The Socratic Origins of John Stuart Mill’s “Art of Life”

Abstract

John Stuart Mill’s attempt to expand the theory of his utilitarian predecessors has led scholars to brand him as inconsistent, confused, and even illogical. However, in challenging these traditional representations of Mill, revisionist interpretations have made use of Mill’s sketch of an “Art of Life,” which appeared in his A System of Logic (London, 1843), to put forward an “enlarged” theory of utility that was consistent with his theory of liberty. As a result, due to a narrow focus on the connection of Mill’s “Art of Life” to crucial arguments in Utilitarianism (London, 1861–3) and On Liberty (London, 1859), its ancient Greek echoes have been widely ignored - even when Mill’s Greco-philia is duly noted.1 To this effect, first, I briefly examine how the “Art of Life” came to be discussed in the last pages of Mill’s Logic; second, I explore the ancient Greek notion of an “Art of Living” third, I turn to the textual connections between the Platonic “political art” and Mill’s “Art of Life; and, lastly, I proceed to reconstruct Mill’s “Art of Life” by discussing Alan Ryan’s, Jonathan Riley’s, and Wendy Donner’s influential interpretations.