James Mill Research Articles

Religion Against Violence: Insights of Contemporary Philosophy and Eastern Patristics

This article examines the concepts of violence and religion as social phenomena of modernity. Religion and the church are presented not as specific organizations or denominations, but as important social institutions and are reflected in philosophical and anthropological terms. I carry out the idea that religion as a modern social institute in cooperation with other social communities can resist violence, especially its aggressive forms. Based on some philosophical theories, the causes of the emergence of the different forms of social violence, as well as definitions of violence, are explored. In this context, the article presents the ideas of Hanna Arendt, Carl von Clausewitz, Bertrand de Jouvenel, James Mill, and Max Weber. Special attention is paid to the conception of the mimetic origin of aggression and violence in “primitive” or “archaic religions” elaborated by the French philosopher René Girard. He compares the social roots of aggression and violence in these religions with the Biblical ones and prefers the latter for their potential in preventing and overcoming the imitation types of violence. Girard’s anthropological justification of the mentioned historical religious traditions is presented. A significant part of the paper is devoted to the views of the Eastern Church Fathers of Early Christianity, considered in the concurrence of their humanistic ideas with those of noted contemporary philosophers. I see meaningful ideas for preventing extreme forms of violence and aggression in the contemporary world in the doctrines of the Early Eastern and Byzantine Fathers, especially those of the classical patristic period. In this regard, this article presents the anthropological and humanistic teachings of Athanasius the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, Maximus the Confessor, and John of Damascus. The Early Church Fathers’ ideas are analyzed from a philosophical point of view, as having rational and anthropological grounds which are relevant for the present day’s human existence.

Development of political and legal ideas regarding the concept of protective democracy

The article examines the evolution of the concept of protective democracy and ways of its implementation in political and legal practice. It is emphasized that in the course of historical development, the concept of democracy as one of the oldest means of organizing political power underwent significant changes caused by the evolution of society, legal and political systems, which affected its interpretation and implementation. The ideas that arose around this concept were studied, considering them from different perspectives - from historical to modern. It is shown that the primary and consolidated ideas about protective democracy arose at the turn of the XVII-XVIII centuries, when democracy began to be considered as a means by which citizens can protect themselves from excessive state control. It is noted that in the process of formation of the concept of protective democracy, political and legal ideas about the right to vote as a tool for the implementation of government accountability played a significant role, since democratic institutions and procedures need protection from abuse of power to ensure their stability and effectiveness. It is emphasized that the right to vote, as a key element of democracy, plays a significant role in this concept, as it is the main mechanism for expressing the will of the people and establishing the accountability of the government to the citizens. It is noted that ensuring wide access to voting ensures a higher level of government legitimacy and reduces the likelihood of its authoritarian tendencies. It is shown that political and legal ideas about the right to vote played a key role in the formation of the concept of protective democracy, emphasizing the need to protect and support this fundamental right to ensure the stability and effectiveness of democratic systems. Attention is paid to the contribution to the concept of defensive democracy by such outstanding thinkers and politicians as John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill and James Madison. The implementation of certain aspects of protective democracy in the US Constitution is considered, and attention is drawn to the role of the republican form of government in this context. Certain milestones in the development of the concept of protective democracy in the 20th century are shown, as well as some ideas regarding this issue in the 21st century, namely the types of protective democracy and its identification as an indirect form of democracy, are explored. Characteristic features of protective democracy and its definition are proposed.

“The Teacher of Teachers”: James Mill and the Education of John Stuart Mill

AbstractJohn Stuart Mill's account of his education in Autobiography (1873) is typically sifted through three interrelated sets of polarities: nurture/nature; reason/emotion; authority/autonomy. First, the father tried to mold the son's development towards a specific ideal, curbing his spontaneous growth. Second, James relentlessly sharpened John Stuart's analytical prowess to the almost total neglect of his emotional needs. Third, the authoritarianism involved in the design and execution of James Mill's curriculum rendered John Stuart Mill incapable of autonomy. This article argues that the dualities of nurture/nature and reason/emotion are not unambiguous, though ever-present in the reception of the younger Mill's education. Widening our perspective in their examination opens the possibility of a different assessment of that famous education being no education for autonomy.

