules for the inductive process, and he stressed the method of empiricism as the source of all knowledge. In his ethics, he pointed out the possibility of a sentiment of unity and solidarity that may even develop a religious character, as in Comte's religion of humanity. In addition he introduced into the utilitarian calculus of pleasure a qualitative principle that goes far beyond the simpler conception of quantity (see utilitarianism). He constantly advocated political and social reforms, such as proportional representation, emancipation of women (he believed in total equality between the sexes), an end to slavery, and the development of labor organizations and farm cooperatives. He also strongly supported the Union cause in the American Civil War. Mill's influence has been strong in economics, politics, and philosophy.

Bibliography

See biography by R. Reeves (2008); B. Mazlish, James and John Stuart Mill (1975, repr. 1988); M. Cowling, Mill and Liberalism (1963); J. M. Robson, The Improvement of Mankind: The Social and Political Thought of John Stuart Mill (1968); H. J. McCloskey, John Stuart Mill: A Critical Study (1971); F. H. von Hayek, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor: Their Correspondence and Subsequent Marriage (1951, repr. 1979); J. Riley, Liberal Utilitarianism: Social Choice Theory and J. S. Mill's Philosophy (1988).

Legal Encyclopedia: Mill, John Stuart

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John Stuart Mill was the leading English political philosopher of the middle and late nineteenth century. Mill's writings on individual freedom, most notably the essay "On Liberty" (1859), have had a profound influence on U.S. constitutional law. His "libertarian theory" continues to attract those opposed to government interference in the lives of individuals.

Mill was born on May 20, 1806, in London. His father, James Mill, was a leading proponent of utilitarianism, a political theory that claimed that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the sole purpose of all public action. James Mill provided his son with an unorthodox but extensive education. John Mill began studying Greek at the age of three, and by the age of seventeen he had completed advanced courses in science, philosophy, psychology, and law.

In 1822 Mill began working as a clerk for his father at India House, the large East Indian trading company. He rose to the position of chief of the examiner's office and stayed with the company until his retirement in 1858.

Mill's real passion, however, was political and social philosophy. In 1826 he had a personal crisis over the tenets of utilitarianism, seeing it as the empty, hedonistic pursuit of pleasure. At the same time, he became acquainted with Harriet Taylor, a gifted thinker who would become Mill's collaborator and later his wife. Largely ignored by historians, Taylor is now credited as a major contributor to Mill's published works.

Mill's essay "On Liberty" remains his major contribution to political thought. He proposed that self-protection is the only reason an individual or the government can interfere with a person's liberty of action. Outside of preventing harm to others, the state has no legitimate reason to compel a person to act in the way the government wishes. This principle has proved complex in application, because it is difficult to determine which aspects of behavior concern only individuals and which concern other members of society.

In chapter two of "On Liberty," Mill considered the benefits that come from freedomof speech. He concluded that, except for speech that is immediately physically harmful to others (like the classic example of the false cry of "fire" in a crowded theater, cited by OliverWendell Holmes, Jr.), no expression of opinion, written or oral, ought to be prohibited. Truth can only emerge from the clash of contrary opinions; therefore robust debate must be permitted. This "adversarial" theory of the necessary nature of the search for truth and this insistence on the free marketplace of ideas have become central elements of U.S. free speech theory.

Mill also applied his principle of liberty to action as well as speech. Mill believed that "experiments of living" maximize the development of human individuality. Restraints on action should be discouraged, even if the actions are inherently harmful to the individuals who engage in them. Mill claimed that society should not be allowed to prohibit fornication, the consumption of alcohol, or even polygamy.

Critics have charged that Mill's liberalism condones an atomistic, fragmented society in which individuals may feel that their lives have no purpose because they do not believe that they are a meaningful part of the community. Other critics have found the same sort of hollowness that Mill ascribed to utilitarianism.

Mill's other works include System of Logic (1843), Principles of Political Economy (1848), The Subjection of Women (1869), and his Autobiography (1873).

Mill served in Parliament from 1865 to 1868. He was considered a radical because he supported the public ownership of natural resources, compulsory education, birth control, and equality for women. His advocacy of women's suffrage in the Reform Bill of 1867 led to the creation of the suffrage movement.

