John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill was one of the most influential thinkers of the 19th century. He was a champion of liberty, individualism, and utilitarianism, which holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness and wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. He was also a prolific writer and a member of Parliament, where he advocated for women's rights, freedom of expression, and electoral reform. Mill was born in London on May 20, 1806. His father was James Mill, a Scottish philosopher and economist who was a leading figure in the utilitarian school and a close associate of Jeremy Bentham. His mother was Harriet Burrow, a woman of modest means who had little influence on his education. Mill was educated by his father and tutors at home, following a rigorous and extensive curriculum that included Greek, Latin, mathematics, logic, history, political economy, and philosophy. He was exposed to the works of Bentham, David Ricardo, Adam Smith, John Locke, and other classical liberals at an early age. He also began writing for various journals and magazines when he was still a teenager. Mill suffered a mental crisis in 1826, when he was 20 years old. He felt that his life had no meaning or purpose, and that he had exhausted all the sources of happiness that his education had provided him. He attributed his recovery to the reading of poetry, especially that of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He also developed a more critical attitude towards utilitarianism and his father's views. He became interested in the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Auguste Comte, and other continental thinkers. He also formed a close friendship with Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish essayist and historian who influenced his views on history and culture. In 1830, Mill met Harriet Taylor, a married woman who shared his intellectual interests and radical opinions. They fell in love and maintained a platonic relationship for two decades until her husband's death in 1849. They married in 1851 and moved to France. Harriet was a major influence on Mill's thought and writings. She collaborated with him on several works, including On Liberty (1859), one of his most famous essays that defends the rights and freedoms of individuals against social and political interference. She also encouraged him to write The Subjection of Women (1869), a powerful argument for women's equality and emancipation. Mill worked for the East India Company from 1823 to 1858 as an administrator and examiner. He was responsible for drafting official documents and reports on Indian affairs. He supported the company's policy of gradual reform and improvement in India, but he also criticized some aspects of its rule, such as the lack of representation and education for the native population. He resigned from the company after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, which led to the transfer of power from the company to the British Crown. Mill was elected to Parliament in 1865 as a Liberal member for Westminster. He was an outspoken advocate for various causes, such as women's suffrage, proportional representation, land reform, Irish independence, free trade, and abolition of slavery. He also opposed the policies of Benjamin Disraeli's Conservative government, such as the Reform Act of 1867 that extended the franchise to urban working-class men but not to women or rural workers. He also opposed the British intervention in the American Civil War and the Crimean War. He lost his seat in 1868 and retired from public life. Mill died in Avignon, France, on May 8, 1873, of erysipelas, a bacterial infection of the skin. He was buried next to his wife, who had died in 1858, in the cemetery of Saint-Véran. He left behind a large body of works that cover various fields of philosophy, economics, politics, sociology, and ethics. Some of his most influential works include Principles of Political Economy (1848), a comprehensive treatise that combines classical and modern economic theories; Utilitarianism (1863), a defense and refinement of the utilitarian doctrine; A System of Logic (1843), a detailed exposition of the methods and principles of scientific inquiry; and Autobiography (1873), a candid account of his life and development as a thinker. Mill's ideas have had a lasting impact on the history of philosophy and social thought. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the 19th century and one of the founders of liberalism.