The Making of J. S. Mill'sCollected Works, and Its Aftermath

AbstractIn 1973, a conference was held in Toronto to mark the bicentenary of James Mill's birth and the centenary of John Stuart Mill's death. By that time, Toronto had emerged as the centre of Mill studies. Between 1963 and 1973, the University of Toronto Press had published, in a scholarly edition, eleven volumes of Mill'sCollected works. A further twenty-two volumes would appear in the eighteen years that followed. Only two of the nine presenters at the 1973 conference were members of a Philosophy Department. Philosophers had a modest part in the production of Mill'sCollected works. Yet, philosophers came to dominate Mill studies in the decades after the Mill edition wrapped up in 1991. Philosophers contributed ten of the fourteen essays featured inThe Cambridge companion to Mill(1998), edited by John Skorupski. Philosophers constituted twenty-six of the thirty-seven contributors toA companion to Mill(2017), published by Wiley Blackwell and edited by Christopher Macleod and Dale E. Miller. This communication explains the relative unimportance of philosophers in the creation of theCollected works, and comments on the forces shaping the subsequent pre-eminence of philosophers in Mill studies.

‘A great pedestrian’: John Stuart Mill, the Walking Philosopher

Abstract Walking was an essential part of John Stuart Mill’s education, working life, and leisure. As a boy, James Mill schooled his son on daily walks; as an adult, Mill made an 11-mile round trip across London on foot to work and back each day; for recreation he went on walking tours; his passion for botany led him to walk regularly in rural Britain; later in life he undertook walking tours across France, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Mill, in short, was ‘a great pedestrian’. But this aspect of his life remains under appreciated by historians. By combining insights from the history of emotions, cultural history, and cultural geography, with the burgeoning literature on the significance of walking, this article will demonstrate that Mill’s walking – including where he walked, and how he walked – is not only worthy of attention, but can help us to better understand both his identity and his thought. The article not only connects Mill to the peripatetic and romantic pedestrian traditions, but also seeks to demonstrate that walking aided the process, and helped to shape the content, of Mill’s philosophy. In particular, the article argues that an appreciation of Mill’s walking can contribute to the development of a new perspective on the thorny question of Mill’s understanding of higher and lower pleasures.

Exports and Economic Growth Nexus: The Case of Pakistan

The theoretical association between trade and economic growth has been discussed for over two centuries. However, controversy still persists regarding their real effects. The favourable arguments with respect to trade can be traced back to the classical school of economic thought that started with Adam Smith and subsequently enriched by the work of Ricardo, Torrens, James Mill and John Stuart Mill in the first part of the nineteenth century. Since then the justification for free trade and the various and indisputable benefits that international specialisation brings to the productivity of nations have been widely discussed in the economic literature [Bhagwati (1978) and Krueger (1978)]. The suitability of trade policy-import substitution or export promotion—for growth and development has been also debated in the literature. In 1950s and 1960s, most of the developing countries followed import substitution (IS) policies for the economic growth. The proponents of the IS policy stress upon the need for developing countries (LDCs) to evolve their own style of development and to control their own destiny [Todaro and Smith (2003), p. 556]. Since the mid-1970s, in most developing countries, there has been considerable shift towards export promotion strategy (EP). 1 This approach postulates that export expansion leads to better resource allocation, creating economies of scale and production efficiency through technological development, capital formation, and employment generation.

Reconceptualizing the Global Transformation of Islam in the Colonial Period: Early Islamic Reform in British-Ruled India and Egypt

Abstract Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European empires extended their rule over most of the Muslim world. The present article argues that these empires promoted three interrelated political discourses; namely, a discourse on utilitarianism, a discourse on civilizational progress, and a discourse on liberal imperialism. The empires also encouraged Islamic reform movements, which entailed cooperation between Muslim thinkers, European officials, liberal intellectuals, and Orientalists. Reform movements legitimated the three aforementioned discourses in terms of premodern Islamic religious concepts (e.g. ʿaql, maṣlaḥa, maqāṣid al-šarīʿa, iǧtihād, taqlīd). These concepts were reinterpreted and tacitly linked to imperial policies concerning race, technology, industrial capitalism, and authoritarian violence. The article examines this process by considering the British Empire, and its relationship to Islamic reform projects in India and Egypt. The article discusses nineteenth century British political discourses as developed in the writings of Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer. The article then discusses Islamic reform in India, focusing on the Muslim thinkers Sayyid Aḥmad Ḫān and Amīr ʿAlī, as well as their relationships with British figures like William Muir and John Strachey. Next the article discusses Islamic reform in Egypt, focusing on the Muslim thinkers Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Rašīd Riḍā as well as their relationships with British figures like Lord Cromer and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt.

