Review of Huei-chun Su's Economic justice and liberty: social philosophy in John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism. Routledge, 2013, 214 pp.For those who are inclined to discount John Stuart as erratic and eclectic thinker, Economic justice and liberty should be required reading. The book belongs to a steadily growing class of scholarly works which interpret with sympathy and a solid cognizance of his writings, and which confirm J. O. Urmson's judgement that if one studies his work diligently, an essentially consistent thesis can be discovered which is very superior to that usually attributed to and immune to common run of criticisms (Urmson 1953, 33). The author of this highly readable book, Huei-chun Su, goes even further than Urmson. Mill's position is not only superior to what sloppy, lazy or nit-picking readers ascribe to him. His social philosophy offers modern readers a serious alternative to that of contemporary luminaries such as Rawls, Sen, and Hayek. By ending book with remark that Mill deserves to be recognized as one of greatest thinkers in human intellectual history, author's praise may go a bit over top. But it is understandable reaction to ill-informed dismissiveness towards which is still de rigueur in some academic quarters. Many philosophers take liberties with they would never dare to take with G. E. Moore.Economic justice and liberty was developed from a PhD thesis supervised by John Maloney at University of Exeter. The later stages of book, however, took shape at Bentham Project at University College London, and one gets impression that this academic environment helped author to hammer out what utilitarianism was in 19th century and how it differed from its modern successor, as canonised by J. J. C. Smart. In order to mark difference between two as clearly as possible, Frederick Rosen once coined useful term 'post-utilitarian paradigm' to describe latter (Rosen 1997). The postutilitarian paradigm of Smart and others requires maximisation of total utility and is indifferent to how utility is distributed. Since it conceives utility to be a uniform and summable entity, post- utilitarian paradigm seems to open floodgates for justification of all kinds of injustices, ranging from imprisoning innocent people for fun to extreme inequalities in distribution of income and wealth. One of great merits of Economic justice and liberty consists in pointing out that a principle of justice is at very centre of Mill's utilitarianism and that his conception of justice is surprisingly close to that of Rawls, who did so much to discredit utilitarianism as a theory of political morality.The book has three parts. The concise first part elucidates important aspects of Mill's moral psychology. Everyone has heard that was both a utilitarian and a radical empiricist. Far less established, though, is how closely linked moral theory with empirical science. The bogus authority of moral intuitions must be replaced by a proper inductive basis for normative and axiological claims. Pursuing essentially Humean programme, was convinced that moral philosophy had to be based on a science of human nature containing in particular what he called the laws of mind. As frequently lamented, there was no scientific psychology in his day. This has important implications for status of Mill's moral philosophy and how modern sympathisers should deal with it. Measured against its own standard his moral theory is based on merely conjectural knowledge. It is thus in spirit of Mill's approach that Huei-chun Su sketches in book's concluding remarks what a scientific foundation for utilitarianism might look like if we used resources of modern psychology.Mill is certainly not to blame for lack of a scientific psychology in his day, but he could have presented his ideas about moral psychology in a more systematic fashion. …