Mill's Views Research Articles

The Return of James Mill

This paper argues that James Mill is worthy of greater study than he now receives. It outlines the course of scholarship on James Mill, and considers various hypotheses to explain the decline of interest in his writings. Two examples, in education and penal theory, are presented of cases in which James Mill's views differed significantly from Bentham's, and anticipated those of John Stuart Mill.

Conflicting Principles or Completing Counterparts? J. S. Mill on Political Economy and the Equality of Women

In the 1970s feminist scholars rediscovered J. S. Mill's writings on sexual equality. The new feminist appraisal confronted traditional Mill scholarship which had tended either to neglect Mill's writings on women or to concentrate on Harriet Taylor's influence on Mill's views on sexual equality. But even the most cursory review of the writings of feminist scholars reveals a lack of consensus.

Mill, the State, and Local Management of Schooling

Contemporary educational policy is centrally concerned with local management of schooling; a practice apparently supported by and following easily from John Stuart Mill's views on liberty and representative government. This paper argues that contemporary practices of local management of schooling are conservative rather than empowering, and that Mill's actual proposals result in an unresolvable paradox in this area. It is then argued that if the State is conceptualised as a relatively autonomous body seeking to secure conditions conducive to accumulation of capital, and if ‘promoting the general welfare’ is formulated in a manner which would not lead inexorably to a free-market capitalist State, then Mill's ideas can provide guidelines for a radical form of democratisation and devolution of power in relation to local management of schooling.

James Mill on Peace and War

James Mill's views on peace and war have yet to be examined in detail. Only a few scholars have paid any attention to this aspect of his thought. Edmund Silberner was the first to give any extensive account of Mill's opposition to war and his proposals for universal peace, but chiefly from an economic point of view. He rightly pointed out that Mill's opposition to war was grounded mainly on his belief that war always obstructs the progress of national wealth, and also that Mill regarded the acquisition and possession of colonies as one of the major causes of war. F. H. Kinsley summed up the leading ideas of Mill's article on the ‘Law of Nations’, but only to show how far Bentham influenced Mill's thinking in this specific area.

Logic and reality in the philosophy of John Stuart Mill

This study of the leading principles of Mill's empiricist metaphysics and philosophy of logic aims to provide accurate (and often revisionary) exegesis and criticism of his theories, and to show their pertinence to current philosophical debates. Mill's views on the attainment of knowledge by inference, the problems of suasive syllogisms, and the possibility of inductive inference are first discussed, and it is argued that his philosophy of logic is informed by a realist theory of error. Subsequently, attention is paid to his uncompromising rejection of a priori avenues to knowledge about objective reality, and his allegiance to a radical empiricist principle that all knowledge is of phenomena alone. A scrutiny of Mill's theories of the experienced world and of the experiencing self: brings the discussion; to the point at which it emerges clearly that there is a deep tension within his thought between a form of empiricism which approximates to a variety of scientific realism, and another which leans towards sensationalistic reductionism.