Alienation and action in the young Marx, Aristotle, and Arendt

Alienation and action in the young Marx, Aristotle, and Arendt

“I profess to have made no discovery”. James Mill on comparative advantage

During recent decades, David Ricardo’s ideas on international trade have been submitted to new scrutiny. This research has led to a new understanding of the so-called ‘principle of comparative advantage’ and shown that the alleged ‘Ricardian’ model of foreign trade is based on a misunderstanding of Ricardo’s text. The present paper focuses on the role of James Mill in the creation of the Ricardian vulgate. It shows how the evolution of Mill’s thought, in part due to a didactic perspective and some difficulties raised by his numerical examples, distorted Ricardo’s approach. In Mill we find all the ingredients of what is called the ‘Ricardian’ model of foreign trade, substituting an ex-ante perspective for Ricardo’s ex-post approach.

Time's Monster: History, conscience and the British Empire by Priya Satia

Reviewed by: Time's Monster: History, conscience and the British Empire by Priya Satia Angus Mitchell Time's Monster: History, conscience and the British Empire By Priya Satia. London: Allen Lane, 2020. The essential thesis of this illuminating and timely study unpacks the complicity between historians and empire. Priya Satia considers how history as a formation of knowledge is instrumentalised to both shape and defend the reputation and conscience of liberal progress and the violent excesses of colonial power. She sets out to challenge historical traditions and unearth motive forces of history sustaining imperialism and capitalist realism. In making this argument she exposes, often in deeply unsettling ways, the ethical confusion at the core of British imperial thought and the Enlightenment concepts of universal human experience. Since her first monograph, Spies in Arabia (2008), Satia has established herself as a historian of extraordinary insight and intellectual originality. In that book, she considered the rise of Britain's covert empire in the Middle East and the role of a group of scholar-spies "who thought with and through history" (9). In her second book, Empire of Guns (2018), about the Quaker gunmaker, Samuel Galton, she looked at how the pre-eminence of British industrial capitalism was built upon an arms industry that fuelled growth and expansion and placed the industrial-military complex at the epicentre of Britain's economy. In Time's Monster, Satia revisits some of her earlier arguments to interrogate the relationship between time, history and conscience. Who has the right to make and shape history? How can we think beyond the limits of history? How has the "Great Man" harnessed his sense of hubris and atonement to historical discourse to justify his motives, actions and crimes? The title also has echoes in Antonio Gramsci's axiom: "The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters." Beginning with analysis of the emergence of history from "the eschatological structures of religious belief" (27) and the Enlightenment view of history as the narrative of progress, the argument moves into the confrontation between imperialism and anticolonial nationalisms. Theories of history proliferated during the nineteenth century. Historians were both public moralists and soothsayers. In the twentieth century, as history and secrecy were increasingly entangled, so an "occultist" element was pioneered by Gertrude Bell and T.E. Lawrence through the fusion of intelligence-gathering and archaeology. It is no coincidence that many of the principal architects of empire from the late nineteenth century lived parallel lives as historians. Historymaking and history-writing became inextricable. A comparative element to this study is achieved through analysis of those who stood up to empire: the antihistorical narratives of the subaltern sensibility. Poetry became an important conveyor of counter histories able to inspire people to act against the grain. The imagination of Urdu, Ghandar and Irish poets sought a new matrix of temporality. There is a recurring and sublime metaphor throughout this book of the moon glimpsed through prison bars, an image that crystalises that unending struggle of the downtrodden to break through the blockade of colonial time. Both coloniser and colonised were forced to come to terms with the violent elimination of certain categories of people in the name of evolutionary progress and the structural racism of the imperial imagination. In unpacking historical difference, Satia builds on the Subaltern Studies collective, notably the work of Dipesh Chakrabarty and Ranajit Guha. If historians such as Thomas Macaulay, James Mill and J.R. Seeley are identified as early exemplars of historians who built the liberal illusion of progress, Satia reserves a different criticism for E.P. Thompson. He is upended for his narrow focus on the domestic struggle of the English working class and adopting an "ostrich position vis-á-vis the empire" (260). Thompson's father had made an important anticolonial intervention with The Other Side of the Medal (1925), exposing a "policy of terrorization" (247) underscoring British rule in India. His son, however, steered the British Left away from imperial engagement, thus draining precious energies away from the broader anticolonial struggle. This review was written as Britain's recent defence policy was announced—Global Britain in a Competitive...

