On liberty, utilitarianism, and other essays

609 Pages·2015·6.408 MB·English

by  Mill, John Stuart;Philp, Mark;Rosen, Frederick

oxford world’s classics
ON LIBERTY, UTILITARIANISM,
and other essays
John Stuart Mill (1806–73), philosopher, economist, and political
thinker, was the most prominent figure of nineteenth-century English
intellectual life and his work has continuing significance for contemporary
debates about ethics, politics, and economics. His father, James Mill,
a close associate of the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, took
responsibility for his eldest son’s education, teaching him ancient Greek
at the age of 3 and equipping him with a deep and an extremely broad
knowledge of the physical and moral sciences of the day. In his late teens Mill
became a passionate advocate and proselytizer for Bentham’s ideas, but his
Autobiography, published after his death, confesses to a ‘mental crisis’ in
his early twenties that left him concerned to develop what he saw as a more
complex, liberal, utilitarian philosophy. In the subsequent forty-five years
he produced major works on logic and political economy, and numerous
essays and studies of which the four collected in this volume are the most
famous. He held senior office for many years at the East India Company, was
owner and editor for a period of the London Review and then the London and
Westminster Review, and, towards the end of his life, served as a Member
of Parliament for the seat of Westminster. Mill’s relationship with Harriet
Taylor, which began in 1830 and culminated in their marriage in 1851, two
years after the death of her husband, was one of the most significant of
his life, and she was acknowledged as a profound influence especially on
his essays On Liberty and The Subjection of Women. The four essays in this
collection demonstrate Mill’s appreciation of the diversity, plurality, and
complexity of ways of life and their possibilities, and his concern to develop
an open and progressive response to a changing world so as to promote
human flourishing and, in its broadest sense, human happiness.
Mark Philp holds a chair in History and Politics at the University of
Warwick. He is an Emeritus Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. His recent
books include Political Conduct (2007) and Reforming Ideas in Britain
(2013).
Frederick Rosen is Professor Emeritus of the History of Political
Thought at University College London, where he has taught for many
years directing the Bentham Project. His recent books include Classical
Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill (2003) and Mill (2013).
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OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS
JOHN STUART MILL
On Liberty, Utilitarianism,
and Other Essays
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by
MARK PHILP and FREDERICK ROSEN
1
1
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Editorial material © Mark Philp and Frederick Rosen 2015
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
On Liberty and Other Essays first published as a World’s Classics paperback 1991
Reissued as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 1998, 2008
New edition 2015
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The editors wish to thank Judith Luna for her initiation, her careful
steering of this project, and her exemplary patience, Dr Henrietta
Ewart for her assistance in checking our notes, and Emily Brand,
Rowena Anketell, and Peter Gibbs for their exemplary work respec-
tively on the production, manuscript, and proofs. We ought also to
thank the British Library, and especially its cafes, where a great deal
of editorial debate took place, and Oriel Library for its extended loans
of many volumes of Mill’s Works. The editors wish to acknowledge
the important work of John M. Robson, the General Editor of the
Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, and his team for numerous
insights and references that have influenced this work and provided
a somewhat daunting example. We have gone further than Robson in
extending the supporting notes so as to clarify for the more general
reader as fully as possible Mill’s references and allusions.
M.P., F.R.

CONTENTS
Introduction ix
Note on the Text xlv
Select Bibliography xlvi
A Chronology of John Stuart Mill li
ON LIBERTY
I. Introductory 5
II. Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion 18
III. Of Individuality, as One of the Elements
of Well-Being 55
IV. Of the Limits to the Authority of Society
over the Individual 73
V. Applications 91
UTILITARIANISM
I. General Remarks 115
II. What Utilitarianism is 120
III. Of the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility 140
IV. Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility
is Susceptible 148
V. On the Connection between Justice and Utility 155
CONSIDERATIONS ON REPRESENTATIVE
GOVERNMENT
I. To What Extent Forms of Government are a Matter
of Choice 181
II. The Criterion of a Good Form of Government 191
III. That the Ideally Best Form of Government
is Representative Government 209
viii Contents
IV. Under What Social Conditions Representative
Government is Inapplicable 225
V. Of the Proper Functions of Representative Bodies 235
VI. Of the Infirmities and Dangers to which
Representative Government is Liable 249
VII. Of True and False Democracy; Representation
of All, and Representation of the Majority Only 264
VIII. Of the Extension of the Suffrage 284
IX. Should there be Two Stages of Election? 301
X. Of the Mode of Voting 307
XI. Of the Duration of Parliaments 322
XII. Ought Pledges to be Required from Members
of Parliament? 325
XIII. Of a Second Chamber 335
XIV. Of the Executive in a Representative Government 342
XV. Of Local Representative Bodies 357
XVI. Of Nationality, as Connected with Representative
Government 371
XVII. Of Federal Representative Governments 378
XVIII. Of the Government of Dependencies by a Free State 388
THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN
I. 409
II. 436
III. 455
IV. 484
Explanatory Notes 506
Index 541
INTRODUCTION
John Stuart Mill (1806–73) is a central figure in the canon of
Western philosophy and literature. His writing engaged with a wide
variety of different strands of nineteenth-century thought: utilitar-
ianism, romanticism, scientism, historicism, political economy, soci-
ology, and so on. He came of age in a Britain recovering from the wars
with Napoleonic France and with rising popular discontent against an
exclusive and elitist political system and an emerging industrial sys-
tem in which men’s and women’s lives appeared dramatically exposed
to the uncertainties of trade and manufactures. His expectations of
the Reform Bill of 1832 were not high, and were not exceeded. His ex-
perience on the streets of Revolutionary Paris in 1830 led him to hope
for more dramatic reforms than were proposed in England. Above
all, he saw himself as living in a period of transition from a highly
unequal society to a more egalitarian order, with an end to distinction
based on rank, through the extension of literacy, and the opening of
prospects for individual development across the whole population.
His thinking drew liberally from European thought as well as from
English and Scottish Enlightenment traditions and contemporary
debates and in his lifetime he carved himself a place as Britain’s fore-
most intellectual. His work straddled many of the boundaries that
have defined his successors’ allegiances, such as that between liberal-
ism and socialism. Consequently, while many have claimed him as an
intellectual forebear, the full breadth of his thought and the subtlety
of his convictions have been captured by very few.
The four essays in this collection are the most widely read of Mill’s
writings. Most students read only these essays. One result is that
many emerge from the experience convinced of Mill’s inconsistency,
puzzled by his own failures to recognize the tensions in his work, and
doubtful as to whether he really deserves the standing in the canon
that their teachers accord him. It is hard not to sympathize with
them. These essays were not written to bring together Mill’s central
ideas for a student audience. Each essay had its particular objectives
and set of concerns; moreover, they were written by a man with an
extraordinary range of intellectual interests and an extraordinary life.
Mill was deeply versed in ancient thought, profoundly influenced by