John Stuart Mill on Liberty and Control [Kindle Edition]

Joseph Hamburger (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

In this final publication Hamburger has left a challenging scholarly legacy that deserves inclusion in all future discussions of John Stuart Mill and twentieth-century liberalism.

Product Description

John Stuart Mill is one of the hallowed figures of the liberal tradition, revered for his defense of liberal principles and expansive personal liberty. By examining Mill's arguments in On Liberty in light of his other writings, however, Joseph Hamburger reveals a Mill very different from the "saint of rationalism" so central to liberal thought. He shows that Mill, far from being an advocate of a maximum degree of liberty, was an advocate of liberty and control -- indeed a degree of control ultimately incompatible with liberal ideals.

Hamburger offers this powerful challenge to conventional scholarship by presenting Mill's views on liberty in the context of his ideas about in particular, religion and historical development. The book draws on the whole range of Mill's philosophical writings and on his correspondence with, among others, Harriet Taylor Mill, Auguste Comte, and Alexander Bain to show that Mill's underlying goal was to replace the traditional religious basis of society with a form of secular religion that would rest on moral authority, individual restraint, and social control. Hamburger argues that Mill was not self-contradictory in thus championing both control and liberty. Rather, liberty and control worked together in Mill's thought as part of a balanced, coherent program of social and moral reform that was neither liberal nor authoritarian.

Based on a lifetime's study of nineteenth-century political thought, this clearly written and forcefully argued book is a major reinterpretation of Mill's ideas and intellectual legacy.

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 3732 KB
• Print Length: 239 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (September 30, 1999)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B002C73WTU
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #493,118 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Grist for the Mill, June 28, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: John Stuart Mill on Liberty and Control. (Hardcover)

Joseph Hamburger, who passed away in 1997, has left us a rich legacy by virtue of his trenchant analysis of the complete Mill. While most scholars have focused on On Liberty and his essay on Utilitarianism, Hamburger has chosen to focus on the entire corpus of Mill's work.

Hamburger is the only scholar who has successfully argued that Mill, long considered amongst the pantheon of great liberal thinkers, offers us a look at the conservative strain of Mill's thought. This is arrived at through a close textual analysis of Mill's less well-known but no less salient work, thereby giving us a more balanced view of this important 19th century thinker. A must read for those who wish to understand Mill as he understood himself.