Descartes (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 157 Liberty (in his posthumous book John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty") holds a different view regarding the son's intellectual debt to his father. He points out that, in his doctrine regarding the quality of pleasures and his conception of individuality and selfdevelopment in Liberty, Mill "moved far beyond his Utilitarian inheritance .... James Mill and Bentham did not evince any great concern about the cultivation of individuality or about the dangers which John Stuart saw threatening it from the growing power of public opinion" (49-5o). Rees argues, convincingly I think, that it was in terms of the value he placed on individuality that John Mill construed the notion of'harm', and that this implies a substantial departure from his father's views. Professor Rees" book consists of a number of papers, many of them previously published, which he was in the process of turning into a critical account of Mill's Liberty when he died. Nevertheless, the book as we have it is sufficiently coherent and serves to bring into focus work which is central not only to contemporary discussions of Liberty but also to a proper understanding of it. Two of the chapters deal with the influences on Mill's early and later views. It should be noted that though Rees gives to Mill's views an original direction, he does not deny the considerable influence of both Bentham and James Mill in specified areas. We also have a chapter devoted to the early (nineteenth-century) critics of Liberty and another to modern critics. Finally, the book contains Rees' well-known account of Mill's distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding conduct in terms of actions which merely affect others and those which also affect the interests of others. This distinction is considered further in a hitherto unpublished paper, here called "Liberty and Justice", and an attempt is made to furnish more definite and reliable criteria for determining interests than the original appeal to prevailing social norms. Rees claims to find these criteria in Mill's account of justice in Utilitarianism, viz., in the "rules ofjustice" supposedly common to all mankind which serve to ensure minimal 'security' for the individual, or as sources of 'individual rights', or to determine the 'essential' or 'vital' interests. It is the Violation of these interests that constitutes harm and thus serves to define the area of self-regarding conduct. We can now view as self-regarding (and, thus, free from interference) actions that cause pain to others simply because they are disliked or disapproved of and also actions that may violate interests which are not sanctioned by the rules of justice. It seems to me that Professor Rees' proposal constitutes a most valuable contribution to our understanding of Mill's great essay. R. F. KHAN Monash University Marjorie Grene. Descartes. Philosophers in Context. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, x985. Pp. x + ~5. Cloth, $35.oo. Paper, $14.95. Having philosophized for a lifetime against Cartesianism, Marjorie Grene as emeritus professor has written what one supposes to be the inevitable book. Like the half dozen or so volumes hearing the same title, this appears in a series catering to undergraduates . Since philosophy instructors, in the main, attend only to Cartesian metaphysics 158 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:~ JANUARY ~988 and method, one knows in advance rather what to expect. The operation of this autocatalytic process bids fair to eliminate, at least in the Descartes industry, grounds for the objection that philosophers never agree. Cartesian metaphysics is now a thoroughly stereotyped teaching routine. Happily, Grene is maverick enough to ignore some of the prescribed mazes and to run the familiar ones in a new pattern. She approaches Descartes as a philosopher largely contemporary with us, for he is the arch-exponent and initial designer of the mechanical hypothesis as a world conception. This conception throws up a host of great questions and problems: the replacement of the heterogeneity of sensed nature by the homogeneity of res extensa in its infinite mutations; the tangle of credibility problems for sense and intellect arising from this replacement; the degradation of human corporeality and its accompanying experience, and so on. Thus, for...

Justice, Independence, and Industrial Democracy: The Development of John Stuart Mill's Views on Socialism

Too little considered in relation to major works like On Liberty, the socialist element in Mill's works has met with a very mixed reception when it has been interpreted. Yet Mill's acceptance of certain socialist ideas was not the product of his wife's influence, nor was it contradictory to the central goals of his philosophy of liberty. Instead, Mill's objections to communism were consistent throughout his life, while his commitment to a cooperative form of socialism which lightened competition without abolishing it not only grew in strength from the mid-1830s onwards, but was fully integrated into his social and political thought and in fact must be interpreted as an extension of his concern for individuality, independence and self-cultivation rather than as existing in an uneasy relationship with these ideals. For cooperation was the economic dimension of Mill's theory of freedom, and when understood as such, Mill's relation not only to later nineteenth and early twentieth century neo-liberalism but al...

John Stuart Mill and the Pursuit of Virtue (review)

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...

J. S. Mill and Irish Land: a Reassessment

Lynn Zastoupil, in his article ‘Moral Government: J. S. Mill on Ireland’, (Historical Journal, 26, 3 (Sept. 1983)), has made an important contribution to our understanding of the sources and character of Mill's views on Ireland. He is right to suggest that insufficient attention has been paid to the lengthy series of Morning Chronicle leaders written by Mill in response to the Famine. No less instructive is his emphasis on the centrality of moral regeneration to Mill's political and ethical enterprise. Ably analysing the evolution of Mill's opinions on Ireland between the 1840s and late 1860s, Mr Zastoupil effectively demonstrates the way in which Mill's changing position on the issue was at each stage informed by a fundamental moral purpose. What his article does not fully convey, however, is the extent to which the expression of that purpose was shaped and conditioned not only by Mill's assessment of Irish circumstances at any particular time, but also by a certain tension and ambivalence in his attitude towards Ireland and her people.