The Astonishing Conclusion of the Attribution Debate on the Law of Comparative Advantage

The recent demystification of David Ricardo’s famous numerical example in chapter 7 of the Principles bears important implications for the longstanding attribution debate on the law of comparative advantage. It has now become apparent that neither Ricardo nor Smith had anything to do with it. In reality, they both adhered to the classical rule for specialization, allegedly refuted by the law of comparative advantage. The unfounded belief in the existence of this so-called law gradually grew out of the confusion created by John Stuart Mill’s misreading of the purpose, content and implications of Ricardo’s four numbers. As shown in the paper, J. S. Mill, James Mill and Robert Torrens also always adhered to the classical rule for specialization. Thus, the law of comparative advantage is nothing more than an illusion, so no one should be credited for it.

Victorian Liberalism and Material Culture: Synergies of Thought and Place, by Kevin A. Morrison

Reviewed by: Victorian Liberalism and Material Culture: Synergies of Thought and Place by Kevin A. Morrison Barbara Leckie (bio) Victorian Liberalism and Material Culture: Synergies of Thought and Place, by Kevin A. Morrison; pp. x + 276. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018, £80.00, £24.99 paper. Kevin Morrison’s Victorian Liberalism and Material Culture: Synergies of Thought and Place explores the role of “architectural space and decorative interiors” in the development of nineteenth-century liberal thought in John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, John Morley, and Robert Browning (3). It is an unlikely focus. While liberalism is many different things for different thinkers, to focus on how these figures “depended on their emplacement in specific workspaces and how the materiality of these sites inflected their thinking” is not an obvious move (21). But the book does an excellent job of convincing the skeptical reader of the merit of Morrison’s approach. The introductory chapter, “Frames of Mind,” reviews Morrison’s approach to liberalism in the context of authors’ workspaces. He is alert to the elasticity of Victorian liberalism and to the vexing evidential problems posed by material culture analysis: here, of the rooms through which his subjects walked, the views from their windows, the objects they held. For Morrison the “frame” signifies both the corporeal frame of the human subject and the architectural frame of the house or workplace, emphases that enable Morrison’s reading of embodied action (human frames) in space (architectural and material frames). While Victorian liberalism has been much discussed, the ways in which workspaces shaped some of its proponents’ key ideas, Morrison argues, has been overlooked. The first chapter, on Mill, begins with an elaboration on India House and the impact of James Mill’s thinking on his son not only in terms of his much-discussed and idiosyncratic parenting principles (characterized by a form of determinism against which liberalism would come to define itself) but also by their shared experience at India House. The material space of the building and the ways in which, “through habitual use, it contributed to the dispositional knowledge of its occupants” is Morrison’s focus, although a considerable portion of the chapter also addresses imperialism (29). Mill’s appreciation for public debate, the private liberal individual, and the organic working of wholes were all shaped by his India House career, Morrison argues, as he moved through the ranks [End Page 678] from clerk with a crowded, shared office to senior administrator with a large and private office (in which he paced as he developed his ideas). While chapter 1 mentions Mill’s membership in the Athenaeum in passing, for Arnold, gaining access to this prestigious club was “epochal” (79). It provided a quiet space otherwise unavailable to him as an inspector of schools and, Arnold claimed, it was the only place where he did “real work” (80). Its Hellenic architecture and ethos shaped Arnold’s ideas; a statue of Apollo, the god of light, greeted Arnold as he climbed the stairs to the generously lit reading room where he wrote much of Culture and Anarchy (1867–68). Morrison argues that the Athenaeum played a “causal” role in Arnold’s intellectual development and that he “derived his ideas about culture, at least in part, from his association with the club” (83). With Morley, we move from the city to the suburbs and into the new Queen Anne– style residence that housed Morley’s family. Influenced by Mill, Morley’s “interiors fostered cultivation of detachment and impersonality,” stressed “deliberation” (133), and defined what Morrison terms his “impersonal domesticity” (134). Morley had considerable say in the location of his home office and its decoration. In this way he differs (as does Browning) from the earlier figures. This chapter also offers a nice example of Morrison’s approach throughout. Morley was known for his departure from decorative norms, preferring white interiors to wallpaper or heavy ornamentation and avoiding the knick-knacks and clutter that we might associate with the overstuffed Victorian interior. Based on print descriptions of the rooms, Morrison imagines Morley as a proto-modernist, adopting minimalist design choices avant la lettre—so it was a surprise when he located photographs of Morley’s...

