- [UNTITLED]
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Early Nineteenth-Century Logic
- Mill’s <i>System of Logic</i>
- Whewell’s Philosophy of Science
- Some British Logicians
- Idealist Logic
- Hamilton, Scottish Common Sense, and the Philosophy of the Conditioned
- J. F. Ferrier’s <i>Institutes of Metaphysic</i>
- The Philosophy of Shadworth Hodgson
- Bradley’s Metaphysics
- Evolution and Religion
- Evolution and Ethics in Victorian Britain
- Herbert Spencer
- The Evolutionary Turn in Positivism: G. H. Lewes and Leslie Stephen
- British Idealism and Evolution
- The Emergence of Psychology
- Jeremy Bentham and James Mill
- John Stuart Mill’s Moral, Social, and Political Philosophy
- British Feminist Thought
- Karl Marx and British Socialism
- The Ethics of British Idealism: Bradley, Green, and Bosanquet
- The Political Thought of the British Idealists
- Henry Sidgwick and the Irrationality of the Universe
- The Philosophy of James Martineau
- John Henry Newman
- The Philosophy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Scottish Religious Philosophy, 1850–1900
- British Idealist Philosophy of Religion
- Poetry and the Philosophical Imagination
- The Professionalization of British Philosophy
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter offers an overview of some of the most significant aspects of J. S. Mill’s work in moral, social, and political philosophy and presents a balanced picture of the debates between interpreters over how this work should be understood without remaining strictly neutral. On the reading developed herein, Mill’s moral theory comprises a hedonistic theory of value and a rule-utilitarian theory of obligation. While not a ‘virtue ethicist’ per se, he attaches paramount importance to the development of our distinctly human faculties and the formation of desirable habits. These moral views underlie his social and political philosophy, including his famous ‘liberty’ or ‘harm’ principle, defence of women’s liberation, advocacy of an employee-ownership economy, and call for a system of government that balances democratic and elitist tendencies. Mill’s social and political philosophy is ‘utopian’ inasmuch as it aims at making it possible for virtually everyone to enjoy a genuinely happy life.
Keywords: John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism, pleasure, hedonism, liberalism, socialism, democracy, elitism, utopianism
Dale E. Miller is a professor of philosophy at Old Dominion University. He is the author of John Stuart Mill: Moral, Social and Political Thought (Polity, 2010). He is the co-editor of several collections: John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life (Oxford 2011, with Ben Eggleston and David Weinstein); Morality, Rules and Consequences (Edinburgh 2000, with Brad Hooker and Elinor Mason); and The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism (forthcoming from Cambridge, with Ben Eggleston).
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- [UNTITLED]
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Early Nineteenth-Century Logic
- Mill’s <i>System of Logic</i>
- Whewell’s Philosophy of Science
- Some British Logicians
- Idealist Logic
- Hamilton, Scottish Common Sense, and the Philosophy of the Conditioned
- J. F. Ferrier’s <i>Institutes of Metaphysic</i>
- The Philosophy of Shadworth Hodgson
- Bradley’s Metaphysics
- Evolution and Religion
- Evolution and Ethics in Victorian Britain
- Herbert Spencer
- The Evolutionary Turn in Positivism: G. H. Lewes and Leslie Stephen
- British Idealism and Evolution
- The Emergence of Psychology
- Jeremy Bentham and James Mill
- John Stuart Mill’s Moral, Social, and Political Philosophy
- British Feminist Thought
- Karl Marx and British Socialism
- The Ethics of British Idealism: Bradley, Green, and Bosanquet
- The Political Thought of the British Idealists
- Henry Sidgwick and the Irrationality of the Universe
- The Philosophy of James Martineau
- John Henry Newman
- The Philosophy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Scottish Religious Philosophy, 1850–1900
- British Idealist Philosophy of Religion
- Poetry and the Philosophical Imagination
- The Professionalization of British Philosophy
- Index
