John Stuart Mill and Utilitarianism free essay sample

Abstract The paper presents the life of John Stuart Mill through his biography. A glimpse on his exceptional life as a child was also included in his biography. Likewise, his major contributions as a philosopher and economist were also discussed. Since John Stuart Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, the paper focuses its discussion on Mill and utilitarianism. The views of John Stuart Mill on utilitarianism and how it differs from Bentham’s views were given much attention in the paper. The history of utilitarianism was also presented to show how utilitarianism evolved. The confusions of many people, regarding who the real founder of utilitarianism, was clarified through the history of utilitarianism. Introduction John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), is a British philosopher-economist, who is the son of James Mill. He is one of the best 19th century thinkers. In economics, he was influenced by the theories of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Thomas Robert Malthus, and his Principles of Political Economy is a little more than a restatement of their ideas. We will write a custom essay sample on John Stuart Mill and Utilitarianism or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page He had a great impact on 19th century British thought, not only in philosophy and economics but also in the areas of political science, logic, and ethics. He was a proponent of utilitarianism. He systematized the utilitarian doctrines of his father and Jeremy Bentham in such works as Utilitarianism (1863), basing knowledge upon human experience and emphasizing human reason. In political economy, Mill advocated those policies that he believed most consistent with individual liberty, and he emphasized that liberty could be threatened as much by social as by political tyranny. He is probably most famous for his essay â€Å"On Liberty† (1859). He studied pre-Marxian socialist doctrine, and, although he did not become a socialist, he worked actively for improvement of the conditions of the working people. Utilitarianism is a philosophy which has been around for centuries, and is still active and popular in the modern world. It is important not only in philosophy itself, but in disciplines such as economics, political science, and decision theory. To some people, Utilitarianism seems to be the only ethical philosophy which is obviously correct. To others, it seems to be quite misconceived, even reprehensible. Biography of John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was a British philosopher, economist, moral and political theorist, and administrator. He was the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century. His views are of continuing significance, and are generally recognized to be among the deepest and certainly the most effective defenses of empiricism and of a liberal political view of society and culture. The overall aim of his philosophy is to develop a positive view of the universe and the place of humans in it, one which contributes to the progress of human knowledge, individual freedom and human well-being. John Stuart Mill was born on May 20, 1806 in Pentonville, London. He was the eldest son of James Mill, a Scottish philosopher and historian who had come to London and become a leading figure in the group of philosophical radicals which aimed to further the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. His mother was Harriet Barrow, who seems to have had very little influence upon him. Mill was educated by his father, with the advice and assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place. He was given an extremely rigorous upbringing, and was deliberately shielded from association with children of his own age other than his siblings. His father, a follower of Bentham and an adherent of associationism, had as his explicit aim to create a genius intellect that would carry on the cause of utilitarianism and its implementation after he and Bentham were dead. John Stuart Mill as a child was exceptional. At the age of three he was taught the Greek alphabet and long lists of Greek words with their English equivalents. By the age of eight he had read Aesop’s Fables, Xenophon’s Anabasis, and the whole of Herodotus, and was acquainted with Lucian, Diogenes Laertius, Isocrates and six dialogues of Plato. He had also read a great deal of history in English and had been aught arithmetic. At fifteen, John Stuart Mill undertook the study of Benthams various fragments on the theory of legal evidence. These had an inspiring influence on him, fixing in him his life-long goal of reforming the world in the interest of human well-being. At the age of seventeen, he had completed advanced and thorough courses of study in Greek literature and philosophy, chemistry, botany, psychology, and law. In 1822 Mill began to work as a clerk for his father in the examiners office of the India House. In 1823, he co-founded the Westminster Review with Jeremy Bentham as a journal for philosophical radicals. This intensive study however had injurious effects on Mills mental health, and state of mind. At the age of twenty-one, he suffered a nervous breakdown. This was caused by the great physical and mental arduousness of his studies which had suppressed any feelings or spirituality he might have developed normally in childhood. Nevertheless, this depression eventually began to dissipate, as he began to find solace in the poetry of William Wordsworth. His capacity for emotion resurfaced, Mill remarking that the â€Å"cloud gradually drew off†. In 1851, Mill married Harriet Taylor after 21 years of an at times intense friendship and love affair. Taylor was a significant influence on Mills work and ideas during both friendship and marriage. His relationship with Harriet Taylor reinforced Mills advocacy of womens rights. He died in Avignon, France in 1873, and is buried alongside his wife. John Stuart Mill and the Classical School of Thought Classical economics starts with Adam Smith, as a coherent economic theory, continues with the British economists Thomas Robert Malthus and David Ricardo, and culminates in the synthesis of John Stuart Mill, who as a young man was a follower of David Ricardo. Among the classical economists in the three-quarters of a century, although they have differences of opinion between Smiths Wealth of Nations and Mills Principles of Political Economy (1848), the members of the group still agreed on major principles. All believed in private property, free markets, and, in Mills words, that â€Å"only through the principle of competition has political economy any pretension to the character of a science. † They shared Smiths strong suspicion of overnment and his ardent confidence in the power of self-interest represented by his famous â€Å"invisible hand,† which reconciled public benefit with individual pursuit of private gain. From Ricardo, classicists derived the notion of diminishing returns, which held that as more labor and capital were applied to land, yields after â€Å"a certain and not very advanced stage in the progress of agriculture steadily diminished. † Through Smiths emphasis on consumption, rather than on producti on, the scope of economics was considerably broadened.