John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was reading Greek at the age of three. By eight he had worked through Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, the whole of Herodotus, and six dialogues of Plato. This was not an accident. His father, James Mill, set out with explicit purpose to manufacture a genius, a mind that would carry the cause of utilitarianism forward after he and Jeremy Bentham were gone. The boy was kept apart from other children, drilled in Latin and Euclid, and made schoolmaster to his younger siblings before he was ten. What does it do to a person to be built rather than raised? At twenty, Mill found out, sliding into months of despair in which he contemplated suicide. The poetry of William Wordsworth pulled him back. From that engineered childhood and that crisis came one of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism, a man the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy would call the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century. How did a ghostwriter for Bentham become a Member of Parliament who demanded the vote for women? Why does a copy of his essay still pass to the leader of a British political party as a symbol of office? And how did a defender of free markets edge, over a lifetime, toward calling himself a socialist?
Thirteen Rodney Street in Pentonville, then on the edge of London, was where Mill was born on the 20th of May 1806, the eldest son of Harriet Barrow and the Scottish philosopher James Mill. His education came not from a school but from his father, with advice from Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place. The aim was deliberate and total. At eight he began Latin, the works of Euclid, and algebra, and by ten could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. His father thought poetry mattered too, so one of the boy's earliest compositions was a continuation of the Iliad. When James Mill's The History of British India appeared in 1818, his son, around twelve, turned to scholastic logic and read Aristotle's logical treatises in the original. David Ricardo, a close friend of his father, used to invite the young Mill to his house to walk and talk about political economy. At fourteen, Mill spent a year in France with the family of Sir Samuel Bentham, brother of Jeremy. The mountain scenery gave him a lifelong taste for mountain landscapes, and in Montpellier he attended winter courses in chemistry, zoology, and logic. Passing through Paris, he stayed with the economist Jean-Baptiste Say and met leaders of the Liberal party along with Henri Saint-Simon.
At twenty years of age, Mill asked himself a simple, devastating question. If the just society he had been bred to build were actually achieved, would it make him happy? His heart answered no. According to Chapter V of his autobiography, the loss of that answer drained the happiness out of striving. Wordsworth's poetry restored it by showing him that beauty generates compassion and stimulates joy. He counted this among the most pivotal shifts in his thinking, and many of the differences between him and his father grew from this expanded source of joy. A different kind of partnership shaped him too. On the 21st of April 1851, Mill married Harriet Taylor after twenty-one years of intimate friendship. She had been married when they met, and the relationship was generally believed to be chaste until her first husband died in 1849. On marrying, Mill made a formal declaration repudiating the rights Victorian law conferred on him over her. He called her mind a perfect instrument, said she was the most eminently qualified of all those known to him, and described himself as chiefly an amanuensis to my wife in his stand for women's rights. Taylor died in 1858 of severe lung congestion, after only seven years of marriage, and he cited her influence in his final revision of On Liberty, published shortly after her death.
From the age of seventeen, in 1823, Mill worked for the East India Company, the same path his father had followed. He could not study at Oxford or Cambridge, because as a nonconformist he refused to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, so he attended University College, London, to hear John Austin, the first Professor of Jurisprudence. His career as a colonial administrator ran until 1858, when the Crown directly annexed the company's territories in India. In 1836 he moved to the political department, handling correspondence on relations with the princely states, and in 1856 became Examiner of Indian Correspondence. His views on empire were stark. He argued for what he called benevolent despotism, provided the end is improvement, and wrote that to call any conduct toward a barbarous people a violation of the law of nations only shows that the speaker has never considered the subject. He immediately added that it may easily be a violation of the great principles of morality. He was a member of Edward Gibbon Wakefield's Colonization Society and among the founding members of the South Australian Association in 1833, set up to lobby for colonies in Australia. When the Crown moved to take direct control, Mill was tasked with defending Company rule and wrote a Memorandum on the Improvements in the Administration of India during the Last Thirty Years. He was offered a seat on the new Council of India but declined, citing disapproval of the new system.
