The study of John Stuart Mill - Essay Example

John Stuart Mill The study of John Stuart Mill's life and career must begin with some necessary references to his father: according to Courtney (1888), in his book Life and Writings of John Stuart Mill, "Without James Mill, the career of John Stuart Mill is inexplicable" although, besides their similarities, "there are many points of contrast between the two of them, both in character, circumstances and life." (p.11) James Stuart Mill was born in 1773, at Northwater Bridge and was first educated in Montrose Academy. Here he met Sir John Stuart of Fettercairn, who gave the name of his eldest son, John Stuart Mill. In 1790, he went to the University of Edinburgh, at the age of seventeen, and in 1798 was licensed as a preacher. He left Scotland four years later and went to London. James Stuart's London life has been divided into three periods: that of struggle - 1802-1819, the period of his most successful works - 1819- 1829 and the last one, from 1830 to his death, in 1836, when he both enjoyed fame and had been made Head Examiner in the India House. As to his inner life, some features are to be noticed: the negativist attitude towards religion, the strength of character, the critical and analytical spirit - "there is nothing which such a spirit will not analyze, nothing which it will not dare to comprehend" (Courtney, 1888, p.20), the rationality, lack of imagination and sympathy. Rationality and strength of character are to be seen both in his personal life, in his relationship with his children and friends, deprived of all emotion and feeling, and in his literary works. And it's according to the principles of pure logic that his son, John Stuart Mill was educated. We find an important amount of data concerning John Stuart Mill's life in his own autobiography. In the first chapter of his own book, before starting with the presentation of his childhood and early education, Mill states the reasons of his writing this work: "I do not for a moment imagine that any part of what I have to relate can be interesting to the public as a narrative, or as being connected with myself. But I have thought that in an age in which education, and its improvement, are the subject of more, if not of profounder study than at any former period of English history, it may be useful that there should be some record of an education which was unusual and remarkable, and which, whatever else it may have done, has proved how much more than is commonly supposed may be taught, and will taught, in those early years which, in the common modes of what is called instruction, are little better than wasted. It has also seemed to me that in an age of transition in opinions, there may be somewhat both of interest and of benefit in noting the successive phases of any mind which was always pressing forward, equally ready to learn and to unlearn either from its own thoughts or from those of others. But a motive which weighs more with me than either of these, is a desire to make acknowledgment of the debts which my intellectual and moral development owes to other persons; some of them of recognized eminence, others less known than they deserve to be, and the one to whom most of all is due, one whom the world had no opportunity of knowing." (Mill, 1944, p.1) As we can see, from the very beginning, John Stuart Mill states the influence that others had on his own development. From the following pages we find out, in the context of the presentation of his first years of life, who these others were. Born on the 20th of May, 1806, the English philosopher started learning Greek when he was three years old. In his book, this piece of information is presented as told by others, as he himself doesn't remember when he took his first Greek class. He reads Greek masterpieces: Herodotus, Socrates, Diogenes Laertius and Plato's writings and, when he is eight years old, he starts learning Latin. It's also during his early childhood that he learns arithmetic but most of his time is occupied with the reading of books - mostly history books. The child makes notes on what he reads and then talks about them to his father. When he starts learning Latin, at the age of eight, he also begins teaching his brothers and sisters, a task that he doesn't really enjoy. History is, as the philosopher himself asserts it, his predilection, and especially ancient history. And he also enjoys experimental science, but only at the theoretical level. At the age of twelve, John Stuart Mill starts the study of Logic and he continues with the reading of Greek and Latin books. But the book he considers as having had a great impact on him and his education is his father's writing, History of India. In 1819, Mill the child studies political economy, and the following year he leaves England for more than a year. Returned in England, he is given to read, by his father, Bentham's ideas, as interpreted by Dumont. He calls this reading an epoch in his life. Bentham's ideas and works have a great influence on his work and formation. Mill emphasizes one important thing related to the nature of education: it wasn't based on memorizing, on acquiring many pieces of information without filtering them through one's own thinking, but on the contrary, it was based on understanding and reason: "My father never permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with every step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anything which could be found out by thinking I never was told, until I had exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself."