Mill, James

Mill, James, 1773–1836, British philosopher, economist, and historian, b. Scotland; father of John Stuart Mill. Educated as a clergyman at Edinburgh through the patronage of Sir John Stuart, Mill gave up the ministry and went to London in 1802 to pursue a career writing for and editing periodicals. He met Jeremy Bentham c.1808 and became an ardent advocate of utilitarianism. On the strength of his History of British India (3 vol., 1817), on which he had worked for over 10 years, he secured a permanent position with the East India Company. Others of his works were Elements of Political Economy (1821), Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (2 vol., 1829), and A Fragment on Mackintosh (1835), which contains the best exposition of his psychological and ethical theories. Mill furnished a psychological basis for utilitarian ethics by expanding the associationism of David Hume. Association by contiguity, where ideas that occur frequently together form combinations, may be such a subtle process that the merging of ideas may occur without leaving any trace of the elements that went into their formulation. Derived conceptions may thus achieve autonomy of value quite apart from their obvious egoistic advantage. This is the origin of altruistic motives, which are otherwise difficult to explain on utilitarian grounds. It is also the origin of conscience.

Bibliography

See W. H. Burston, James Mill on Philosophy and Education (1973).

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Mill, James

(born April 6, 1773, Northwater Bridge, Forfarshire, Scot.—died June 23, 1836, London, Eng.) Scottish philosopher, historian, and economist. After studying at the University of Edinburgh and teaching, he went to London in 1802, where he met Jeremy Bentham and became a major promulgator of Bentham's utilitarianism. He wrote for several journals, including the Edinburgh Review (1808–13), and contributed articles on government and education to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He helped found London University in 1825. After completing his History of British India (3 vol., 1817), he was appointed an official in India House (1819) and later became head of the examiner's office (1830). His criticism of British rule led to changes in the government of India. His Elements of Political Economy (1821) summarized the views of David Ricardo, and his Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829) associated psychology with utilitarianism, a doctrine continued by his son, John Stuart Mill. Mill is considered the founder of philosophical radicalism.

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Mill, James 

Born Apr. 6, 1773, in Northwater Bridge, Scotland; died June 23, 1836, in Kensington. British philosopher, historian, and economist. Father of John Stuart Mill.

James Mill graduated from the faculty of theology of Edinburgh University in 1798. He became a journalist. After the publication of the History of India (vols. 1–3, 1817–18), he obtained a position in the East India Company in London, where he worked for the rest of his life. He was greatly influenced by the utilitarianism of J. Bentham. In his main philosophical work, An Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829), Mill followed the doctrine of D. Hume, striving to reduce all meaning to feelings or experiences, among which he included sensations and “ideas.” He made extensive use of the principle of the association of ideas proposed by Hume and D. Hartley, considering association the basic operation of consciousness. In ethics he was a utilitarian, regarding the public good as the highest principle and the criterion of morality but as a good that could not be completely realized by human beings. He saw the source of personal happiness in devotion to the common good. Characteristic of his sociological views was his denial of the concept of natural law and his effort to explain the content and structure of all social institutions in terms of the principle of utility. An adherent of liberal bourgeois political views, Mill proposed partial improvements in the British constitutional system. He considered the “middle class”—that is, the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie—the true master of the state.

I. S. NARSKII

In the book Elements of Political Economy (1821), Mill emerges as a disciple of and a commentator on D. Ricardo’s teachings, which he considered a theoretical weapon in the struggle against the vestiges of feudalism in the economy. At the same time, he distorted and oversimplified Ricardo’s theory, ignoring its essence—the labor theory of value. Thus, he laid the foundation for the disintegration of the Ricardian school. Mill is famous as one of the authors of the apologistic wages-fund theory, according to which the total share of wages in the national income is determined by natural factors and does not depend on the results of the class struggle.

WORKS

The Principles of Toleration. London, 1837.
A Fragment on Mackintosh, new ed. London, 1870.

REFERENCES

Marx, K. “K kritike politicheskoi ekonomii.” In K. Marx and F. Engels. Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 13.
Marx, K. “Teorii pribavochnoi stoimosti” (Das Kapital, vol. 4). Ibid., vol. 26.
Rozenberg, D. I. Istoriia politicheskoi ekonomii, part 2. Moscow-Leningrad, 1935. Pages 304–13.
Istoriia filosofii, vol. 3. [Moscow] 1943. Pages 456–59.
Bain, A. J. Mill. London, 1882.
Stephen, L. The English Utilitarians, vol. 2. New York, 1950.
Mill, John S. Autobiography. New York [1957].