The sole end for which mankind are warranted in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection. That sentence, from On Liberty in 1859, is the spine of Mill's thought on freedom. Power could rightfully be exercised over a member of a civilized community against his will only to prevent harm to others. A person's own good, physical or moral, was not sufficient warrant. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. Harm, for Mill, could come from omission as well as action. Failing to rescue a drowning child, to pay taxes, or to appear as a witness in court all counted as harmful, and could be regulated. He drew one hard limit on consent. Society should not permit people to sell themselves into slavery. Mill also feared a danger beyond government. He named it social tyranny and the tyranny of the majority, warning that society practising a social tyranny penetrates much more deeply into the details of life, enslaving the soul itself. His defence of free speech ran on the same logic. We can never be sure a silenced opinion contains no element of the truth, and beliefs left unchallenged decline into mere dogma. He drew the line at incitement, noting that an opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor may justly incur punishment when delivered to an excited mob before a corn-dealer's house. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. built his clear and present danger standard on Mill's idea.
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. With that line Mill broke from his teacher. Bentham had treated all happiness as equal, declaring that, quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry. Mill could not accept it. His major contribution to utilitarianism was the qualitative separation of pleasures, ranking intellectual, moral, and aesthetic pleasures above the merely sensational. His test for which pleasure ranked higher was elegant. Of two pleasures, the one preferred by almost all who have experienced both is the more desirable. The simple pleasures, he argued, tend to be chosen by people with no experience of high art, who are not in a position to judge. Underneath sat the greatest-happiness principle inherited from Bentham, that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse. Mill split his book Utilitarianism into five sections, from General Remarks through to Of the Connection between Justice and Utility. He concluded that justice is essential for utility in some cases, while in others social duty matters far more than justice.
Mill's Principles of Political Economy, first published in 1848, became one of the most widely read books on economics of its time. At Oxford it remained the standard text until 1919, when Marshall's Principles of Economics replaced it. Mill began as a believer in free markets, willing to accept intervention only on utilitarian grounds, such as a tax on alcohol or for animal welfare. He once called progressive taxation a mild form of robbery. Over time his views shifted toward a more socialist outlook. He added chapters defending socialist causes and made the radical proposal that the whole wage system be abolished in favour of a co-operative one. In his autobiography he wrote that his ideal of ultimate improvement would class him decidedly under the general designation of Socialists. His objection to socialism was narrow but firm. He dissented from the socialists' declamations against competition. The future he expected to predominate was an association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning their capital and working under managers elected and removable by themselves, which led him to be classified as an early proponent of market socialism. In Of the Stationary State, he argued that unlimited growth meant the destruction of the environment, and that a stationary state of capital and wealth need not be regarded with aversion.
In 1866, Mill became the second person in the history of Parliament, after Henry Hunt, to call for women to be given the right to vote. He defended the position vigorously in debate. Sitting for the Liberal Party as Member of Parliament for the City of Westminster between 1865 and 1868, he was one of the very few political philosophers ever to serve as an elected official, and in office proved more willing to compromise than his radical writing suggested. He pressed to ease the burdens on Ireland and championed labour unions and farm cooperatives. In Considerations on Representative Government he called for proportional representation, the single transferable vote, and the extension of suffrage. He introduced an unsuccessful amendment to the Reform Bill to substitute the word person for the word man. Not every position aged comfortably. In April 1868 he favoured retaining capital punishment for crimes such as aggravated murder, terming its abolition an effeminacy in the general mind of the country. During the same years he served as Lord Rector of the University of St Andrews, and in his inaugural address on the 1st of February 1867 made the remark, often wrongly attributed to him, that bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good men should look on and do nothing. His co-authored work The Subjection of Women appeared in 1869. Mill died on the 7th of May 1873, at the age of sixty-six, of erysipelas in Avignon, where he was buried alongside his wife and left his estate to his stepdaughter Helen Taylor, whom he named his literary executor.
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Common questions
Who was John Stuart Mill?
John Stuart Mill was an English philosopher, political economist, politician, and civil servant who lived from the 20th of May 1806 to the 7th of May 1873. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy called him the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century, and he was a central figure in liberalism and social liberalism.
What is John Stuart Mill's harm principle in On Liberty?
John Stuart Mill's harm principle holds that the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over a member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others. He stated it in On Liberty in 1859, arguing that a person's own physical or moral good is not sufficient warrant for interference, and that over his own body and mind the individual is sovereign.
What did John Stuart Mill believe about utilitarianism?
John Stuart Mill held that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness and wrong as they tend to produce its reverse. His major contribution was distinguishing higher pleasures, which are intellectual, moral, and aesthetic, from lower sensational pleasures, captured in his line that it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
Did John Stuart Mill support women's rights?