(p.22) Mill notes one of the weak points of his education. Although succeeding in making him very good at the theoretical level, he is not that good at the practical one. His very strict education prevented him from coming in contact with boys of his age and, at the same time, from being in the situation when he is bound to take decisions on his own. Besides that, his father was a very strong and energetic figure and "But the children of energetic parents, frequently grow up unenergetic, because they lean on their parents, and the parents are energetic for them."(p.25-26) Mill's autobiography deals in a whole chapter with the moral influences that had an impact on him during his early years of life, his father's ideas and conceptions. And the first thing he writes about is the lack of religious belief. As we've already mentioned, his father rejected the religious dogma and this is what he also inspired to his son. The father emphasized on the importance of temperance and placed intellectual enjoyments above all others. As well as his father's ideas and attitude, Mill's readings leave their mark on him. In 1822 he first reads the history of the French Revolution. He takes, thus, contact with the ideas of liberty. He also studies philosophy and reads Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, then Helvetius De L'Esprit and Heartley's Observations on Man, while, at the same time he was reading James Mill's Analysis on the Mind. All of them belonged to the Empirical category. They contain the main principles of the inductive and experiential scheme. A third great influence is that of Bentham and there's also another book, one written on the lines of Bentham, whose influence is to be found in the posthumous essays on religion: The Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind - a discussion of the usefulness of religion. Mill's personality and education is also the result of the contact with certain instructed men, friends of his father. Among them, two figures are more preeminent: Mr. Grote and Mr. John Austin. The conversations with the first one instructed him and, at the same time, gave him the feeling of communion. The dialogues with the second introduced him to the world of a new mental type that rejected prejudices and narrowness of mind. In the winter of 1822-1823, Mill creates the plan of a society formed of young men who considered utility as standard in politics and ethics. It's the first time when someone entitled himself as utilitarian and the name given to the organization is The Utilitarian Society. Then in 1823, he begins his work at the East India Company, in the office of the examiner of India Correspondence. It's at his father's decision that he starts his career here. In Ruth Borchard's book we find the words addressed by James Mill to his son on this occasion: "I have ambition for you--perhaps more even than you yourself. You shall leave your mark, not only on England--on the world. But not as a man of action. As a thinker. Here, at India House, you will hold within five years greater administrative power than any minister of the Crown. You will have security, income, position, but above all--you will have time to think. Think, John. There is a great turn of the tide under way in England. Grasp it. And direct it. I promise you: in that way you shall have more influence than any other man of your generation. Think, John!" (p.3) John Stuart Mill published his first two letters in 1822 in the Traveller evening newspaper. But his most famous works are to appear years later: A system of Logic(1843), Principles of Political Economy (1848), On Liberty (1859), Utilitarianism (1863), An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865), The Subjection of Women (1869), and the Autobiography (1873). As Mill himself asserts it, the moment of reading Bentham is the moment when he finds the object in life: and that is - to be reformer. Yet, a few years later, this object seems to be no longer satisfactory. So, the autumn of 1826, finds him in a "dull state of nerves" (p.94). And it's the time when he asks himself a question that creates confusion in his system of thinking: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!" At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means I seemed to have nothing left to live for." It's a period of interior crisis for Mill, who cannot even find relief in his books and can no longer continue with his usual occupations. And most important of all, it's a time of change of opinion. He believes now in a happiness attained by fixing another object than the self happiness. And he also starts to understand the importance of feelings and the necessity of a "balance among the faculties" (p.101). And so, he notes as an important event in his life, the first time when he reads Wordsworth, in whose poetry he finds real pleasure. His poems are "a medicine" for him, as they expressed: "not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty." (p.104) Interesting is the way in which Mill presents in his autobiography the change he undergoes in point of conception of feelings, as a consequent of his reading the poems of Wordsworth, as compared to the reactions of one of his friends, Roebuck, who, although a lover of poetry and fine arts and a sensitive man, regarded his feelings as something that had better be removed. As a result of the change, it was not long before his relationship with his utilitarian friends diminished, and he started to get close to the Coleridgian adversaries - Frederick Maurice and John Sterling. In 1830, Mill's melancholy crises hadn't yet been surpassed. It was then that he met the woman that twenty-one years later was to become his wife, Harriet Taylor. At the