John Stuart Mill

163 Pages·1998·16.584 MB·English

by  William Stafford (auth.)

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Houndmills, Basingstokc, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England
jOHN STUART MILL
William Stafford
Prqfessor ifP olitics
University ifHuddersfield
Published in Great Britain by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-333-62852-2 ISBN 978-1-349-26964-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-26964-8
Published in the United States of America by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-21632-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stafford, William.
John Stuart Mill/ William Stafford.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-21632-0
I. Mill, John Stuart, 1806-1873. I. Title.
B 1607 .S73 1998
192--dc21 98-6884
CIP
©William Stafford 1998
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
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with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
07 06 05 04 03 02 OJ 00 99 98
For Pauline
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
1 Life and Reputation 3
The Life 3
The Reputation 12
2 Autobiography and Narratives 26
Mill's Narrative of his Life 27
Is Mill's Narrative True? 44
3 Logic and Political Economy 55
The Logic 55
The Principles of Political Economy 68
4 Utilitarianism and Liberty 79
The Essays and their Reputation 79
Mill's Theory of Right and Wrong Actions 83
Mill's Theory of the Good 87
Is the Argument of On Liberty Logical? 91
Is On Liberty Extreme, or Covertly Illiberal? 95
Moral Motivation and Proof 100
5 Politics 104
Political Activism 104
Fundamental Ideas 105
Imperialism 109
Ireland 110
Jamaica 112
Democracy 113
Vlll Contents
Socialism 122
Feminism 130
6 Conclusion 141
Select Bibliography 143
Index 149
INTRODUCTION
How can another book on John Stuart Mill be justified? In spite of the
mountain of commentary, there are several reasons justifYing a new
look. First, all too often, and especially in the first century after Mill's
death, interpretations have been based on a mere selection of his writ
ings. This runs the risk of getting him wrong in all decades of his life,
and is fatal for his last. Mill drafted and published no new books
between 1865, when he entered parliament, and 1873 when he died;
therefore any study of his big publications in isolation fails to do justice
to the final evolution of his thought. For that and for the whole of his
career we must turn to his letters, speeches and occasional articles.
There is no excuse for ignoring these, for the Mill scholar today
is blessed with a superb complete edition of thirty-three volumes: there
is so much meat in it that only a dullard would be unable to find fresh
perspectives.
Second, all too often Mill has been assessed anachronistically, ripped
out of the context of his time. Historians of ideas are rarely guilty of
this, but some philosophers and economists are. This study attempts to
be fair to Mill, judging him within the parameters of what it was rea
sonable to think and do in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth
century. But it does not regard him as of historical interest only: it
frankly proposes that Mill is still exciting and relevant.
It offers a survey of Mill's reputation and of interpretations of him
from his lifetime to the present, and it discusses the major areas of his
thought. It differs from many interpretations in approaching not only
Mill's life but also his thought as a whole as the expression of a man
who was always politically engaged. It will be argued that Mill was a
political animal from the crown of his hat to the sole of his boots and,
in spite of what he occasionally said and of what some commentators
have said about him, he was always radical. Because of his continuous
political engagement, this study starts from the assumption that there
1
2 Introduction
is a more than usual need to have a sense of the purpose of each text,
and its rhetorical strategy. Serious mistakes can be made if we assume
that particular texts are full, straightforward expressions of what Mill
thought. They are always tailored to an audience, an occasion, and a
goal: this is true even of so 'abstract' a book as the Logic, as others have
pointed out. Scholars are aware of this in relation to Utilitarianism and
On Liberty; it is time it was recognized more fully in the case of The
Subjection of Women.
Because of the depth of his political engagement, Mill's thought can
not be understood in a purely intellectual context, in relation to other
books and authors. Mill was passionately involved in economic, social
and political events, and not merely British ones: by virtue of his occu
pation, India (and the wider empire) was a context; he regarded him
self as an expert on France and he was fascinated by America. Nor
were his intellectual contexts merely British; he was immersed in
French thought, aware of some German and Italian, and imaginatively
absorbed in the literature of classical Greece and Rome. This study
takes it for granted that any 'tunnel vision' contextualizing of Mill,
relating him to a single tradition of thought, or discourse, will fail to
catch him.
Since about 1970, there has been a spate of important work on Mill:
general books by Robson and Ryan; collections of essays by Schneewind,
Laine, and Robson & Laine; books on his philosophy by Ryan and
Skorupski; on his economics by O'Brien, Hollander and Kurer; on his
moral philosophy and defence of liberty by Rees, Ten, Berger, Gray
and Donner; on his feminism by Tulloch and on his period in parlia
ment by Kinzer, Robson & Robson. I write in the shadow of and in debt
to this work.
In what follows, quotations from Mill have been kept to a minimum,
because of constraints of length, and because of a sense that no com
mentary, however good, is a substitute for reading the books them
selves. Mill's writings are so absorbing and eloquent that none should
deny themselves the pleasures of the text.