Painful Subjects

Painful Subjects

Frieden durch Recht und Öffentlichkeit: Die Hoffnungen und Verwirrungen der ersten Utilitaristen

The international thought of the early utilitarian thinkers Jeremy Bentham and James Mill remains little known and largely misunderstood. Most commentators give them a superficial appreciation or criticize their supposed naivety, in both cases mostly assuming that Mill borrowed his thoughts from Bentham's writings alone. This questionable reception overlooks some essential aspects of Bentham's and Mill's extensive reflections on war and peace, in particular their constant effort to overcome the tension between individual freedom and collective security. In reality, the fertile dialogue between the two thinkers gradually crystallized into an independent utilitarian peace theory centered on law and public opinion as instruments of an ambitious reform of international relations according to the principle of utility. They managed to elaborate a fragile synthesis between liberal principles and considerations of political realism, which grants their utilitarian peace theory a singular place in the historical efforts to systematically define the conditions of world peace.

Marx, Say’s Law and Commodity Money

Abstract Under Marx’s critique of Say’s Law, as originally devised by Say and James Mill, money hoarding leads to a shortfall in aggregate demand. This paper responds to a Post Keynesian argument that hoarding does not restrict aggregate demand since for Marx money consists of a produced commodity, and hoarding is just one form of commodity demand. Drawing on Marx’s monetary writings, a new monetary equilibrium is suggested in which produced gold is used to replace wear and tear in circulation. An alternative critique of Say’s Law is thus proposed as a contribution to understanding the complexity of Marx’s monetary foundations.

PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF JAMES MILL (1773–1836) IN THE INTERPRETATION OF FEDOR ZELENOGORSKII (1839–1908)

In the article, a little-studied question of the critical interpretation of the philosophical and psychological position of the representative of Scotland tradition James Mill (1773–1836) in the university philosophy, especially in the work of Kharkiv Professor Fedor Zelenogorskii (1839–1908) is presented. At first, the main periods of scientific and creative career of Fedor Zelenogorskii, including his studying at the Kazan Clerical Academy (1862–1864) and the historical-philosophical faculty at the Kazan University (1864–1868) are considered. Then his scientific internship from 1871 till 1873 in Germany and Switzerland is emphasized. During that period, he attended lectures of such famous Professors as Moritz Drobisch (Leipzig), Eduard Zeller (Heidelberg), Friedrich Albert Lange (Zurich, and Marburg), who was the author of the work “Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart” (1866). Then the features of the teaching and the publications of Fedor Zelenogroskii in his “Kharkiv period” (1874–1908) are pointed out, during which he was, at first, private docent, then extraordinary and ordinary professor of philosophy. Fedor Zelenogorskii’s works at this time comprise three areas: 1) Antique philosophy (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aristippus of Cyrene), 2) works in the history of philosophy, for instance, Kharkiv university philosophy and Ukrainian philosophy (J. B. Schad, A I. Dudrovich, M. N. Protopopov, G. S. Skovoroda, at al.), 3) logic, psychology and pedagogic. In the last group, his doctoral monograph “On mathematical, metaphysical, inductive and critical research and proof methods” (1877) was of great importance. Fedor Zelenogorskii’s very important work was his monograph “Essay of Development of Psychology from Descartes to our Time” (Kharkiv, 1885). The positions of well-known philosophers (Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Berkley, Leibniz, Locke, and John Stewart Mill) and less-known thinkers (Glisson, Bonnet, and James Mill) were here analyzed. Fedor Zelenogorskii’s critical interpretation of the psychological viewpoint of James Mill in his two volumes work “Analysis of the phenomena of the human mind” (1829, 1869) occupies an important place in this analysis. According to him, Chapter III. “The Association of Ideas” of James Mill's work played a key role. James Mill appears here as a representative of associative psychology (David Hartley, Thomas Brown, J. F. Herbart, John Stewart Mill). The Kharkiv philosopher gave credit to James Mill for his contribution to the development of the causal law in Chapter “XXIV. The Will” of this work. In turn, Fedor Zelenogorskii’s important achievement was the popularization of the ideas of the Scotland philosopher and psychologist James Mill, in particular, because of his translation of extracts from the work “Analysis of the phenomena of the human mind”.