Mill died on May 8, 1873, in Avignon, France.

CROSS-REFERENCES: Bentham, Jeremy.

Quotes By: John Stuart Mill

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Quotes:

"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."

"The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time."

"Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained."

"There is one plain rule of life. Try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then do it."

"There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home."

"The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves."

See more famous quotes by John Stuart Mill

Wikipedia: John Stuart Mill

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"Stuart Mill" redirects here. For the town in Australia, see Stuart Mill, Victoria.

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John Stuart Mill
Western Philosophy 19th-century philosophy, Classical economics
John Stuart Mill
Full name	John Stuart Mill
Born	20 May 1806(1806-05-20) Pentonville, London, England
Died	8 May 1873 (aged 66) Avignon, France
School/tradition	Empiricism, utilitarianism, liberalism
Main interests	Political philosophy, ethics, economics, inductive logic
Notable ideas	public/private sphere, hierarchy of pleasures in Utilitarianism, liberalism, early liberal feminism, harm principle, Mill's Methods
Influenced by Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, Francis Place, James Mill, Harriet Taylor Mill, Smith, Ricardo, Tocqueville, von Humboldt, Goethe, Coleridge, Saint-Simon (Utopian Socialists)^[1]
Influenced William James, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, Ronald Dworkin, H.L.A. Hart, Peter Singer, Wilhelm Dilthey, Paul Feyerabend, Zechariah Chafee, John Maynard Keynes, Will Kymlicka, Carlos Vaz Ferreira

John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873), English philosopher, political theorist, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential Classical liberal thinker of the 19th century whose works on liberty justified freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control.^[2] He was an exponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's. He clearly set forth the premises of the scientific method.^[3]

1 Biography
2 Works
3 Major publications
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links

Biography

John Stuart Mill was born on Rodney Street in the Pentonville area of London, the eldest son of the Scottish philosopher and historian James Mill and Harriet Burrow. John Stuart was educated by his father, with the advice and assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place. He was given an extremely rigorous upbringing, and was deliberately shielded from association with children his own age other than his siblings. His father, a follower of Bentham and an adherent of associationism, had as his explicit aim to create a genius intellect that would carry on the cause of utilitarianism and its implementation after he and Bentham were dead. Mill was a notably precocious child; at the age of three he was taught Greek. By the age of eight he had read Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, and the whole of Herodotus, and was acquainted with Lucian, Diogenes Laërtius, Isocrates and six dialogues of Plato. He had also read a great deal of history in English and had been taught arithmetic.

At the age of eight he began learning Latin, Euclid, and algebra, and was appointed schoolmaster to the younger children of the family. His main reading was still history, but he went through all the commonly taught Latin and Greek authors and by the age of ten could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. His father also thought that it was important for Mill to study and compose poetry. One of Mill's earliest poetry compositions was a continuation of the Iliad. In his spare time, he also enjoyed reading about natural sciences and popular novels, such as Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe.

His father's History of India was published in 1818; immediately thereafter, about the age of twelve, Mill began a thorough study of the scholastic logic, at the same time reading Aristotle's logical treatises in the original language. In the following year he was introduced to political economy and studied Adam Smith and David Ricardo with his father, ultimately completing their classical economic view of factors of production. Mill's comptes rendus of his daily economy lessons helped his father in writing Elements of Political Economy, which became the leading textbook exposition of doctrinaire Ricardian economics. Ricardo, who was a close friend of his father, used to invite the young Mill to his house for a walk in order to talk about political economy.

At age fourteen, Mill stayed a year in France with the family of Sir Samuel Bentham, brother of Jeremy Bentham. The mountain scenery he saw led to a lifelong taste for mountain landscapes. The lively and friendly way of life of the French also left a deep impression on him. In Montpellier, he attended the winter courses on chemistry, zoology, logic of the Faculté des Sciences, as well as taking a course of the higher mathematics. While coming and going from France, he stayed in Paris for a few days in the house of the renowned economist Jean-Baptiste Say, a friend of Mill's father. There he met many leaders of the Liberal party, as well as other notable Parisians, including Henri Saint-Simon.

