John Stuart Mill and the Pursuit of Virtue (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 42t questioning. The latter are those which would have to be in effect if the kind of experience being explored were to be actual. The phenomenological dialectic turns out then to be a dialogue in which natural consciousness is first questioned to see what it takes to be presupposed by the experience in which it dwells, and then these putative presuppositions are questioned to see if they would actually make possible that mode of experience. The failure of putative presuppositions to be the actual presuppositions required at any given stage, combined with the reformulation of the inadequate assumptions to correct the defect discovered through reflection gives rise to dialectical movement. By paying strict attention to this method throughout his exposition, Flay gives more than the usual lip service to the positive link between absolute idealism and the natural attitude of pre-philosophical consciousness. The result is an interpretation which is deeply sympathetic to Hegel's account of his project and filled with interpretations which are not only fresh and insightful hut regularly in touch with everyday experience. No summary of these could give an adequate sense of their richness. But in the final analysis, Flay finds the Hegelian argument to fail. The only internal critique that could be made of his project, as interpreted by Flay, would be to show that the natural attitude makes a presupposition which Hegel has not examined and which cannot be sustained upon examination. Flay claims to identify just such a supposition, shared not only by natural consciousness but also by the philosophical tradition and the Phenomenology itself. In common sense terms, that assumption is that the world is a whole and makes sense as a whole. Put more technically, it is that the referents for the principle or ground of totality and the principle or ground of intelligibility are one and the same. But while experience always implies a totality, even if it is never given, the intelligibility of our thought and action is irreducibly plural and the many frameworks of intelligibility are not continuous with each other. Flay seeks to show how this reading of our experience leads to a non-nihilistic relativism typical of several post-Hegelian thinkers, especially Jaspers. Actually Flay has written two books. The second consists of 143 pages of notes discussing the interpretations of Hegel to be found in 543 books and articles, with special attention to the interpretations of Becker, Findlay, Heinrichs, Hyppolite, Labarriere, Lauer, Navickas, Taylor, and Westphal. Flay's dialogue of appreciation and disagreement with these and other interpreters is a valuable component of a book which will prove invaluable in the study of Hegel. MEROLD WESTPHAL Hope College Bernard Semmel. John Stuart Mill and thePursuit of Virtue. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. Pp. xi + ~x~. $x7.5o. Professor Bernard Semmel writes as a historian of ideas and argues that John Stuart Mill's emphasis on virtue is crucial to an understanding of his liberalism. As in the myth of Hercules at the crossroads, Mill's philosophic life involved the choice between 422 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 24" 5 JULY 1986 the pursuit of virtue and material happiness. According to Semmel, Mill's preference for virtue also constituted a commitment to free will as opposed to the necessitarian doctrines of the nineteenth century. Thus, Semmel argues, Mill's ur.ilitarianism emphasizes character and development of the "inner" person; and this emphasis on virtue shapes Mill's liberalism, as is evident from Mill's views on sexual equality, capital punishment, and suffrage. Finally, all this is said to reveal a more "conservative" Mill than the stereotypical liberals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the interest of accessibility for a "wider readership" Semmel eschews "the special methods of analysis and discussion of political theorists and philosophers," and he adopts "the less-technical approach of the historian of ideas" (ix). Semmel's reliance on correspondence and lesser-known writings reveals interesting features of Mill's relationship to his contemporaries, especially Comte and Saint-Simon. As an interpretation of Mill, however, Semmel's "less-technical approach" does not obviously serve him well. The central argument of the book is often unclear or inaccurate...