First published in 1974. As logician, economist, political theorist, practical politician and active champion of social freedom, John Stuart Mill is a figure of continuing importance. In this book the author does full justice to the range of Mill’s achievements, providing an introductory guide to his most important and best known writings including Autobiography, A System of Logic, Utilitarianism, Liberty, and The Subjugation of Women. In their treatment of his works, the author seeks to emphasise Mill’s approach to those issues — education, the conflict between social order and individual freedom, the unresolved state of the social sciences, rights and duties of citizens in a democratic state — which remain most alive to us today. At the same time Mill is seen as part of his own age, responding to the anxieties that beset his contemporaries. This book will be of interest to students of politics and philosophy.
First published in 1974. As logician, economist, political theorist, practical politician and active champion of social freedom, John Stuart Mill is a figure of continuing importance. In this book the author does full justice to the range of Mill’s achievements, providing an introductory guide to his most important and best known writings including Autobiography, A System of Logic, Utilitarianism, Liberty, and The Subjugation of Women. In their treatment of his works, the author seeks to emphasise Mill’s approach to those issues — education, the conflict between social order and individual freedom, the unresolved state of the social sciences, rights and duties of citizens in a democratic state — which remain most alive to us today. At the same time Mill is seen as part of his own age, responding to the anxieties that beset his contemporaries. This book will be of interest to students of politics and philosophy.
First published in 1991, this book attempts to deal with Mill’s thought as a coherent system and tie some elements of his thoughts together. It seeks to show that he developed a set of ethical principles to underlie government intervention and provide a theory as to how it should intervene — which he then applied to practical politics. The first chapters deal with Mill’s doctrine of improvement and what impact the improvement of man has on the social organisation of society. The third chapter deals with Mill’s theory of economic development. The second part of the book deals with policy issues such as the question of the optimal constitution and Mill’s policy proposals for England.
First published in 1991, this book attempts to deal with Mill’s thought as a coherent system and tie some elements of his thoughts together. It seeks to show that he developed a set of ethical principles to underlie government intervention and provide a theory as to how it should intervene — which he then applied to practical politics. The first chapters deal with Mill’s doctrine of improvement and what impact the improvement of man has on the social organisation of society. The third chapter deals with Mill’s theory of economic development. The second part of the book deals with policy issues such as the question of the optimal constitution and Mill’s policy proposals for England.
First published in 1952, British Empirical Philosophers is a comprehensive picture of one of the most important movements in the history of philosophic thought. In his introduction, Professor A. J. Ayer distinguishes the main problems of empiricism and gives a critical account of the ways in which the philosophers whose writings are included in this volume attempted to solve them. Editors Ayer and Raymond Winch bring together an authoritative abridgement of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding; Bishop George Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge; almost the entire first book of David Hume’s Treatise Concerning Human Nature; and extracts from Thomas Reid’s Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man and John Stuart Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy.
First published in 2001, this book sets out to shed light on traditional controversies in Mill scholarship, underscore the significance of the contribution Mill made to associationist psychology, argue he is not entirely successful in explaining why art matters, and that this failure is linked to a deep tension in his mature work — rooted in his unwillingness to shake off the moral psychology he was raised on. The book examines various episodes and tensions in Mill’s life and work and how they relate to and informed his philosophy — while also giving a critical account of it. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy.
First published in 1991, The Greatest Happiness Principle traces the history of the theory of utility, starting with the Bible, and running through Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus. It goes on to discuss the utilitarian theories of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill in detail, commenting on the latter’s view of the Christianity of his day and his optimal socialist society. The book argues that the key theory of utility is fundamentally concerned with happiness, stating that happiness has largely been left out of discussions of utility. It also goes on to argue that utility can be used as a moral theory, ultimately posing the question, what is happiness?
Liberalisms, a work first published in 1989, provides a coherent and comprehensive analytical guide to liberal thinking over the past century and considers the dominance of liberal thought in Anglo-American political philosophy over the past 20 years. John Gray assesses the work of all the major liberal political philosophers including J. S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, Karl Popper, F. A Hayek, John Rawls and Robert Nozick, and explores their mutual connections and differences.
Jeremy Bentham, the father of utilitarianism, not only created a philosophical system which sought a rational solution to the problems of ethics, but was also concerned with the practical application of his theories to social reforms, administration, education and the law. This reissued volume represents a comprehensive collection of essays on Bentham’s work from J. S. Mill to the year of the book’s first publication in 1974. The wide range of Bentham’s concern and the varied reactions he provoked are well represented by the essays in this volume. It begins with Mill’s famous appraisal of the virtues and deficiencies of the theory that had so much influence on his own, followed by the criticisms of perhaps the ablest of Bentham’s (and Mill’s) contemporary opponents, William Whewell. Bentham’s psychology and analysis of human motivation is dealt with by John Watson, and in the editor’s own essay on the thorny problem of the justification of the principle of utility, the whole question of the link between specific human desires and the general desire for pleasure is examined as a psychological as well as a logical problem. The seldom-considered subject of Bentham’s logic and the way in which he anticipates in some respects the work of Frege and Wittgenstein is considered by H. L. A. Hart, who has also contributed a paper on the question of sovereignty. Bentham’s Political Fallacies is examined by Professor Burns, and the Constitutional Code and its projection of Bentham’s ideal republic as considered by Thomas Peardon makes interesting reading in the light of David Robert’s analysis of the impact Bentham had on the Victorian administrative state. Finally, there is Wesley C. Mitchell’s interesting paper on the notorious felicific calculus. The editor has written an extensive introduction which will prove useful not only to those unfamiliar with Bentham’s writings but to those acquainted with only one aspect of his work. Philosophers, jurists and political scientists should all find something of interest in this collection.
Mill is usually thought of as an eclectic and unsystematic writer, whose views on freedom contradict his views on moral right and wrong, whose views on causation contradict his views on syllogistic inference and so on. Alan Ryan, however, demonstrates that Mill both saw his views as part of a systematic defence of empiricist epistemology and utilitarian ethics, and was to a large extent successful in offering a coherent and connected defence of this system. Mill aimed to show that we could possess a knowledge of individual and social human nature equal to our knowledge of the material world; the point of showing this was to erect on the science of human nature a utilitarian ethics in which freedom and self-realisation for as many people as possible could be achieved. Written at a time when John Stuart Mill was beginning to be taken seriously as a philosopher who provided more than a storehouse of errors for student philosophers to cut their teeth on, The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill was unusual in insisting on the systematic character of Mill's philosophy. From the philosophy of mathematics to the defence of individual liberty, Mill attacked the prevailing 'intuitive' theories and put a subtle empiricism in their place. Since the first edition of this acclaimed study in 1970, many writers have contributed to a more systematic understanding of Mill's programme for philosophy, ethics and social science, and Alan Ryan's preface to the second edition briefly assesses the way Mill appeared in this later climate of opinion.