This intensive study however had injurious effects on Mill's mental health, and state of mind. At the age of twenty^[4] he suffered a nervous breakdown. As explained in chapter V of his Autobiography, this was caused by the great physical and mental arduousness of his studies which had suppressed any feelings he might have developed normally in childhood. Nevertheless, this depression eventually began to dissipate, as he began to find solace in the Mémoires of Jean-François Marmontel and the poetry of William Wordsworth.

Mill refused to study at Oxford University or Cambridge University, because he refused to take Anglican orders from the "white devil".^[5] Instead he followed his father to work for the East India Company until 1858.

Harriet Taylor

In 1851, Mill married Harriet Taylor after 21 years of an intimate friendship. Taylor was married when they met, and their relationship was close but generally believed to be chaste during the years before her first husband died. Brilliant in her own right, Taylor was a significant influence on Mill's work and ideas during both friendship and marriage. His relationship with Harriet Taylor reinforced Mill's advocacy of women's rights. He cites her influence in his final revision of On Liberty, which was published shortly after her death, and she appears to be obliquely referenced in The Subjection of Women. Taylor died in 1858 after developing severe lung congestion, only seven years into their marriage.

Between the years 1865-1868 Mill served as Lord Rector of the University of St. Andrews. During the same period, 1865-8, he was a Member of Parliament for City and Westminster^[6], and was often associated with the Liberal Party. During his time as an MP, Mill advocated easing the burdens on Ireland, and in 1869 became the first person in Parliament to call for women to be given the right to vote. Mill became a strong advocate of women's rights and such social reforms as labor unions and farm cooperatives. In Considerations on Representative Government, Mill called for various reforms of Parliament and voting, especially proportional representation, the Single Transferable Vote, and the extension of suffrage. He was godfather to Bertrand Russell.

He died in Avignon, France, in 1873, where he is buried alongside his wife.

Works

Theory of liberty

The Utilitarianism series
part of the Politics series
Utilitarian Thinkers
Jeremy Bentham John Stuart Mill Henry Sidgwick Peter Singer
Forms
preference utilitarianism rule utilitarianism act utilitarianism Two-level utilitarianism Total utilitarianism Average utilitarianism Negative utilitarianism animal welfare Abolitionism (bioethics) Hedonism Enlightened self-interest
Predecessors
Epicurus David Hume William Godwin
Key concepts
Pain Suffering Pleasure Utility Happiness Eudaimonia Consequentialism Felicific calculus
Problems
Mere addition paradox Paradox of hedonism Utility monster
See also
Rational choice theory Game theory Social choice Economics
Portal: Politics
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Main article: On Liberty

Mill's On Liberty addresses the nature and limits of the power that can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. One argument that Mill develops further than any previous philosopher is the harm principle. The harm principle holds that each individual has the right to act as he wants, so long as these actions do not harm others. If the action is self-regarding, that is, if it only directly affects the person undertaking the action, then society has no right to intervene, even if it feels the actor is harming himself. He does argue, however, that individuals are prevented from doing lasting, serious harm to themselves or their property by the harm principle. Because no-one exists in isolation, harm done to oneself also harms others, and destroying property deprives the community as well as oneself. ^[7] Mill excuses those who are "incapable of self-government" from this principle, such as young children or those living in "backward states of society".

Mill argues that despotism is an acceptable form of government for those societies that are "backward", as long as the despot has the best interests of the people at heart, because of the barriers to spontaneous progress. ^[8] Though this principle seems clear, there are a number of complications. For example, Mill explicitly states that "harms" may include acts of omission as well as acts of commission. Thus, failing to rescue a drowning child counts as a harmful act, as does failing to pay taxes, or failing to appear as a witness in court. All such harmful omissions may be regulated, according to Mill. By contrast, it does not count as harming someone if — without force or fraud — the affected individual consents to assume the risk: thus one may permissibly offer unsafe employment to others, provided there is no deception involved. (Mill does, however, recognize one limit to consent: society should not permit people to sell themselves into slavery). In these and other cases, it is important to keep in mind that the arguments in On Liberty are grounded on the principle of Utility, and not on appeals to natural rights.