time when Mill made acquaintance with her, Harriet was married to john Taylor. She is described as fallows in Borchard's book: "Harriet was a competent woman. Authority and dignity came naturally to her. She had extremely good, if somewhat expensive, taste." (p.41) As wife of John Taylor, she made her husband proud of her, as she was both beautiful and intelligent. "Full of energy, rebellion and restlessness, sensitive and romantic like her favourite poet Shelley--such was Harriet's frame of mind." Invited to have dinner at John Taylor's house, Mill "faced for the first time those great dark eyes, challenging, provoking, adoring, which, from this moment onwards, were completely to dominate him until, as an old man, he closed his own eyes." (Borchard, 1957, p. 46) And in this company he feels free to express what he thinks. The two of them find out that they have similar views regarding the position of women in society. The relationship with Harriet helped him understand the feminine side of life and, at the same time, introduced him to another way of seeing it. He became deeply convinced then and there that the "great occupation of woman should be to beautify life: to cultivate, for her own sake and that of those who surround her, all her faculties of mind, soul, body; all her powers of enjoyment; and to diffuse beauty, elegance, and grace, everywhere" (Levy- Bruhl, 1951, p. 67). Under the influence of his relationship with Harriet, Mill conceived his most valuable writings. Mill married Harriet only in 1851, after the death of her husband. By then, he had become a sort of mentor of the world. They were together as a married couple only for three years, because in 1854 Harriet died. They had no children together, but Harriet had two sons and a daughter from her previous marriage. Before marrying the woman he had loved since they met, he signed a document renouncing the powers that the law gave the husband over the wife; and promising Harriet the same absolute freedom of action and disposal of herself and her property as if no marriage had taken place. This he formally dated and signed. Her inheritance from Mr. Taylor as well as her half share in Mill's books was therefore absolutely at Harriet's own disposal. This is one of the actions undertaken by Mill in the spirit of feminism. Among the things for which he campaigned most strongly were women's rights, women's suffrage, and equal access to education for women. His essay on the Subjection of Women (1869) represents a defense of gender equality. In 1834 Mill founded the Radical journal, the London Review with William Molesworth. Two years later, Mill purchased the Westminster Review and merged the two journals. As proprietor of the Westminster Review, Mill used the journal to support those politicians such as Thomas Wakley, Joseph Brotherton, Thomas Duncombe and Thomas Attwood, who were advocating further reform of the House of Commons. And he supported the reform and renewal throughout his whole life, culminating with his efforts when he becomes a member in the House. In the 1865 General Election John Stuart Mill was invited to stand as the Radical candidate for the Westminster seat in Parliament. He was elected with a good majority. He took his duties in the House extremely seriously. He meticulously attended Parliamentary meetings and committees. He was not popular. He appeared pedantic, a constant reproach to the jollier, less responsible members. He spoke in favour of the vote for the whole working class. And when the Bill for extending the vote to all municipal householders was introduced, he proposed that the word "man" in the bill be substituted by "person"; 73 members voted in favour, 196 against, a result showing a surprisingly large bloc in the House in favour of the vote for women. This is how Ruth Borchard describes Mill's manner of bringing about reform and change: "During those years he reached the height of his fantastic influence and renown. He was fully conscious of the responsibility this involved. He had acquired in his father's school a statesmanlike attitude towards the injection of ideas into the stream of thought of the time. He deliberately measured men's prejudices; than he administered at the right time as much of the truth as he thought beneficial. It took a great deal of courage and patience to strike the balance between what to say and what to omit. Thus, although he cut at the roots of theology in his writings, and his considered arguments against "priest craft" were fired by the most primitive animosity, in his voluminous and largely polemical writings we find hardly a sentence to offend a devout believer." (p.127) On the 7th of May 1873, when Mill died, his last words, spoken in fever, were: "You know that I have done my work", addressed to Helen Taylor, Harriet's daughter. "Were they the parting words of the wise old man of mature intellect who left his legacy complete Or were they the anxious, fearful, defensive words of the little boy who never grew up, seeking approval--his father's, Harriet's, Helen's There is no way of knowing." (Bochard, p.158-159) But no matter the meaning of his last words, there is no doubt that he was one of the great figures that contributed to the progress of knowledge and thought. He left behind valuable works, some of them controversial, but, at the same time, challenging. About his work, A System of Logic, Courtney says: "it is a work which no student of the subject can possibly forego" (p.79) and it has been used for educative purposes. Composed of six books, the work deals with the formal aspect of Logic and the process of deduction, with Mill's attack on one the