Mill, John Stuart

Mill, John Stuart, 1806–73, British philosopher and economist. A precocious child, he was educated privately by his father, James Mill. In 1823, abandoning the study of law, he became a clerk in the East India company, where he rose to become head of the examiner's office by the time of the company's dissolution (1858). During this period he contributed to various periodicals and met with discussion groups, one of which included Thomas Macaulay, to explore the problems of political theory. His A System of Logic (1843) was followed in 1848 by the Principles of Political Economy, which influenced English radical thought. In 1851, following the death of her husband, he married Harriet Taylor, whom he had loved for 20 years. She died in 1858, and Mill, profoundly affected, dedicated to her the famous On Liberty (1859), on which they had worked together. In 1863, Utilitarianism was published, and his Auguste Comte and Positivism appeared in 1865. From 1865 to 1868 he served as a member of Parliament, after which he retired, spending much of his time at Avignon, France, where his wife was buried and where he died. In the year of his death appeared his celebrated Autobiography. John Stuart Mill's philosophy followed the doctrines of his father and Jeremy Bentham, but he sought to temper them with humanitarianism. At times Mill came close to socialism, a theory repugnant to his predecessors. In logic he formulated rules for the inductive process and stressed the method of empiricism as the source of all knowledge. In his ethics he pointed out the possibility of a sentiment of unity and solidarity that may even develop a religious character, as in Comte's religion of humanity. In addition he introduced into the utilitarian calculus of pleasure a qualitative principle that goes far beyond the simpler conception of quantity (see utilitarianism). He constantly advocated political and social reforms, such as proportional representation, emancipation of women, and the development of labor organizations and farm cooperatives. He strongly supported the Union cause in the American Civil War. Mill's influence has been strong in economics, politics, and philosophy.

Bibliography

See M. Cowling, Mill and Liberalism (1963); J. M. Robson, The Improvement of Mankind: The Social and Political Thought of John Stuart Mill (1968); H. J. McCloskey, John Stuart Mill: A Critical Study (1971); F. H. von Hayek, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor: Their Correspondence and Subsequent Marriage (1951, repr. 1979); J. Riley, Liberal Utilitarianism: Social Choice Theory and J. S. Mill's Philosophy (1988).

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Mill, John Stuart

(born May 20, 1806, London, Eng.—died May 8, 1873, Avignon, France) British philosopher and economist, the leading expositor of utilitarianism. He was educated exclusively and exhaustively by his father, James Mill. By age 8 he had read in the original Greek Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, and all of Herodotus, and he had begun a study of Euclid's geometry; at age 12 he began a thorough study of scholastic logic. In 1823 he cofounded the Utilitarian Society with Jeremy Bentham, though he would later significantly modify the utilitarianism he inherited from Bentham and his father to meet the criticisms it encountered. In 1826 he and Bentham cofounded London University (now University College). From 1828 to 1856 he was an assistant examiner in India House, where from 1836 he was in charge of the East India Company's relations with the Indian states. In the 1840s he published his great systematic works in logic and political economy, chiefly A System of Logic (2 vol., 1843) and Principles of Political Economy (2 vol., 1848). As head of the examiner's office in India House from 1856 to 1858 he wrote a defense of the company's government of India when the transfer of its powers was proposed. In 1859 he published On Liberty, a trenchant defense of individual freedom. His Utilitarianism (1863) is a closely reasoned attempt to answer objections to his ethical theory and to address misconceptions about it; he was especially insistent that “utility” include the pleasures of the imagination and the gratification of the higher emotions and that his system include a place for settled rules of conduct. In 1869 he published The Subjection of Women (written 1861), now the classical theoretical statement of the case for woman suffrage. Prominent as a publicist in the reforming age of the 19th century, he remains of lasting interest as a logician and ethical theorist. See also Mill's methods.