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5.0 out of 5 stars
The great defender of individual liberty, December 23, 2006
John Stuart Mill, 1806-73, worked for the East India Co. helped run Colonial India from England. Minister of Parliament 1865-68 he served one term. Maiden speech was a disaster his second was great success. He was first MP to propose that women should be given the vote on equal footing with the men who could vote. He got 1/3 support, England gives franchise to women after U.S. He was a great Feminist, his essay "Subjection of Women" is written with great passion and prose. It was a brave position for him to take he was ridiculed for it. He favored democracy, and letting more men from lower classes the right to vote, but believed that people that are more educated should have more votes then less educated because they would make better decisions about what government should do. He would have wanted to extend education to the masses, so that all may have gotten 2-3 votes and so on. He didn't think it should be extended to where a small elite could carry the day on votes. The idea was that if the working class, and middle class, where divided on an issue, the people with more intelligence would have the power to tip the balance. Mill thought that people with more education would probably not only be better able to make political decisions, especially in terms of intellectually being able to see what would be best for the government to do, but that they would also be more concerned about the common good publicly then people in general. He was intensely educated by his father James. John could read Greek, and Latin at 6 yrs.; his Dad tutored him at home. Dad thought environment was everything. He was treated like an adult, never played games with kids; he had a very cerebral upbringing. He had a period of depression in his twenties, it changed his philosophy, and he recognized the importance of developing feelings along with the intellect, this is something that he stressed in his work. He read poetry to get out of depression; he became devoted to poetry and became a romantic. He fell in love with a married woman Harriet Taylor, was a platonic relationship, after her husband's death they married 3 years later and probably never consummated the marriage maybe due to his having syphilis. His dedication to "On Liberty" is to her, very devoted to each other. Both buried together in Avignon France where they used to vacation.
Mill as a moral theorist subscribed to a theory we call Utilitarianism. It means---In some way morality is about the maximization of happiness. Whether actions are right or wrong depends on how happiness can be most effectively maximized. I say in some way, because there are allot of different kinds of Utilitarians. Allot of different ways of saying exactly how it is the maximization of happiness comes into morality. Therefore, happiness is clearly an important idea for Utilitarians. Mill has a hedonistic view of happiness, he thinks that happiness can be defined in terms of "pleasure in the absence of pain." What is distinctive about Mill in this area is that he believes that some kinds of pleasure are better than others are, and add more to a person's happiness than other kinds of pleasures. He believes in what he calls, "higher quality pleasures." These are pleasures, he says, that we get from the exercise of faculties that only human beings happen to have. So the intellect, imagination, the moral feelings, these are the sources of higher quality pleasures people use. His view seems to be that a certain quantity of intellectual pleasure just adds more to your happiness, and a given quantity of some lower pleasure like a kind we would share with the animals such as sensation, taste, sexual pleasure, etc. His "higher quality pleasures" in a way echo Aristotle's ethics. The idea of those things that make us distinctly human that are the real key to our happiness, that is in Mill also. It is not as limited to reason and intellect as Aristotle thinks. Mill recognizes the importance of the appreciation of beauty, aesthetic pleasure, and moral pleasure. He frankly owes a debt to Aristotle that he never properly acknowledges, never gives him proper credit.
"On Liberty" is Mill's is his most widely read and enduring work. It is an indispensable essay on political thought, which strenuously argues for individual liberty. He is defending what he calls the "liberty principle." It is a principle that guarantees individuals quite a bit of personal freedom. "That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant." These quoted sentences in John Stuart Mill's book, "On Liberty," embody the crux of his argument; that the power of the state must intrude as little as possible on the liberty of its citizenry. In essence, Mill was against using the power of the state through its lawmaking apparatus to compel citizens to conduct themselves in ways that society deems moral or appropriate. Mill thought that people had not only a right, but also a duty to develop their intellectual faculties, which is indispensable to maximize their happiness. He believed that society improved for all its citizens when they where left unfettered to the maximum extent possible, allowing them to use their imagination and intellect to improve themselves. Mill postulates a theory that societies usually institute laws based primarily on "personal preference" of its citizenry instead of established principles. This lack of clarity of opinion often leads to the government frequently interfering in the lives of its citizens unnecessarily. For Mill, there are very few times when the state can infringe on the personal liberty of others. Firstly, the state has the right to promulgate laws that prevent a person's actions from harming others. Secondly, the state must protect those citizens who are not mature enough to protect themselves, such as children. Thirdly, he exempts, "... backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage." In Mill's view, immature societies need a benevolent leader to rule them until they have developed to a point where they, "... have attained the capacity of being guided to their own improvement by conviction or persuasion ..." Mill said this third exemption did not apply to any of the countries in Europe. Mill believed that forced morality by the state on its citizen's liberties was destructive to their inward development, and could even lead to a violent reaction by them against the government.
