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J.S. Mill's deep interest in French intellectual, political, and social affairs began in 1820 when, in his fourteenth year, he went to France to live for a year with the family of Sir Samuel Bentham. French became his second language, and France his second home, where he died and was buried in 1873. His interest in history began even earlier when, as a child of seven, he tried to imitate his father's labours on the History of British India; though he never wrote a history in his maturity, study of the past remained a passion and helped shape the philosophy of history that informed his views of society and ethics. His intense interest in contemporary French politics also led him to seek connections between historical developments and present trends, both seen by his from a Radical perspective approproate to what he believed to be an age of transition. The English historians of France, including Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle, as well as the French, some of whom were themselves political figures, are judged by their historical methods, but those methods are seen as having practical effects in shaping as well as revealing the mind of the times. This volume brings together for the first time the essays, running from 1826 to 1849, that meld these abiding interests. They give as well insights into Mill's personal aspirations, his developing view of comparative politics and sociology, his concern for freedom, and his feminism. During these years Mill worked on a published his System of Logic, Book VI of which shows in condensed form the results of the speculations here developed; reading these essays with that work, which made his reputation as a philosopher, enables one to see the effects of romanticism on analytic thought in a way not as clearly evident even in Mill's Autobiography. Independently important, then, the essays in this volume also enable us to interpret anew the practical and theoretical concerns fundamental to his formative years and maturity. John C. Cairns' Introduction demonstrates how the essays reveal, through their reactions to the Revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848, and to French historiography, politics, and thought, the effect of France on Mill's ideas, and also the way in which his other concerns influenced his reactions to France. The texts, with the variants and notes that are the hallmark of this edition, are described in John M. Robson's Textual Introduction, which explains the editorial principles and methods.
The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill took thirty years to complete and is acknowledged as the definitive edition of J.S. Mill and as one of the finest works editions ever completed. Mill's contributions to philosophy, economics, and history, and in the roles of scholar, politician and journalist can hardly be overstated and this edition remains the only reliable version of the full range of Mill's writings. Each volume contains extensive notes, a new introduction and an index. Many of the volumes have been unavailable for some time, but the Works are now again available, both as a complete set and as individual volumes.
How the great political thinkers have persistently warned against the dangers of economic inequality Economic inequality is one of the most daunting challenges of our time, with public debate often turning to questions of whether it is an inevitable outcome of economic systems and what, if anything, can be done about it. But why, exactly, should inequality worry us? The Greatest of All Plagues demonstrates that this underlying question has been a central preoccupation of some of the most eminent political thinkers of the Western intellectual tradition. David Lay Williams shares bold new perspectives on the writings and ideas of Plato, Jesus, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx. He shows how they describe economic inequality as a source of political instability and a corrupter of character and soul, and how they view unchecked inequality as a threat to their most cherished values, such as justice, faith, civic harmony, peace, democracy, and freedom. Williams draws invaluable insights into the societal problems generated by what Plato called “the greatest of all plagues,” and examines the solutions employed through the centuries. An eye-opening work of intellectual history, The Greatest of All Plagues recovers a forgotten past for some of the most timeless books in the Western canon, revealing how economic inequality has been a paramount problem throughout the history of political thought.
Though Mill has been the subject of an imposing volume of scholarship, his philosophy of history has received scant attention. This inquiry considers the role of history in Mill’s break from the Benthamite radicals, his effort to define a methodology for the study of society modelled on the natural sciences, and his speculations about the course and meaning of history. A dominant theme is Mill’s struggle to reconcile his ambition to develop a comprehensive science of society with his convictions that human nature is malleable and that history progresses as a consequence of intellectual achievement and diversity of beliefs. Mill’s compatibilist vision of the individual as driven by deterministic psychological laws and as also capable of freely choosing a life of autonomous “self-culture” was mirrored in his philosophy of history, as Mill retained the materialistic stadial theory of social development proposed during the Scottish Enlightenment, and an idealistic vision of history derived from the Saint-Simonians, Guizot and Comte. Though Mill claimed the primacy of the intellect in advancing material living conditions, he believed that the culmination of instrumental rationalism in his own Age of Commerce was undermining and marginalizing other forms of individual accomplishment—indeed, individuality itself—in the suffocating conformity of mass culture. Mindful of what he considered to be the culturally stationary states of Asia, Mill dreaded the prospect that a commercial culture with no higher ambition than the acquisition of ever-greater wealth would also become inert as the consequence of overbearing social conventions and intellectual stagnation. Like Smith and Ricardo, Mill anticipated the inevitability of the economically stationary state as the consequence of the fall in the rate of profits under free market capitalism, but rather than await its arrival, Mill seized on its possibilities. The stationary state became Mill’s vehicle for advocating an egalitarian supra-subsistence economy in the expectation that cultural priorities would shift to the pursuit of higher moral, intellectual and aesthetic aspirations, and the revitalization of individual autonomy.
The object of this essay is to explain as clearly as I am able, the grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all on social or political matters, and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been constantly growing stronger by the progress of reflection and the experience of life: That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes- the legal subordination of one sex to the other- is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement ; and that is ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.
An argument advocating universal suffrage with plurality of voting based on education; proposing representation in government of minorities; and condemning the secret ballot.