Mill John Stuart - John Stuart Mill

EDITOR: TED HONDERICH

The purpose of this series is to provide a contemporary assessment and history of the entire course of philosophical thought. Each book constitutes a detailed, critical introduction to the work of a philosopher of major influence and significance.

Plato J.C.B.Gosling

Augustine Christopher Kirwan

The Presocratic Philosophers Jonathan Barnes

Plotinus Lloyd P.Gerson

The Sceptics R.J.Hankinson

Socrates Gerasimos Xenophon Santas

Berkeley George Pitcher

Descartes Margaret Dauler Wilson

Hobbes Tom Sorell

Locke Michael Ayers

Spinoza R.J.Delahunty

Bentham Ross Harrison

Hume Barry Stroud

Butler Terence Penelhum

John Stuart Mill John Skorupski

Thomas Reid Keith Lehrer

Kant Ralph C.S.Walker

Hegel M.J.Inwood

Schopenhauer D.W.Hamlyn

Kierkegaard Alastair Hannay

Nietzsche Richard Schacht

Karl Marx Allen W.Wood

Gottlob Frege Hans D.Sluga

Meinong Reinhardt Grossmann

Husserl David Bell

G.E.Moore Thomas Baldwin

Wittgenstein Robert J.Fogelin

Russell Mark Sainsbury

William James Graham Bird

Peirce Christopher Hookway

Santayana Timothy L.S.Sprigge

Dewey J.E.Tiles

Bergson A.R.Lacey

J.L.Austin G.J.Warnock

Karl Popper Anthony OHear

Ayer John Foster

Sartre Peter Caws

London and New York

John Stuart Mill looms in the central massif of nineteenth century thought; one of its highest peaks, gaunt in appearance, cloud-capped, chilly. The outline casts its shadow on lower hillsit is regularly used to take bearings on thembut climbers on its high ridges remain few.

The same could be said of other major nineteenth-century philosophers; we are only slowly beginning to take stock of their legacy, and to locate ourselves, as the heroic phase of twentieth-century philosophy recedes, in relation to it. But it is particularly true, I think in the case of Mill. Though his reputation continues to revive, there is still no accurate revaluation of the most fundamental points in his philosophy. Yet his questions, his answers, and their difficulties are all readily understandable in todays perspective. Not every vast nineteenth-century canvas repays the painstaking work of restoration, but in this case the result is incisive and fresh.

This book traces Mills arguments, tests their strength and suggests alternatives. Some of it, inevitably, enters into complicated detail, but I have tried to keep the larger picture in view. In the first chapter I sketch out the main themes of Mills philosophical thought. There is an impressive steadiness and scope in Mills vision; he tackles very big themes right out in the open, for an audience of intelligent readers; he tries to bring pure philosophy into contact with life and thought.

Anyone who does that runs the dangers of pontificating, spreading himself too thinly, hurrying over difficult issues too quickly. Mill can be absolved of none of these things. And it must be confessed that there is something glacial about the philosopher as public figure. Mill fits into no cosy group, no shared esoteric languagebut neither does he cast himself as the romantic outsider, observing human society from the desert or the bush. His chosen role is to educate the serious-minded; his philosophical stance is numbingly comprehensive, lucid and systematic. He magisterially treats of mind, society, politics, economics, culture. If Bacon wrote philosophy like a Lord Chancellor, Mill all too often writes it like a self-appointed Royal Commission.

The grand manner risks sounding hollowespecially when expressed in plain and sober prose which mercilessly exposes bits of mere blur or filling. Some of Mills more substantive political writings suffer badly from a lack of the nuance and self-irony which attractive political writing needs. They generate horror Victorianorum. But his more purely philosophical works are saved by their incisiveness and humanity. There is little pot-boiling in them; they are packed with crisp argument. We can learn a great deal from these arguments, but it is from Mills strategic vision that we have most to learnexpecially about the necessary relations between philosophy, culture and politics.

Mill is very English. The English tradition of the philosopher and practical man of sense, and the English paradox of the conservative radical, go far to explain the strengths and weaknesses of his mind. Like Locke or Butler he values intelligibility above laboriously achieved precision. He is humane and balanced rather than playful and ingenious, incisive and strategic rather than carefully worked-over and exact. Another comparison would be with George Orwell: Mill has the same conservative radicalism, centring on hatred of domination but fear of the atomised human mass, the same liking for honest language, the same wistfully prosaic mind. He liked to lecture his compatriots about the virtues of continental thought, but it was from the island of Albion that he did so.

This is no provincialism: the resources of the English intellectual and moral tradition gave Mill the strength and materials to write earnestly and simply and to encounter continental ideas on equal terms. It was another Englishman, Bishop Butler, who spoke of the uniformity of thought and design, which will always be found in the writings of the same person, when he writes with simplicity and in earnest (Butler 1970:16): that uniformity is found in Mill.

The layout of this book is determined by four of Mills works: the