The question of what counts as a self-regarding action and what actions, whether of omission or commission, constitute harmful actions subject to regulation, continues to exercise interpreters of Mill. It is important to emphasize that Mill did not consider giving offense to constitute "harm"; an action could not be restricted because it violated the conventions or morals of a given society. The idea of 'offense' causing harm and thus being restricted was later developed by Joel Feinberg in his 'offense principle' essentially an extension of J.S.Mill's 'harm principle'.

On Liberty involves an impassioned defense of free speech. Mill argues that free discourse is a necessary condition for intellectual and social progress. We can never be sure, he contends, that a silenced opinion does not contain some element of the truth. He also argues that allowing people to air false opinions is productive for two reasons. First, individuals are more likely to abandon erroneous beliefs if they are engaged in an open exchange of ideas. Second, by forcing other individuals to re-examine and re-affirm their beliefs in the process of debate, these beliefs are kept from declining into mere dogma. It is not enough for Mill that one simply has an unexamined belief that happens to be true; one must understand why the belief in question is the true one.

John Stuart Mill and Helen Taylor. Helen was the daughter of Harriet Taylor and collaborated with Mill for fifteen years after her mother's death in 1858

Mill's view on social liberty and tyranny of majority (from On Liberty)

Mill believed that “the struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history.” For him, liberty in antiquity was a “contest... between subjects, or some classes of subjects, and the government." Mill defined "social liberty" as protection from "the tyranny of political rulers." He introduces a number of different tyrannies, including social tyranny, and also the tyranny of the majority.

Social liberty for Mill was to put limits on the ruler’s power so that he would not be able to use his power on his own wishes and make every kind of decision which could harm society; in other words, people should have the right to have a say in the government’s decisions. He said that social liberty was “the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual”. It was attempted in two ways: first, by obtaining recognition of certain immunities, called political liberties or rights; second, by establishment of a system of "constitutional checks".

However, limiting the power of government is not enough. "Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.”

View on liberty

John Stuart Mill’s view on liberty, which was influenced by Joseph Priestley and Josiah Warren, is that the individual ought be free to do as he wishes unless he harms others. Individuals are rational enough to make decisions about their good being and choose any religion they want to. Government should interfere when it is for the protection of society. Mill explains,

“The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right...The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns him, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”^[9]

View on freedom of speech

An influential advocate of freedom of speech, Mill objected to censorship. He says: "I choose, by preference the cases which are least favourable to me - In which the argument against freedom of opinion, both on truth and that of utility, is considered the strongest. Let the opinions impugned be the belief of God and in a future state, or any of the commonly received doctrines of morality... But I must be permitted to observe that it is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may) which I call an assumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking to decide that question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this pretension not the less if it is put forth on the side of my most solemn convictions. However positive anyone's persuasion may be, not only of the faculty but of the pernicious consequences, but (to adopt expressions which I altogether condemn) the immorality and impiety of opinion. - yet if, in pursuance of that private judgement, though backed by the public judgement of his country or contemporaries, he prevents the opinion from being heard in its defence, he assumes infallibility. And so far from the assumption being less objectionable or less dangerous because the opinion is called immoral or impious, this is the case of all others in which it is most fatal.” ^[10]

Human rights and slavery

In 1850, Mill sent an anonymous letter (which came to be known under the title "The Negro Question"), in rebuttal to Thomas Carlyle's anonymous letter to Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country. Carlyle had defended slavery on grounds of genetic inferiority and claimed that the West Indies development was due to British ingenuity alone and dismissed any notion that there was a debtedness to imported slaves for building the economy there. Mill's rebuttal and references to the ongoing debate in the U.S. at the time regarding slavery were emphatic and eloquent. The full text, as well as a link to the Carlyle letter which prompted it, is available online.^[11]

Mill is also famous for being one of the earliest and strongest supporters of women's liberation. His book The Subjection of Women is one of the earliest written on this subject by a male author. He felt that the oppression of women was one of the few remaining relics from ancient times, a set of prejudices that severely impeded the progress of humanity.^[12]

Utilitarianism

Main article: Utilitarianism (book)

The canonical statement of Mill's utilitarianism can be found in Utilitarianism. This philosophy has a long tradition, although Mill's account is primarily influenced by Jeremy Bentham and Mill's father James Mill.

