MILL, JOHN STUART

born May 20, 1806, London, Eng. died May 8, 1873, Avignon, France English philosopher, economist, and exponent of Utilitarianism. He was prominent as a publicist in the reforming age of the 19th century, and remains of lasting interest as a logician and an ethical theorist. born May 20, 1806, London, Eng. died May 8, 1873, Avignon, France English philosopher, economist, and exponent of Utilitarianism, which he tended to humanize and infuse with an element of Idealism. Mill was educated under his father's rigorous discipline both at home and in France. He joined the examiner's office of India House in 1823, becoming its chief in 1856. After writing essays for various periodicals, he was asked to edit The London Review in 1835. His early writings, later published in the first two volumes of Dissertations and Discussions (1859), added a new dimension to English radicalism. Mill's major publications, however, were A System of Logic (1843) and Principles of Political Economy (1848). He showed interest in woman suffrage (Subjection of Women ) and wrote on ethics and politics (On Liberty ; Considerations on Representative Government ). Mill's successive friendships with John Sterling, Thomas Carlyle, and Mrs. Taylor (Harriet Hardy), whom he married in 1851, influenced his thinking over the years and sustained his interest and enthusiasm. He had a brief parliamentary career and was also elected rector of St. Andrews University in 1867, but he retired in the following year and moved to France. His Autobiography (1873) and Three Essays on Religion (1874) were published posthumously. Additional reading Biography The standard biography is M.ST.J. Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill (1954, reissued 1970), a fascinating book (including a bibliography), with interpretations sometimes too colourful. Mill's own Autobiography has been edited several times, for example by Jack Stillinger (1969). Stillinger has also edited The Early Draft of John Stuart Mill's Autobiography (1961), written in 185354, which includes a much more vivid and intimate account of Mill's relations with his father and mother; it suggests a more gloomy picture of his childhood than does the final version. (This is not a work that Mill was himself prepared to publish.) Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections (1882, reprinted 1969), will never be superseded; an excellent, rambling account by Mill's closest philosophical disciple, it refers to many conversations and quotes from letters now lost. F.A. Hayek (ed.), John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor (1951, reprinted 1969), is full of details about the writing of Mill's works from the 1830s to 1858 (with gaps for times when they were meeting together); the painting of Harriet Taylor should not be missed. Pedro Schwartz, The New Political Economy of J.S. Mill (1972), is an intellectual biography; Eugene R. August, John Stuart Mill (1975), is a biography for the general reader. Comment and criticism Richard P. Anschutz, The Philosophy of J.S. Mill (1953, reprinted 1969), a subtle and precise study presupposing a wide reading of the texts; Karl W. Britton, John Stuart Mill: Life and Philosophy, 2nd ed. (1969), an introductory booksympathetic but critical; lie Halvy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism (1928; new ed., 1949, reissued 1972; originally published in French, 190104), the standard comprehensive account of the school in which Mill was brought up, with issues fully analyzed and discussed (including a bibliography); John P. Plamenatz, The English Utilitarians, 2nd ed. (1958, reissued 1966), on the background and content of Mill's moral theory; John M. Robson, The Improvement of Mankind: The Social and Political Thought of John Stuart Mill (1968), offering an account of Mill's life and of his mature views on morals, scientific method, politics, and sociology; Maurice Cowling, Mill and Liberalism (1963), an eccentric account that imputes to Mill a strong strain of authoritarianism; Dennis F. Thompson, John Stuart Mill and Representative Government (1976), an analysis of his Considerations on Representative Government; Alan Ryan, John Stuart Mill (1970), an attempt to show that a single constant theory of inductivism underlies all Mill's writings; Richard Halliday, John Stuart Mill (1976), arguing that behind Mill's eclecticism is a coherent pattern of thought; Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science, ch. 3 (1958, reissued 1977), an attack on attempts to construct a causal science of human conduct; Francis H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, 2nd ed. (1927, reissued 1962), in which the third essay is an attack on Mill's hedonism; G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica (1903, reissued 1976), a very lively onslaught on Mill's Utilitarianism, often patently unfair; C.L. Ten, Mill on Liberty (1980), an interpretation of the conflict between his Utilitarianism and his liberalism; J.O. Urmson, The Interpretation of the Moral Philosophy of J.S. Mill, Philosophical Quarterly, 3:3339 (1953), on moral rules; Ney MacMinn, J.R. Hainds, and J. McCrimmon (eds.), Bibliography of the Published Writings of John Stuart Mill (1945, reprinted 1970). Richard Paul Anschutz The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica Major Works: Politics and economics Essays on Some Unsettled Questions in Political Economy (1844); Principles of Political Economy, 2 vol. (1848; 2nd and 3rd eds. with important differences, 1849, 1852); On Liberty (1859); Considerations on Representative Government (1861); Utilitarianism (1863); On The Subjection of Women (1869). Philosophy and religion A System of Logic (1843); Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865); Auguste Comte and Positivism (1865); Three Essays on Religion (1874). Other works Essays on Bentham (1838) and Coleridge (1840) in Dissertations and Discussions, 4 vol. (185975), also reprinted together with an introduction by F.R. Leavis (1950); Autobiography, ed. by Helen Taylor (1873). Editions The definitive edition of the Collected Works is that edited by John M. Robson et al., in 17 vol. (begun in 1963); each volume has a full introduction, notes, and indexes.