There are different parts of his defense of this, different arguments that he gives. He has a long chapter on freedom of speech and press. He has some very specific reasons why he thinks those freedoms are important. Always in the background for Mill is the idea of development, and making it possible for more people to enjoy these higher quality pleasures. How do we help people develop their distinctly human faculties, in ways that will help them enjoy their higher quality pleasures? Because for him that is the way, we maximize the total amount of happiness that is enjoyed in the world, and that is the object of morality as far as he is concerned. Utilitarianists believe that maximizing happiness is ultimately, what morality is all about. That does not mean maximizing your own happiness that means maximizing the total amount of happiness that is enjoyed, not only by yourself but also by everybody else as well.
Roger Kimball, in his book "Experiments Against Reality" wrote, "On Liberty" was published in 1859, coincidentally the same year as "On the Origin of Species." Darwin's book has been credited--and blamed--for all manner of moral and religious mischief. But in the long run "On Liberty" may have effected an even greater revolution in sentiment.
I read this book for a graduate class in Philosophy. Recommended reading for anyone interested in philosophy, political science, and history.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
On Mill's essay The Subjection of Women, July 19, 2011
As given in the title "On Liberty and The Subjection of Women," the book includes two essays by John Stuart Mill. The first one, On Liberty, was proofread and edited by (I assume) the publishers, Classic Books America, New York, New York. The second essay, the subject of this review, was evidently not. I give examples from the first three pages of the essay, pages 130 - 132 of the book; I have inserted words that I believe were left out of the text in [square brackets]:
(1) (p. 130) "But it would be a mistake to suppose that the difficulty of the case must lie in the insufficiency or obscurity of the grounds of reason on which my convictions [rest]."
(2) (p. 130) "but when it rests solely on feeling, [the] worse it fares in argumentative contest...."
(3) (p. 130) "that we need not wonder to find them as yet less undermined and loosened than any of the rest by the progress [of] the great modern spiritual and social transition..."
(4) (p. 131) "They must be very fortunate [as] well as capable if they obtain a hearing at all."
(5) (p. 131) "and at no time [are] these required to do more than show that the evidence produced by the others is of no value."
(6) (p. 131) "It is held that there should be no restraint not required by I general good..." The word "I" should probably be "the."
(7) (p. 131) "It is useless to me to say that those who maintain the doctrine that men ha a right to command and women are under an obligation to obey..." The 'word' "ha" should be "have."
(8) (p. 132) "Before I could hope to make any impression, I should be expected not only to answer all that has ever been said bye [those] who take the other side of the question..." The word "bye" should be "by."
(9) (p. 132) "...but to imagine that could be said by them--to find them in reasons, as I as answer all I can find." This is the second half of the sentence quoted in (8) above. I couldn't make sense of it.
(10) (p. 132) "...and not a single unrefuted one on [the other? my?] side..."
(11) (p. 132) "...for a cause supported on the one hand by universal usage, and on the r by so great a preponderance of popular sentiment..." "r" should be "other."
(12) (p. 132) "I do not mention these difficulties to complain of them; first, use it would be useless..."
The word "use" doesn't seem to belong there, seems an antic repetition of the "use" in "uesless."
(13) (p. 132) "...as to give up practical principles in which [they?] have been born and bred..."
(14) (p. 132) "It is one of the characteristic prejudices of the ion of the nineteenth century against the eighteeneth, to d to the unreasoning elements in human nature..." This, too, seems to be nonsense, as published.
At this point I gave up and decided to buy another copy of this essay (the reason I bought the book in the first place) published by another publisher. I tried to locate "Classic Books America" on the internet, but they do not seem to have a website.
There are two other reviews on Amazon.com which mention this publisher (Classic Books America), and the reviewers made complaints about the lack of editing similar to mine. In one case, the book's title included an essay which was then not included in the book itself {a collection of essays by Thomas Paine). The other was a review of a collection of Greek tragedies by, I believe, Euripedes; this reviewer, too, made multiple objections to the editing of the book.
So I would definitely advise people to stear clear of this particular book done by this particular publisher, "Classic Books America," if they are interested to read Mill's essay on "The Subjection of Women," and buy it by another publisher. The essay "On Liberty" was adequately edited; at least I did not notice in it such errors as I've shown above.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Nice Edition, August 28, 2011
This review is from: On Liberty and The Subjection of Women (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
This edition is well printed and bound for a black spine penguin classic. The text is, of course, a classic, a seminal work in individual liberalism.
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