Yes. In 1866 John Stuart Mill became the second person in the history of Parliament, after Henry Hunt, to call for women to be given the right to vote. He co-authored The Subjection of Women, published in 1869, and as a Member of Parliament introduced an unsuccessful amendment to the Reform Bill to substitute the word person for the word man.
How was John Stuart Mill educated as a child?
John Stuart Mill was educated by his father, James Mill, in an extremely rigorous program designed to create a genius. He was taught Greek at age three, had read the whole of Herodotus and six dialogues of Plato by age eight, and began Latin, Euclid, and algebra at eight, becoming schoolmaster to his younger siblings.
How did John Stuart Mill's economic views change over his life?
John Stuart Mill began as a believer in free markets and once called progressive taxation a mild form of robbery, but his views shifted toward socialism. He added chapters to his Principles of Political Economy defending socialist causes, proposed abolishing the wage system in favour of worker cooperatives, and wrote that his ideal would class him decidedly under the general designation of Socialists.
When and how did John Stuart Mill die?
John Stuart Mill died on the 7th of May 1873, at the age of sixty-six, of erysipelas in Avignon, France. He was buried alongside his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill, and bequeathed his estate to his stepdaughter Helen Taylor, whom he named his literary executor.
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- 46bookThe Rise of the Global Imaginary Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on TerrorManfred B. Steger — OUP — 2008
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- 50journalLegislator of the World? A Rereading of Bentham on ColoniesJennifer Pitts — April 2003
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- 52journalJohn Stuart Mill and the practice of colonial rule in IndiaDavid Williams — October 2021
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- 54journalJohn Stuart Mill on Federation, Civilization and EmpireDuncan Bell — 2025
- 55webIfaw.org
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- 60webWas John Stuart Mill a Socialist?Matt McManus — 30 May 2021
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- 62bookA History of Economic Theory and MethodEkelund, Robert B. Jr. et al. — Waveland Press Long Grove, Illinois — 1997
- 63webGrundrisseMarx
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- 66webWhat Did Mill Understand as "Socialism"?Nicholas Capaldi — Liberty Fund, Inc. — 2015-07-13
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- 71bookJ.S. Mill's Political ThoughtDennis Thompson — Cambridge University Press — 2007
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- 73journalJohn Stuart Mill, Socialism, and His Liberal Utopia: An Application of His View of Social InstitutionsLaura Valladão de Mattos — 2000
- 74journalJohn Stuart Mill on the Political Significance of Higher EducationLee Ward — August 2023
- 75bookPrinciples of Political EconomyJohn Stuart Mill — D. Appleton and Company — 1885
- 76journalJohn Stuart Mill's Theories of Wealth and Income DistributionHans Jensen — December 2001
- 77journalThe New Political Economy of J.S. Mill: Means to Social JusticeRobert Ekelund et al. — May 1976
- 79journalThe Early History of Modern Ecological EconomicsInge Røpke — 1 October 2004
- 80bookPrinciples of Political EconomyJohn Stuart Mill
- 84bookGreat American Judges: An EncyclopediaJohn R. Vile — ABC-CLIO — 2003
- 85journalJohn Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, and the U.S. Civil WarT. Peter Park — 1 September 1991
- 86webBlood for Liberty2008
- 87webJohn Stuart Mill on Slavery, the Confederacy, and the American Civil WarIlya Somin — 2013-07-17
- 92bookThe Basic Writings of John Stuart MillJohn Mill — The Modern Library — 2002
- 93bookUtilitarianism by John Stuart MillFebruary 2004
- 94journalFoundations for Ethical Standards and Codes: The Role of Moral Philosophy and Theory in EthicsStephen J. Freeman et al. — April 2004
- 95webJohn Stuart Mill (1806–1873)Colin Heydt
- 96bookUtilitarianismJohn Mill — Doubleday — 1961
- 97webThe History of UtilitarianismJulia Driver — 27 March 2009
- 98journalPoetry, Pushpin, and UtilityMartin Bronfenbrenner — 1977
- 99bookA Down-East Yankee From the District of MaineWindsor Daggett — A.J. Huston — 1920
- 100webAbout John Stuart Mill, a Male Feminist and PhilosopherJone Johnson Lewis — February 10, 2019
- 101bookThe Oxford Handbook of the History of EthicsHenry R. West — Oxford University Press — 2015