Mill and Edwards on the Higher Pleasures

In his recent book, Pleasures and Pains: A Theory of Qualitative Hedonism, Rem B. Edwards develops a distinction between kinds of pleasure which he claims can be used, among other things, to explicate further John Stuart Mill's distinction between the higher and lower pleasures. I confess that I am more interested in Mill than in Edwards, and at this point more interested in what Mill's distinction was than in whether it can be defended. I will trust, rather than defend, that revealing more adequately Mill's views on the subject serves more than mere historical curiosity. I should like to make three main points about Edwards' proposed distinction between higher and lower pleasures in relation to Mill: (i) Edwards' distinction is not Mill's distinction, (2) Mill explicates his own distinction to a greater degree than Edwards realizes, i.e. beyond the mere description of higher pleasures as mental or non-sensory and lower pleasures as physical or sensory, and (3) Mill provides a rationale for his distinction in a way that Edwards does not provide one for his. Edwards observes that Mill has not carefully distinguished the higher from the lower pleasures in a way which enables us to understand how to classify various examples which may arise. MVIill does, of course, distinguish them as mental or non-sensory and physical or sensory, respectively, but this, Edwards charges, is not sufficiently explained.1 I shall below discuss not only the explanation Mill does give of this distinction but also its rationale: Mill has, I feel, done more to clarify this problem than Edwards has noticed. Part of Edwards' purpose is to improve on, by further elucidating, the distinction in a way of which he thinks Mill would have approved. This is the task at which I think he has failed, but failed in a way which brings out how haphazardly philosophers in general have examined the basis for this distinction which is so crucial to Mill's philosophy.

Platonism and penology: James Mill's attempted synthesis

The modern science of penology owes much to the English Utilitarians, and to Bentham and his erstwhile disciple James Mill in particular. I argue that James Mill's views on crime and punishment are, contrary to the conventional view, not simply those of a Benthamite Utilitarian; they are, rather, distinctively Platonist. James Mill's penological theory reveals, upon closer examination, a deep and pervasive debt to Plato. The upshot of this discovery is that the roots and rationale of modern penology are older and deeper than is commonly supposed, and that Plato's presence pervades the theory, practice, and justification of that punitive discipline.

Florence Nightingale and J.S. Mill Debate Women's Rights

In Florence Nightingale's correspondence a series of letters to and from J.S. Mill treat a different subject than her usual correspondence with government officials, health and sanitation reformers, and hospital administrators in many parts of the world. Although it was never her intention when she initiated the exchange of letters, she and Mill quickly became involved in a controversy concerning the role of women.Interwoven with some religious and philosophical matters, the Nightingale-Mill correspondence which falls into two periods, 1860 and 1867, is essentially a debate on women's rights. One debate concerns terminology and hinges on the entire validity of the question of publicity for the women's movement, then in its infancy, as well as the opening of the medical profession to women. The other focuses on differing perceptions of the role of women in political action. The exchange never became public during the lifetime of the participants, emerging with little notice only in the twentieth century with the complete publication of their correspondence in the journalHospitalsin 1936.J.S. Mill's views on women's rights were public knowledge in his own day and have continued to be studied exhaustively. Florence Nightingale has been studied as the remarkable woman responsible for opening a respected profession for women. The point is often made that she refused to sign the women's petition Mill presented to the House of Commons in 1866 and would not at first become a member of the London National Society for Women's Suffrage.

John Stuart Mill's Philosophy of Economics

John Stuart Mill regards economics as an inexact and separate science which employs a deductive method. This paper analyzes and restates Mill's views and considers whether they help one to understand philosophical peculiarities of contemporary microeconomic theory. The author concludes that it is philosophically enlightening to interpret microeconomics as an inexact and separate science, but that Mill's notion of a deductive method has only a little to contribute.

A Note on John Stuart Mill's Views on Capital Punishment

A Note on John Stuart Mill's Views on Capital Punishment

Comment: Overcoming His-story? Ms. Hughes's Treatment of Mr. Mill

There is something intrepidly parochial in Patricia Hughes's account of Mill's views. Her very opening statement, with its new vision of society, its “emerging social forces,” its principals “trapped by traditional influences,” sets the tone for the enterprise which follows—an historical melodrama with J. S. Mill, the patron saint of contemporary liberalism, reborn in Canada without his aspergillum, an affable enough character, a sort of Bruno Gerussi of the political thought set, his do-gooder's heart generally in the right place but his head usually muddled: an admirably earnest figure, even, who some how always misses the point but, up to now, has gotten away with it. Our aspiring script-writer intends to set things right, to show how we can redo the storyline (which may require substituting another nineteenth century great in the leading role), so as to combine passion and theory in a really radical vision of a fully liberated society.