Men in the Home: Everyday Practices of Gender in Twentieth-Century India

Feminist Studies 46, no. 2. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 403 Gyanendra Pandey Men in the Home: Everyday Practices of Gender in Twentieth-Century India This article responds to a call by feminist historians of South Asia to attend to the “complex experience of family” as conditioned by age, gender, and class, and the ordinary “daily practices of gender” in the domestic arena.1 My essay focuses on the comparatively neglected aspect of men’s domesticity—their performance of life in the home—as revealed in the writings and practices of prominent nationalist thinkers and activists who lived and worked in an era of militant anticolonial agitation in India. The domestic sphere, with its assigned gender roles and routines, was at the heart of major debates between the colonizers and the colonized about the meaning of culture and enlightenment. “Among rude people, the women are generally degraded; among civilized people they are exalted,” James Mill declared, in his classic statement on domestic manners .2 From Mill, writing in the second decade of the nineteenth century , to Katherine Mayo in the third decade of the twentieth, colonialist 1. Indrani Chatterjee, introduction to Unfamiliar Relations: Family and History in South Asia, ed. Indrani Chatterjee (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), 4; Mrinalini Sinha, “A Global Perspective on Gender: What’s South Asia Got to Do with It?” in South Asian Feminisms, ed. Ania Loomba and Ritty A. Lukose (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 359. 2. James Mill, The History of British India, 4th ed. (1817), edited by H. H. Wilson, vol. 1 (London: James Madden, 1848), 309. 404 Gyanendra Pandey writers dredged up the condition of women, familial relations, and domestic life in India to demonstrate the necessity of colonialist-initiated improvement and reform.3 Colonial rule thus provided the impetus for “a thoroughgoing re-evaluation of Indian ‘tradition’ along lines more consonant with [a] ‘modern’ economy and society.”4 Faced with insistent colonial critique, nationalist reformers and thinkers set out to controvert suppositions about the fallen state of Indian women and the oppressiveness of Indian homes. They also further sought to ameliorate conditions where these had deviated from their version of a glorious past. The Hindi/Urdu writer Premchand sums up the nationalist rebuttal in a 1931 essay entitled “Nari-jati ke adhikar” (“The Rights of Women”): “In fact, the Indian woman has always been considered the goddess of the home, and she has a higher status than men in the society .” For a variety of reasons, Premchand suggests, women fell from this preeminent position over time and men began to appropriate the established rights of women. “But,” he concludes, “the [new] wave of nationalism and enlightenment that has arrived now will obliterate all these [gender] distinctions, and our mothers [sic] will be re-installed in the exalted place that is their right.”5 It was in this way that early nationalist thinkers and spokespersons produced an argument about the existence of a sacred and relatively uncolonized “inner” space of Indian society, as contrasted with a more quickly changing, compromised, and negotiated “outer” space. In what is now a familiar precept in South Asian gender history, women were cast as the (predominant) custodians of “tradition” in private and in public life; men were (predominantly) the instruments of national, social, and cultural transformation in the wider, public domain. With this framing came propositions about the need for rapid progress in the “outer” realms of science, industry, and voluntary association as well as the later goals of welfare and development, secularism, and socialism. The push 3. Ibid.; Katherine Mayo, Mother India (London: Jonathan Cape, 1927). 4. Lata Mani, “Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India,” in Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989), 88. Mani makes a powerful critique of the so-called “Indian tradition” and of claimed colonial efforts to improve Indian society. 5. Premchand, “Nari-jati ke adhikar,” in Vividh Prasang, vol. 3, ed. Amrit Rai (Allahabad, India: Hans Prakashan, 1980) 249. Gyanendra Pandey 405 for such advancements developed alongside a more guarded approach to change in the “inner” world and its inherited store of spiritual resources— symbolized above all...

Reforming Utilitarianism: Lyric Poetry in J. S. Mill's "Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties" and Autobiography.

