Mill, John Stuart

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MILL, JOHN STUART

MILL, JOHN STUART (1806–1873), British philosopher.

John Stuart Mill was the most influential British philosopher of the nineteenth century. He made significant contributions to philosophy, economics, political theory, and women's liberation.

Mill was born on 20 May 1806 at Pentonville, London. His father was James Mill (1773–1836), an important philosopher in his own right, as well as a prominent leader of the Philosophic Radicals, the author of A History of India, and a high-ranking employee of the East India Company. The Philosophic Radicals was a political group intent upon reforming all aspects of British society in the transition from a feudal and agrarian economy to an industrial economy. They generally opposed the conservative Tory landholders, the Church of England, and slavery. Under the influence of Adam Smith (1723–1790) and David Ricardo (1772–1823) they advocated free trade. They also advocated birth control and education as means of improving the condition of the working class. The other prominent leader of the Philosophic Radicals and a family friend was Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832).

Both James Mill and Bentham exercised an enormous influence over Mill.

James Mill had adopted the Enlightenment view that a carefully controlled environment, especially in education, could mold human beings to achieve extraordinary heights. These educational views were rigidly imposed on Mill who, in his Autobiography, describes his remarkable intellectual achievements. By the time he was sixteen, he had read and studied practically everything now considered part of a classical liberal education. Mill also developed from this rigorous training a keen analytical mind and the virtue of being highly self-critical in the Socratic sense. At the same time, Mill describes the negative effects of this educational system: a total emotional dependence upon his father, and a starved emotional life. Mill was involved in editing Bentham's writings and as a result became an early proselytizer of the Philosophic Radical position.

Mill briefly studied law with another neighbor, the famous jurist Charles Austin, but at the age of sixteen Mill entered the employment of the East India Company under his father's watchful eye. He remained in the employ of the Company until its dissolution in 1858, having succeeded to his father's position as chief examiner. He was responsible for correspondence with high-ranking Indian civil servants. The Company during Mill's tenure was concerned largely with the administration of India. His position, along with his self-discipline, allowed him to maintain a prolific writing career and correspondence.

From 1826 to 1830 Mill underwent a severe personal crisis. Part of it was intellectual, in that he came to see the shortcomings of the positions that James Mill and Bentham so prominently advocated. Part of it was psychological, as he struggled to achieve independence from his father's domination. Part of it was emotional, as he sought to fill the emotional vacuum of his early educational upbringing.

Four things enabled Mill to resolve his crisis. First, he read and met prominent Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth (1770–1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), initially through his friendship with the poet John Sterling (1806–1844). Second, he was exposed to Continental thought, especially the works of Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) through another close relationship this time with Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881). Carlyle also encouraged Mill's critique of the thought of James Mill and Bentham. Third, Mill met and fell in love with Harriet Taylor (1807–1858) in 1831 through his association with a Unitarian group under the leadership of William Fox. What ensued was a celibate but scandalous romantic relationship that lasted until the death of Taylor's husband in 1849 and the subsequent marriage of Mill and Taylor in 1851. Harriet Taylor Mill exercised an enormous influence on Mill, comparable to that of his father, but more positive. In addition to encouraging the cause of women's liberation, she helped Mill gain a deeper appreciation of perhaps his most important idea, personal autonomy.

In 1835 Mill became the nominal editor of the London Review, the official organ of the Philosophic Radicals meant to rival the Whig Edinburgh Review. The fourth crucial event in Mill's own liberation was the death of his father, James Mill, in 1836. From 1836 to 1840 Mill was the owner and editor of the London and Westminster Review. During that time he published two significant reviews of the two volumes of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1835 and 1840). It was during this time that Mill was heavily influenced by the conservative views of Carlyle and Coleridge, and he tried to use his editorship to achieve a new synthesis, both intellectual and political, of both liberal and conservative views. By his own admission he failed. It was during this time that he wrote two essays, one on Coleridge and the other on Bentham, the latter serving both as a stinging critique of the views of the Philosophic Radicals and a catharsis.

Mill achieved fame in 1843 with the publication of A System of Logic. In addition to its discussion of technical topics in philosophy, it expressed both the hope and the limitations of producing a social science that could be the basis of sound public policy. The work was influenced by a long correspondence with Auguste Comte (1798–1857). Mill would eventually renounce his relationship with Comte because of the latter's views on the inherent inferiority of women, a narrow positivism, and what Mill saw as the totalitarian implications of positivism.