Bentham's famous formulation of utilitarianism is known as the "greatest-happiness principle". It holds that one must always act so as to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, within reason. Mill's major contribution to utilitarianism is his argument for the qualitative separation of pleasures. Bentham treats all forms of happiness as equal, whereas Mill argues that intellectual and moral pleasures are superior to more physical forms of pleasure. Mill distinguishes between happiness and contentment, claiming that the former is of higher value than the latter, a belief wittily encapsulated in the statement that "[i]t is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."

Mill defines the difference between higher and lower forms of happiness with the principle that those who have experienced both tend to prefer one over the other. This is, perhaps, in direct contrast with Bentham's statement that "Pushpin is as good as Poetry", that, if a simple child's game like hopscotch causes more pleasure to more people than a night at the opera house, it is more imperative upon a society to devote more resources to propagating hopscotch than running opera houses. Mill's argument is that the "simple pleasures" tend to be preferred by people who have no experience with high art, and are therefore not in a proper position to judge. Mill supported legislation that would have granted extra voting power to university graduates on the grounds that they were in a better position to judge what would be best for society. It should be noted that, in this example, Mill did not intend to devalue uneducated people and would certainly have advocated sending the poor but talented to universities: he believed that education, and not the intrinsic nature of the educated, qualified them to have more influence in government.

Mill also dealt with one of the prime problems associated with utilitarianism, that of schadenfreude. Detractors of utilitarianism argued, among other things, that, if enough people hated another person sufficiently that simply reducing the happiness of the object of their hatred would cause them pleasure, it would be incumbent upon a utilitarian society to aid them in harming the individual. Mill argued that, in order to have such an attitude of malice, each citizen would have to value his own pleasure over that of another. Society, therefore, is in no way obligated to indulge him; on the contrary, it is fully permitted to suppress his actions.

The qualitative account of happiness that Mill advocates thus sheds light on his account presented in On Liberty. As Mill suggests in that text, utility is to be conceived in relation to mankind "as a progressive being", which includes the development and exercise of his rational capacities as he strives to achieve a "higher mode of existence". The rejection of censorship and paternalism is intended to provide the necessary social conditions for the achievement of knowledge and the greatest ability for the greatest number to develop and exercise their deliberative and rational capacities.

Economic philosophy

Main article: Principles of Political Economy

Mill's early economic philosophy was one of free markets. However, he accepted interventions in the economy, such as a tax on alcohol, if there were sufficient utilitarian grounds. He also accepted the principle of legislative intervention for the purpose of animal welfare. [2] Mill originally believed that "equality of taxation" meant "equality of sacrifice" and that progressive taxation penalized those who worked harder and saved more and was therefore "a mild form of robbery".[3]

Given a tax break to the rich, Mill agreed that inheritance should be taxed. A utilitarian society would agree that everyone should be equal one way or another. Therefore receiving inheritance would put one ahead of society unless taxed on the inheritance. Those who donate should consider and choose carefully where their monies go. Some charities are more deserving than others. Considering public charities boards such as a government will disperse the monies equally. However a private charity board like a church would disperse the monies fairly to those whom are in more need than others.^[13]

Later he altered his views toward a more socialist bent, adding chapters to his Principles of Political Economy in defense of a socialist outlook, and defending some socialist causes.^[14] Within this revised work he also made the radical proposal that the whole wage system be abolished in favour of a co-operative wage system. Nonetheless, some of his views on the idea of flat taxation remained, albeit in a slightly toned down form.^[15]

Mill's Principles of Political Economy, first published in 1848, was one of the most widely read of all books on economics in the period.^[16] As Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations had during an earlier period, Mill's Principles dominated economics teaching. In the case of Oxford University it was the standard text until 1919. The text that replaced it was written by Cambridge's Alfred Marshall.

