John Stuart Mill (1806–73) British philosopher, economist and politician. Mill was subjected to an intense and austere regime of education by his father, the utilitarian theorist James Mill, graphically described in his Autobiography (1873). This resulted in a mental collapse at the age of 20, after which he developed a more human philosophy influenced by Coleridge and the German Idealists. He founded and edited the London Review and was MP for Westminster, 1865–8.
Mill’s work was crucial to the development of liberalism because it straddled the divide between classical and modern theories. In On Liberty ([1859] 1972) he advanced an eloquent defence of freedom based upon the principle that the only justification for restricting individual freedom is to prevent ‘harm to others’. His opposition to collectivist tendencies and traditions, including those embodied in majoritarian democracy, was rooted in a commitment to ‘individuality’. His essay, Utilitarianism ([1861] 1972), was designed to outline the basic themes of the utilitarian tradition, but departed from them in emphasising the difference between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ pleasures. In Considerations on Representative Government ([1861] 1972), Mill discussed the representative and electoral mechanisms he believed would balance broader participation against the need for an intellectual and moral elite. The Subjection of Women (1869), written in collaboration with his wife Harriet Taylor, proposed that women should enjoy the same rights and liberties as men, including the right to vote.
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