Mill achieved even greater fame in 1848 with the publication of the Principles of Political Economy, which dealt with all of the economic, social, and political problems created by an industrial and market economy. The work became the standard text in economics for the next fifty years.

Harriet Taylor Mill died in 1858. Thereafter Mill published a series of essays to honor her memory: "On Liberty" (1859), which was heavily influenced by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835); "Considerations on Representative Government" (1861); and "Utilitarianism" (1863). Mill served in Parliament (1865–1867), where he was generally supportive of William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898), and he was elected rector of St. Andrews University (1866). Stefan Collini has characterized his life as that of a public intellectual, a man who, like Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) and others, saw himself as the Socratic questioner of Victorian England's fundamental beliefs. After Harriet's death, Mill spent much time at Avignon in a house overlooking the cemetery where they are now both buried. Among his social acquaintances at this time were John Russell, Lord Amberley (1842–1876) (for whose son, Bertrand Russell [1872–1870], Mill stood as godfather), Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), and John Morley (1838–1923). He published The Subjection of Women in 1869. His carefully orchestrated posthumous publications include the Autobiography (1873), Nature, the Utility of Religion, Theism, Being Three Essays on Religion (1874), and Chapters on Socialism (1891). Mill died at Avignon on 8 May 1873.

Just about every aspect of Mill's thought is subject to scholarly debate. For many years Mill's works System of Logic and Political Economy achieved textbook status in British universities, but this was followed by a long period in which Mill became a straw man accused of multiple inconsistencies. Late-twentieth and early-twenty-first-century scholarship has stressed the continuity in his work (Fred Berger, John Gray, John Robson, and Alan Ryan), the periodization of his work (Gertrude Himmelfarb), or the historical development in his work (Nicholas Capaldi). In philosophy he has generally been viewed as the inheritor of the British Empirical tradition that originated with John Locke (1632–1704) and David Hume (1711–1776) (T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and John Skorupski), but later he was interpreted as a Romantic and precursor of idealism (Bernard Semmel and Capaldi). In ethics he was routinely characterized as a simplistic utilitarian follower of Bentham (G. E. Moore), but later scholarship emphasized his sophistication (J. O. Urmson) and distance from utilitarianism. With regard to religion, he has been identified as an atheistic follower and advocate of Comte's religion of humanity (Linda Raeder), but others see Mill as a sincere progressive (Eldon J. Eisenach, Robert DeVigne). In politics, he has been widely hailed as the epitome of liberalism (C.L. Ten and Nancy Rosenblum), as a consistent proponent of democracy (J.H. Burns), and as someone who never abandoned radicalism (Alan Ryan and William Thomas); but others (Maurice Cowling, Joseph Hamburger, and Shirley Letwin) see Mill as an elitist authoritarian. Until the publication of the work of Lynn Zastoupil in the 1980s there was little discussion of Mill's views on colonialism.

Much controversy surrounds Mill's economic views, with some seeing him as a kind of socialist (R. Ashcraft, Jonathan Riley; Himmelfarb claims this is true only under Harriet's influence), while others view him as a defender of capitalism (Pedro Schwartz, Samuel Hollander, and Lewis Feuer). Mill's relationship with members and leaders of the working class (aside from Feuer) needs more work. In social philosophy, he has been criticized for encouraging a destructive form of self-expression (Willmore Kendall and Himmelfarb) and hailed for defending a sophisticated form of autonomy (Capaldi). Mill's views on women's issues has been criticized by some feminists (Julia Annas and S. M. Okin) and praised by others (Ruth Abbey, Wendy Donner, and Mary Lyndon Shanley).

There is of course endless fascination with Mill's life and his relationship with Harriet. The Autobiography has been treated by Bruce Mazlish as a form of psychohistory; Janice Carlyle raises important questions about the truthfulness of the whole; Capaldi treats it as a self-conscious exercise in Bildung. The relationship with Harriet has been viewed as negligible (Alexander Bain, Mill's first biographer), and as substantial (F. A. Hayek and Michael St. John Packe); her influence has been described as negligible (H. O. Pappe), as negative (Himmelfarb), and as positive (Capaldi and Jo Ellen Jacobs).

The Collected Works in thirty-three volumes, including extensive correspondence with many major nineteenth-century figures, was edited by John Robson and published by the University of Toronto Press (1980–1991). Nicholas Capaldi published a biography on Mill in 2004; older useful biographies include works by Alexander Bain and Michael St. John Packe.