John Stuart Mill on Justice and Fairness

The main difficulty utilitarians have faced is the problem of reconciling the dictates of utility with what seem clearly to be moral duties, but based on considerations of Justice. John Stuart Mill addressed this problem in his essay,Utilitarianism,and the result has not served to silence the critics of utilitarianism on this score. In part, this is due to the fact that Mill's position in the chapter on Justice is not entirely clear, nor is it entirely convincing where it is clear. Still, I do not think Mill's views on Justice have been given their due. In this essay, I shall try to show that Mill anticipated recently defended principles that rely on appeal to a notion of fairness or fair play, and that these can be given a utilitarian foundation.

On Predicating Proper Names

M ILL'S System of Logic is not often turned to by contemporary philosophers as a source of insights regarding the philosophy of language. To be sure, the terms and denotation, which Mill coined, have passed into quite general circulation; and Mill's doctrine of proper names has recently regained a certain popularity largely as a result of the writings of Kripke. But the notions of connotation and denotation seem generally to be understood in the context of a Fregean or Carnapian scheme of thought which is, to a large extent, alien to Mill's own way of conceiving language; and Mill's views on proper names are usually discussed entirely without reference to what, for Mill, constitutes their theoretical rationale. To some, it may come as a surprise to learn that Mill actually had anything amounting to a theory of language. In fact, however, there is to be gleaned from Mill's Logic a theory of quite considerable sophistication which I shall attempt, in part, to reconstruct and defend. What will emerge from our discussion is a conception of proper names which combines elements that might seem, at first blush, incompatible with one another. I shall argue that the Kripke-Donnellan conception of proper names as rigid designators or purely referential devices is anticipated by Mill to an even greater degree than is generally recognized; but that, curiously, this conception does not prevent Mill from allowing that proper names can function as genuine predicates. We shall find that, even for Mill, there is, after all, a sense in which proper names might be said to connote.

James Mill on Universal Suffrage and the Middle Class

JAMES MILL'S Essay on Government is widely known as a succinct theoretical statement of Mill's political views. It is thus somewhat surprising, in view of Mill's reputation as a forthright and bold reformer who was greatly concerned with clarity in thought and expression, that there should be no general agreement as to position he takes up in Essay. This is made more surprising when it is recalled that Mill modelled his argument on what Macaulay called geometric method of Euclid, a method not calculated to leave doubt as to author's conclusion. Some of Mill's interpreters, by far majority, believe Essay to be a theoretical defense of middle class and Mill an advocate of a suffrage restricted to that class, while others see it as a defense of universal suffrage. Since Essay is properly considered to be important for way it exemplifies political application of Utilitarianism, a good deal turns on question. According to MIill's initial premise, human nature is such that men will seek to gratify their individual interests, even to extent of behaving in a predatory manner. From this he deduced that rulers, if they were responsible to only a segment of populace, would sacrifice interests of remainder. Mill suggested that such difficulties can be avoided only if an identity of interests between rulers and community be established. His argument thus implies universal suffrage. Yet Mill is also supposed to have ignored this implication, holding that since middle class interests comprehended all others, suffrage could reasonably be confined to that class. This view, held by Sabine, Dicey, and Wilson, among others, and perpetuated by editor of most recent edition of Essay, finds support in Mill's famous eulogy of middle class at end of Essay. It is middle class that is the most wise and most virtuous part of community; it gives to science, to art, and to legislation itself their most distinguished ornaments; and the opinions of that class of people who are below mid(le rank are formed, and their minds are directed by that intelli-

John Stuart Mill and the Law of Markets

I. Introduction, 263. — II. Walras' Law, Say's Identity, and Say's Equality, 264. — III. Mill's concepts of money, 265. — IV. Mill's interpretations of Say's Law and his dual concept of money, 267. — V. Mill's theory of crises, 269. — VI. Mill's views on general overproduction, 271. — VII. Conclusion, 273.

Karl Britton. The nature of arithmetic: A reconsideration of Mill's views. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society n.s. vol. 48 (1948), pp. 1–12.

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