John stuart mill biography book reference
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He advanced in his endeavor by immersing himself in the writings of a wide variety of thinkers (and corresponding with many as well), including John Ruskin, Auguste Comte and Alexis de Tocqueville, and editing a new journal that he co-founded with his father and Charles Molesworth, the London Review.
Books: 'On Liberty' and 'Utilitarianism'
In 1832, Bentham died, followed closely by James Mill in 1836.
Such a belief is a running theme among those who prescribe to modern libertarian social beliefs.
His seminal work On Liberty noted that those ruling over society should have limits on the power they exercise on individuals. His father had had little use for poetry, friendship and private emotions; John Stuart Mill began to change his views and to have a more moderate and practical approach to political ideals and the meaning of human happiness.
His advocacy of reform made him unpopular with “moderate Liberals” and he lost the general parliamentary election in 1868. He then took up the study of logic, mathematics, and political economy with the same energy. In this work, Mill pointed out how extremely important it was for a society to allow free speech to its people. The great economic thinkers who followed him eschewed value judgments in favor of developing theory while allowing others to formulate policy.
| Western Philosophy Nineteenth-century philosophy | |
|---|---|
| Name: John Stuart Mill | |
| Birth: May 20, 1806 (Pentonville, London, England) | |
| Death: May 8, 1873 (Avignon, France) | |
| School/tradition: Empiricism, Utilitarianism | |
| Main interests | |
| Political philosophy, Ethics, Economics, Inductive Logic | |
| Notable ideas | |
| public/private sphere, hierarchy of pleasures in Utilitarianism, liberalism, early liberal feminism, first system of inductive logic | |
| Influences | Influenced |
| Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, Smith, Ricardo, Tocqueville, James Mill, Saint-Simon (Utopian Socialists)[1] | Many philosophers after him, including John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, Ronald Dworkin, H.L.A.
He became a contributor to the Westminster Review, founded in April, 1824, as the organ of the philosophical radicals. Mill's statement of the "harm principle" in Chapter 1 of On Liberty, "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. Mill describes the five basic principles of induction which have come to be known as Mill's Methods: the method of agreement, the method of difference, the joint or double method of agreement and difference, the method of residues, and that of concomitant variations. Over the course of several months, his depression disappeared, and with it many of his former firmly held ideals. Mill came to believe that he had been emotionally stunted by his father's demanding analytical training, that his ability to feel had been compromised by the constant cultivation of his intellect, and that this emotional component was lacking from what the radical philosophers had been espousing. When he was 12, Mill invested a tremendous amount of time studying scholastic logic and, as a teen, he continued his education through traveling in France. "System of logic"The main purpose of Mill's philosophic works was to repair the British empirical (experimental) tradition extending from English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704). He was instrumental in shaping the 1867 Reform Bill to prevent certain corrupt practices, and argued for the reform of land tenure in Ireland (see his England and Ireland, 1868, and his Chapters and Speeches on the Irish Land Question, 1870), women’s suffrage, the reduction of the national debt, the reform of London government, and the abrogation of the Declaration of Paris (1856), concerning the carriage of property at sea during the Crimean War. He also advocated England's duty to intervene in foreign politics in support of freedom. It bolsters support for Bentham's philosophy and refutes certain misconceptions about it. A history of economic theory and method, 4th ed. He understood that fighting the negativity against which he was rebelling with more negativity was futile, so he allowed himself to see the good and to view the defenders of the old ways not as reactionaries but as those who have always advanced the good aspects of their generally flawed ways of thinking. Mill must have considered his own role in advancing his formerly held beliefs, as he did not abandon Bentham’s utilitarianism entirely, but now centered his thoughts on its “positive” elements instead of attacking it critically and destructively; he focused on how its best parts could be used constructively in the creation of a new society. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0534542511 and online [4]www.sterlingharwood.com. |