Week Five
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
John Stuart Mill was the most important English philosopher in the midst of the British Empire’s global hegemony, which had taken shape after the defeat of Napoleon, within the international order established by the Congress of Vienna. He was born in London in 1806, the eldest son of James Mill, who educated him so that he could bear the mantle of utilitarianism and advance its radical social and political aims. Mill learned Greek at three years old, and Latin, Euclid, and algebra at eight. Around the age of twenty, he underwent a severe mental and spiritual crisis. Reading Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle allowed him to cultivate his feelings and a sense of beauty, to accompany his empiricist rationalism: a synthesis of Romanticism and Enlightenment. Mill spent his career as a colonial administrator at the British East India Company. He married Mrs. Harriet Taylor in 1851, after her first husband’s death. Mill had begun a friendship with her over twenty years before. Mill credited her with being a co-author of several of his works. They were only able to enjoy seven years of marriage before she died in Avignon. To be near her grave, Mill would spend half of each year living in that town, until his death in 1873. He was elected Member of Parliament for the Liberal Party in 1865, and argued for abolitionism and full social and political equality for women in The Subjection of Women (1869)—though he was also a defender of imperialism.
“Society between equals can only exist on the understanding that the interests of all are to be regarded equally.”
In Mill we see an interesting combination of proto-libertarian and socialist. He sought to advance a progressive transformation of society, but did not find that goal incompatible with capitalism. His philosophical work was always bent towards moral, social, and political reform. In On Liberty (1859), Mill argues for individual liberty in the face of the power of state and society, subject only to the harm principle: “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.” He also argues for the value of diversity of opinion as a great social good. Mill feared the tyranny of the majority in a democratic society, like Tocqueville, and held that “the free development of individuality is the most important work of man.”
The Davenant Institute on the key to Martin Luther’s theology, and view of eternal life.
In Utilitarianism (1863), Mill extends and transforms the ethical theory of Jeremy Bentham, who maintained: “It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong” (“happiness” meaning pleasure as opposed to pain). Mill ennobles Bentham’s system, which had been built upon the Scottish Enlightenment’s commitment to utility (social benefit), opening it to the reality of human conscience and spiritual values.