belief that necessary truth is distinct in kind, and not only in degree, from contingent truth, with an analysis of Induction and the process of science. The same Courtney and Scott talk about the necessity of distinguishing between the scientific character and the metaphysical groundwork. "Probably no other work on Logic can give the reader so clear an idea of what Science is and what it is doing." (p. 82) But besides that, there are the metaphysical implications that must be considered. The book, which has been considered the most thorough attempt to argue for empiricism in epistemology, contains the investigation of the way in which man manifests himself in relation to other people (under the two aspects: relationships in what is called today society, structured by moral laws and the relationships with the State, belonging to the political register). The English author treated these questions extensively in Book VI; and this is not at all surprising, taking into consideration the fact that for Mill, Logic represented "the entire theory of the ascertainment of reasoned or inferred truth." (Mill, 1868, p. 232), and the propositions regarding man's life in community can be evaluated by the distinction true-false. In metaphysics and epistemology, Mill adhered to the "school of Experience and Association" which denied the existence of a prior knowledge and held all knowledge to consist in the facts that we perceive through our senses and that which can be inferred from these. In A System of Logic he attempted to construct an inductive logic sufficiently powerful to make redundant the postulation of an a priori basis for any branch of human knowledge. Remarkably, Mill tried to show that even the laws of deductive logic and mathematics can be known by inductive inference from a sensory basis. The sixth book of Mill's Logic is centered on the description of the way in which the research in the social field should take place. The understanding of the social life as well as of the correct social action must necessarily be preceded by a study of human nature, by the discovery of the laws of thinking, by the construction of a science that would deal with the development of character, by determining the correct method of social investigation. The resolution of all these problems is the task of sciences; morality and politics are considered arts. The difference between science and art and, more important than that, the connections between them are problems Mill researches. From the motto chosen for the book, Mill presents his belief in the existence of rules at the level of society, rules that explain the general tendencies of the mass of people. These rules manifest themselves the same way as those characterizing the relations between physical objects, considered under their lifeless aspect. A science that would have as object the man in his relationships with other men (or maybe, as Mill suggests, with all beings capable of feeling) would have a much greater importance than all other sciences. Mill's attempt was directed to a field as needing to be studied as it was untouched by serious studies. In the sixth book of his great treaty of Logic, the English writer asserts a few times that, besides A. Comte, no other writer has done a serious and responsible attempt to study society, and Comte has real merits only in interpreting the facts that belong to the past, the present (Mill's epoch, of course) being much more poorly analyzed by the French sociologist. A first aspect Mill deals with is that of the connection between the freedom of the will and the laws that describe the social actions. He talks about the dispute between the doctrine of the free will on the one hand and that of the philosophical necessity on the other. The doctrine of necessity, as Mill presents it, is different from that which maintains that there is a mystical connection between the cause and the effect. Mill asserts that, although it's true that the formation of character is a result of circumstances, someone's will of changing his character is one of these circumstances, and it's one of the most important ones. We fell morally free if we feel that we are the masters of our habits and temptations. From Mill's approach results the supposition on which is made the distinction between freedom and fatalism: any fatalist doctrine is based on the idea that in some people (if not in all human beings) there is a part that is forced not to manifest itself, which is reduced to inactivity by the implacable laws of nature. According to these theories, there is a sort of appendix of the intellect, whose role is to give headaches to those that try to use their reason. In an ideal situation, in which we wouldn't be the slaves of the exterior laws, that appendix could produce extraordinary effects. The extreme case to which we could go with the example of our submission to the implacable laws would be that of our own character: if we could create our own character, we'd be the most virtuous, the most correct people. A conclusion to his reasoning would be that Mill considers that there is no contradiction of any kind between asserting the existence of laws that structure society and keeping the freedom character necessary to human actions. Mill introduces us to ethology which he defines as the science whose purpose is the analysis of reactions to different stimuli. The knowledge that this science engenders consists in empirical laws and theoretical principles obtained from psychology. The empirical laws result from observation - casual or not - regarding the effects that the different causes produced in certain circumstances. They do not