Mill's statement that "poetry is overheard" is often read as a definition of the lyric in miniature and is associated with social retreat. Yet Mill saw his encounter with the Wordsworthian lyric as a corrective to utilitarian social theory, and as a supplement to Adam Smith's theory of sympathy. Mill suggests that the writings of James Mill and Jeremy Bentham overlook the bond connecting individuals to one another. He reconceives communal aspects of feeling by drawing on Wordsworth's poetry as the fulfillment of Smith's affective account of social relations, a development which anticipates affect theory.

John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life, by Timothy Larsen

Reviewed by: John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life by Timothy Larsen Alan Ryan (bio) John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life, by Timothy Larsen; pp. ix + 242. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, £30.00, $39.95. Timothy Larsen’s John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life is a slightly odd but fascinating account of Mill’s life. The oddity is that this short biography takes its place in a series of “spiritual lives” but professes to be about Mill’s secular life (44). One might wonder whether Mill led a spiritual life after all, or whether some sorts of secular life can be spiritual. (The answer that emerges is that both seem to be true.) Larsen wisely does not spend his energies on trying to finesse definitional issues. Instead he focuses throughout on the religious influences on Mill and on Mill’s relations with conventionally religious contemporaries. For anyone disposed to take at face value Mill’s claim that his agnosticism was such that the religion of his English contemporaries meant no more to him than the beliefs of the ancient Greeks, the results are eye-opening. The book is organized chronologically, beginning with a short excursus on James Mill’s curious unwillingness to admit that he had as a young man trained for the ministry in his native Scotland and his subsequent antipathy to organized religion. On Larsen’s reading, it is not surprising that the teenaged John Stuart was a bitter critic of both the Christian religion and the established church. Matters changed dramatically when Mill suffered a loss of faith, that is to say, his faith in Benthamism. As converts will, he initially swung violently to the opposite extreme, to the extent that he misled Thomas Carlyle into thinking that Mill was “a new mystic,” misled the Saint-Simonian missionaries into thinking he was ripe for conversion to their faith, and misled Auguste Comte into thinking he had gained an English disciple (and perhaps a source of funds) (63). In terms of spirituality in the usual sense, it is equally significant that Mill became friendly with the Fox family, a family of well-known Quakers, particularly with Barclay Fox and his sister Carolyn Fox, the diarist, who recorded their impressions of Mill. These impressions are couched in decidedly religious terms, and Mill seemed to adopt their vocabulary with no unease. The most important friendship of Mill’s life before he met Harriet Taylor was with a young clergyman who moved in the same circles and was a [End Page 684] friend of Carlyle. This was John Sterling, an Anglican with unorthodox views, whose early death from consumption deprived Mill of a male soulmate. Larsen is right to emphasize that Mill, supposedly agnostic as he was, seems to have suffered no discomfort in the company of persons with conventionally religious attachments. Skeptical readers might wonder whether Taylor made Mill more or less agnostic, given her overwhelming influence on Mill’s opinions. Larsen’s treatment of their relationship is agreeably sensible and low key. His answer to the question that exercises so many writers is that it is likely that their relationship was, as they themselves said, spiritual and celibate. Given Taylor’s fixed belief that women found sexual intercourse disagreeable, it is hard to believe anything else; but the issue of Mill’s spirituality comes back in a somewhat sideways sense. He treated Taylor as an object of something very like religious devotion. One of Mill’s quirks was his habit of addressing her in the third person, and his belief in her intellectual and emotional infallibility was complete. Oddly, given her impact on just about all his opinions, there is little evidence of her having influenced his religious opinions in the ordinary sense of the term. Or, rather, the impact she had was not a matter of her religious views, but had to do with the effect her premature death from consumption had on Mill’s subsequent thinking about religion and immortality. Among the things that may come as a surprise to readers whose interest in Mill is largely confined to his philosophy, politics, and economics is the account of his eventual stepdaughter Helen Taylor’s...

The case for freedom revisited

AbstractI argue that the case for freedom is about either knowledge or incentives. Freedom optimises the production and use of knowledge, and gives people the right incentives. I trace the history of these arguments. Knowledge‐based justifications can be found in the writings of Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Wilhelm von Humboldt, J. S. Mill, Friedrich von Hayek, and Karl Popper. Incentive‐based arguments are due to Thomas Aquinas, Adam Smith, and James Mill. I then go on to query the extent to which classical freedom is compatible with other aims such as efficiency, enforcement of contracts, freedom of choice, political participation, and the socialist concept of freedom. Finally, I reject natural selection as a justification of freedom or of the right of property.