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Book No. – 3 (Political Science)
Book Name – A History of Political Thought: Plato to Marx (Subrata Mukherjee & S. Ramaswamy)
What’s Inside the Chapter? (After Subscription)
1. LIFE SKETCH
2. CRITIQUE OF UTILITARIANISM
3. DEFENCE OF INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM AND INDIVIDUALITY
4. EQUALITY WITHIN THE FAMILY AND BETWEEN THE SEXES
5. DEMOCRACY AND REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
6. ECONOMY AND STATE
7. ON INDIA
8. CONCLUSION
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LANGUAGE
John Stuart Mill
Chapter – 13
Table of Contents
- John Stuart Mill is seen as a paradigmatic liberal thinker, known for affirming the priority of individual liberty and the belief that human progress can be advanced through critical reason.
- Mill supported democratic institutions, the feminist movement, and individual freedom from oppressive public opinion, qualifying him as a prominent liberal figure.
- Mill was a transitional thinker, bridging laissez-faire and collectivist liberalism, imposing a perfectionist teleologyof progress upon liberalism.
- Mill advocated for a negative demand for the state to respect autonomy, reason, and agency, but also a positive rolefor the state to encourage their attainment.
- True liberty, for Mill, was focused on the development of independence, self-development, and self-control.
- Green and Hobhouse expanded on Mill’s ideas, adding government actions to create conditions for self-realization, but Mill laid the groundwork for these ideas.
- Mill’s death was a significant loss to the Suffragist movement, as he was a passionate and influential advocate for women’s rights.
- Mill (1806–1873) was the most influential political thinker of the nineteenth century, marking a shift from laissez-faire to an active role for the state in liberalism.
- Mill’s political thought shifted liberalism from a negative conception of liberty to a positive one, from atomistic individuality to a more social conception of individual freedom.
- Mill was a reluctant democrat, pluralist, cooperative socialist, elitist, and feminist simultaneously.
- Mill’s criticism of Benthamite utilitarianism was a major contribution to political thought, distinguishing happinessfrom pleasure and replacing Bentham’s quantitative approach with a qualitative one.
- Mill argued for the defense of basic freedoms by law, with the purpose of law being to maximize liberty and facilitate self-realization.
- Mill made a distinction between the public sphere regulated by law and the private sphere regulated by morality.
- He saw a liberal society as a precondition for a liberal state and government, defending free speech and the right to individuality.
- Mill championed women’s rights, viewing sexual inequality as ethically and legally unjustifiable, unlike many contemporary liberals.
- Mill updated Smith’s ideas in his Principles of Political Economy (1848), defending laissez-faire and arguing for the possibility of just economic development through trade unions.
- He proposed redistribution of wealth, primarily through taxation, to ensure social justice, and rejected Ricardo’s labor theory of value, asserting that prices are determined by supply and demand forces.
LIFE SKETCH
- John Stuart Mill was born in London on May 20, 1806, with eight younger siblings.
- His father, James Mill, was from Scotland, and initially pursued journalism before focusing on writing the History of British India, which took 11 years to complete and remains an influential work on Indian history.
- India influenced Mill’s life and career, and he learned from his father’s books, starting to help with reading proofs at age 11.
- After the publication of History of British India in 1818, James Mill became an assistant examiner at the East India House, solving financial problems and allowing him to focus on writing philosophical and political works.
- James Mill envisioned a liberal profession for his eldest son, initially considering law for him but later securing a post at the East India House in 1823.
- John Stuart Mill’s education was home-schooled by his father, denying him a typical school experience and instead focusing on classical education and rigorous study from a young age.
- At age 4, Mill began learning Greek, and by age 8, Latin. He read works by Plato, Euripides, Homer, Polybius, Sophocles, and Thucydides by the time he was 10.
- Mill also mastered algebra, geometry, differential calculus, and higher mathematics early on.
- Mill’s education, dominated by his father’s influence, meant he had limited recollection of his mother’s role in his childhood.
- By age 13, Mill began reading English classical economists and published his first textbook, Elements of Political Economy (1820), at age 14.
- Mill was influenced by writers such as Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Comte, Goethe, and Wordsworth, developing an appreciation for poetry and art.
- Mill reviewed Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835-1840), which had a profound impact on him.
- Mill believed that nurture, rather than nature, played a crucial role in shaping character and that education could transform human nature.
- In his Autobiography, Mill acknowledged his father’s influence in shaping his mental abilities, though he lacked a “normal boyhood.”
- By age 20, Mill began writing for newspapers and periodicals, contributing to various aspects of political theory.
- His System of Logic (1843) combined British empiricist tradition with a Newtonian physics model for social sciences.
- Mill’s essays, such as On Liberty (1859) and The Subjection of Women (1869), presented classic liberal thought on law, rights, and liberty.
- Considerations on Representative Government (1861) outlined Mill’s ideal government, emphasizing proportional representation, protection of minorities, and self-government institutions.
- Mill’s pamphlet Utilitarianism (1863) endorsed Benthamite utilitarianism, distinguishing between happiness and pleasure, marking a departure from Bentham’s approach.
- His essays on Bentham and Coleridge (1838-1840) critically dissected Benthamism.
- In 1826, Mill underwent a mental crisis, losing all capacity for joy, which he overcame through romantic poetry by Coleridge and Wordsworth.
- Mill recognized the incompleteness of his education, realizing the lack of the emotional dimension of life and critiqued Benthamite philosophy for its one-sidedness.
- Mill expanded Benthamism, incorporating emotions, aesthetics, and spirituality, without completely abandoning its fundamentals.
- Mill’s utilitarianism differed from Bentham’s by including a more sophisticated view of human nature, influenced by Hume.
- Mill acknowledged the joint contribution of Harriet Hardy Taylor in his works On Liberty and The Subjection of Women.
- Mill and Harriet Taylor maintained a chaste friendship for 19 years before marrying in 1851 after her husband’s death in 1849.
- Mill described Harriet Taylor as the honor and chief blessing of his existence, and credited her with inspiring his efforts for human improvement.
- Mill believed that had Harriet Taylor lived in a time with more opportunities for women, she would have been eminent among the rulers of mankind.
- Mill died in 1873 at Avignon, England.