constitute the essence of the science, having only the role of verifying the theoretical part, by evincing the cases that respect or do not respect the conditions and conclusions set forth by the theoretical principles. Once constituted the science whose object is the individual and his behavioral and character changes under the influence of exterior stimuli, there may be created new science, that which has as object the study of the masses of people and the social life. The idea of progress is an important idea in Mill's work. It is extensively treated in Considerations on Representative Government and also in the opening of the essay On Liberty. In Mill's theory, both the individual character and the general condition of a society are submitted to change; this is equivalent with asserting that the subject of the science that studies the human nature and that of the science of society change in time. This idea is called by Mill the progress of man and of society. Mill believed that the general tendency is towards improvement, a tendency towards a better and a happier condition. Mill is one of the names associated with "classical liberalism", a doctrine stressing individual liberties and limited government. From the very beginning of his essay On Liberty, Mill announces that its subject "is not the so-called Liberty of the Will but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual." (Mill, 1885) The philosopher argues that the only rational guarantee of the righteousness of a person is the liberty to contradict opinions. By refuting ideas, we filter them. The lack of freedom, asserts Mill, will distort the process. So, the conclusion is that the private sphere of individuals should not be invaded. In the sphere of psychology, Mill introduces the notion of mental chemistry when talking about complex ideas. He defines such an idea as a process in which parts fuse into a sort of mental whole. This new sort of mental unity emerges from associational processes. Mill dedicates an extensive study to the notion of utilitarianism. Under a strictly theoretical aspect, in John Stuart Mill's opinion, the principle of utility is not only a moral principle, it's a general principle of the human action, of what he calls the art of life. Different from the science of life, this latter has three specific compartments: morality, prudence or the strategies of action, and the aesthetics, the domains of the right, efficacy and of the beauty or nobleness in action. In the space of ethical theories the main opponent of utilitarians was the theory of the moral sense, represented by W. Whewell. According to this school, in every person there is a sui generis sense of the moral value, independent of any empirical experience; the principles of morality are, according to this approach, a priori propositions, that don't need any demonstration. Mill starts from the necessity of an ethics based on the human nature. And the utilitarian doctrine, a doctrine built on the background of the inductivist empiricism satisfies such a requirement: instead of the problematic internal standard (the moral sense) of this hypothetical irrational experience (the moral instinct), an external standard is proposed: the evaluation of the consequences of the action, the work with empirical quantifiable and measurable methods. The principles of morality can be demonstrated by making use of observation and experience. When critics refer to Mill's demonstration, they refer to Utilitarianism IV and they consider usually that it consists of the justification of three main theses: Happiness is desirable; General happiness is desirable; Nothing else besides happiness is desirable. Placing together all these theses, it results that the principle of the utilitarian moral can be formulated as follows: General happiness, and nothing else, is desirable for the human being. There are researchers who oppose Mill's demonstration, who think that it is undermined by flagrant errors (F. Bradley, G. Moore). And at the same time, there are defenders, who, however, read Mill's text in disconcertingly different manners. Some of them consider that we shouldn't look for a demonstration of the principle of morality, but to reformulate the problem trying to create empirically an ethical theory as a whole (E. Hall), others think that the demonstration can be reconstructed in he usual, deductive sense (H. West), or as an analogical inductive argument (R. Crisp). And these are only a few of the solutions proposed. This reminds of imprecise and elliptical character of Mill's demonstration. Some guide marks are, yet, to be found and although the demonstration doesn't seem to have neither an inductive, nor a deductive sense, it has a certain evidence and immediateness, combined, paradoxically with an empirical foundation. No matter the oppositions to certain of his theories, John Stuart Mill was a representative and influential figure of his time and his ideas connected to utilitarianism, empiricism, feminism, classical liberalism continue to draw the attention of specialists. Bibliography 1. Borchard, R. (1957). John Stuart Mill, the Man. London, England: Watts. 2. Courtney, W.L. (1888). Life and Writings of John Stuart Mill. London: England: Walter Scott. 3. Levy-Bruhl L. (1951). John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor. London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 4. Mill, J.S. (1944). Autobiography of John Stuart Mill. New York: Columbia University Press. 5. Mill J.S. (1885). On Liberty. New York: John B. Alden. 6. Mill J.S. (1868). A System of Logic. London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer. Read More