Mill's views on the Environment

Main articles: Principles of Political Economy and Of the Stationary State

Mill demonstrated an early insight into the value of the natural world - in particular in Book IV, chapter VI of "Principles of Political Economy": "Of the Stationary State" ^[17]^[18] in which Mill recognises wealth beyond the material, and argues that the logical conclusion of unlimited growth is destruction of the environment and a reduced quality of life.

Major publications

"Two Letters on the Measure of Value", 1822, The Traveller
"Questions of Population", 1823, Black Dwarf
"War Expenditure", 1824, Westminster Review
"Quarterly Review -- Political Economy", 1825, Westminster Review
"Review of Miss Martineau's Tales", 1830, Examiner
"The Spirit of the Age", 1831, Examiner
"What is Poetry", 1833, 1859
"Essay on Bentham" 1838
A System of Logic, 1843
Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, 1844
"Claims of Labour", 1845, Edinburgh Review
The Principles of Political Economy: with some of their applications to social philosophy, 1848
"The Negro Question", 1850, Fraser's Magazine
Dissertations and Discussions, 1859.
A Few Words on Non-intervention, 1859
On Liberty, 1859
Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, 1859.
Considerations on Representative Government, 1861
"Centralisation", 1862, Edinburgh Review
"The Contest in America", 1862, Harper's Magazine
Utilitarianism, 1863
An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, 1865.
Auguste Comte and Positivism, 1865.
Inaugural Address at St. Andrews - Rectorial Inaugural Address at the University of St. Andrews, concerning the value of culture, 1867.
"Speech In Favor of Capital Punishment", 1868
England and Ireland, 1868.
"Thornton on Labor and its Claims", 1869, Fortnightly Review
The Subjection of Women, 1869
Chapters and Speeches on the Irish Land Question, 1870
On Nature, 1874
Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, 1873
Three Essays on Religion, 1874
"Notes on N.W. Senior's Political Economy", 1945, Economica

Notes

^ Friedrich Hayek (1941). "The Counter-Revolution of Science". Economica 8 (31): 281–320. doi:10.2307/2549335.
^ "John Stuart Mill's On Liberty". victorianweb. http://www.victorianweb.org/philosophy/mill/liberty.html. Retrieved 2009-07-23. "On Liberty is a rational justification of the freedom of the individual in opposition to the claims of the state to impose unlimited control and is thus a defence of the rights of the individual against the state."
^ "John Stuart Mill (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". plato.stanford.edu. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/#SciMet. Retrieved 2009-07-31.
^ Mill, J.S. Autobiography, Part V (1873).
^ Capaldi, Nicholas. John Stuart Mill: A Biography. p.33, Cambridge, 2004, ISBN 0-521-62024-4.
^ Ibid. p.321-322
^ Mill, John Stuart "On Liberty" Penguin Classics, 2006 ISBN 978-0-14-144147-4 pages 90-91
^ Mill, John Stuart "On Liberty" Penguin Classics, 2006 ISBN 978-0-14-144147-4 page 16
^ John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), “The Contest in America.” Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 24, Issue 143, page 683-684. Harper & Bros., New York, April 1862. [1]
^ John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) “On Liberty” 1859. ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb, UK: Penguin, 1985, pp.83-84
^ The Negro Question by John Stuart Mill.
^ Mill, J.S. (1869) The Subjection of Women, Chapter 1
^ (Strasser,1991)
^ Mill, John Stuart and Benthem, Jeremy edited by Ryan, Alan. (2004). Utilitarianism and other essays. London: Penguin Books. pp. 11. ISBN 0-140-43272-8.
^ Wilson, Fred (2007). "John Stuart Mill: Political Economy". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/#PolEco. Retrieved 2009-05-04.
^ Ekelund, Robert B., Jr. and Hébert, Robert F. (1997). A history of economic theory and method (4th ed.). Waveland Press [Long Grove, Illinois]. pp. 172. ISBN 1-57766-381-0.
^ http://www.efm.bris.ac.uk/het/mill/book4/bk4ch06 The Principles of Political Economy, Book 4, Chapter VI.
^ "The early history of modern ecological economics Inge Røpke in Ecological Economics Volume 50, Issues 3-4, 1 October 2004". http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VDY-4DG3DFP-1/2/d74b62bf0315ae52a3e60f698eae5ca5. Retrieved 2008-08-08.

References

Mark Philip Strasser, "Moral Philosophy of John Stuart Mill," Longwood Academic (1991). Wakefield, New Hampshire. ISBN 0-89341-681-9
Michael St. John Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill, Macmillan (1952).
David O. Brink, "Mill's Deliberative Utilitarianism," in Philosophy and Public Affairs 21 (1992), 67-103.
Sterling Harwood, "Eleven Objections to Utilitarianism," in Louis P. Pojman, ed., Moral Philosophy: A Reader (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1998), and in Sterling Harwood, ed., Business as Ethical and Business as Usual (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1996), Chapter 7, and in [4]www.sterlingharwood.com.
Richard Reeves, John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand, Atlantic Books (2007), paperback 2008. ISBN 978-1-84354-644-3
Robinson, Dave & Groves, Judy (2003). Introducing Political Philosophy. Icon Books. ISBN 1-84046-450-X.
Frederick Rosen, Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill (Routledge Studies in Ethics & Moral Theory), 2003. ISBN 0415220947
Samuel Hollander, The Economics of John Stuart Mill (University of Toronto Press, 1985)
Mill, John Stuart, A System of Logic, University Press of the Pacific, Honolulu, 2002, ISBN 1-4102-0252-6
Chin Liew Ten, Mill on Liberty, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980, full-text online at [5]Victorianweb.org (National University of Singapore)
"Right Again, The passions of John Stuart Mill," by Adam Gopnik. The New Yorker, October 6, 2008.
"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: John Stuart Mill"

External links

Mill's works

Wikisource has original works written by or about: John Stuart Mill

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Stuart Mill

Collected Works of John Stuart Mill - Definitive Edition in 33 volumes, plus separate titles, on the Online Library of Liberty
Works by John Stuart Mill at Project Gutenberg
The Online Books Page lists works on various sites
Vintage Mill, works in HTML
Works, readable and downloadable
Primary and secondary works
More easily readable versions of On Liberty, Utilitarianism, and Three Essays on Religion
Of the Composition of Causes, Chapter VI of System of Logic (1859)

Secondary works

John Stuart Mill in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics on Econlib
"John Stuart Mill" article by Fred Wilson in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007-07-10
John Stuart Mill in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
A podcast interview of Richard Reeves on Mill's On Liberty
Mill On Liberty, by Chin Liew Ten (C.L. Ten), Clarendon Press, 1980 (full-text online)
Utilitarianism as Secondary Ethic An overview of utilitarianism with summary of its critiques.
How far did JS Mill let liberalism down? Did he prefer Socialism to Liberalism? by David McDonagh
Mill-fest: The Bicentennial Edition by the blog Catallarchy
"Organic Conservatism, Administrative Realism, and the Imperialist Ethos in the 'Indian Career' of John Stuart Mill, by Vinay Lal (review of "John Stuart Mill and India" by Lynn Zastoupil, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1994.)
"On John Stuart Mill" in Some Reflections on Ethics by Dr.Ramendra, Mill
Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy (Ashley ed.) [1848]. See original text in The Online Library of Liberty.
The Subjection of Women (1878 ed.). See original text in The Online Library of Liberty.

Further information

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill. Extensive collection of links to writings by and about J.S. Mill.
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Catalogue of Mill's correspondence and papers held at the Archives Division of the London School of Economics. View the Archives Catalogue of the contents of this important holding, which also includes letters of James Mill and Helen Taylor.
John Stuart Mill (obituary, Tues., Nov. 4, 1873) in "Eminent persons: Biographies reprinted from the Times. Vol. 1-6. D. Vol I, 1870-1875", Macmillan & Co., 1892, pp. 195-224, http://books.google.com/books?id=0CMYAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA195 John Stuart Mill (obituary, Tues., Nov. 4, 1873) in
John Stuart Mill at Find a Grave

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Persondata
NAME	Mill, John Stuart
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	English philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH	20 May 1806(1806-05-20)
PLACE OF BIRTH	Pentonville, London, England, United Kingdom
DATE OF DEATH	8 May 1873
PLACE OF DEATH	Avignon, France

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