John Stuart Mill (1806- 1873)

• John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political
economist and civil servant.
• One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism, he contributed widely to
social theory, political theory and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential
English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century", Mill's conception of liberty
justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control.
• Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor
Jeremy Bentham, and contributed significantly to the theory of the scientific method.
• A member of the Liberal Party, he was also the first Member of Parliament to call for
women's suffrage.
Biography
• John Stuart Mill was born at 13 Rodney Street in the Penton Ville area of London, the
eldest son of the Scottish philosopher, historian and economist James Mill, and Harriet
Burrow.
• John Stuart 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 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 had died.

Mill as a kid
• Mill was a notably precocious child. He describes his education in his autobiography.
• At the age of three he was taught Greek.
 • 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 taught arithmetic,
physics and astronomy.
• At the age of eight, Mill began studying Latin, the works of Euclid, and algebra, and was
appointed schoolmaster to the younger children of the family. His main reading was still
history, but he went through all the commonly taught Latin and Greek authors.
• And by the age of ten could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease.
• His father also thought that it was important for Mill to study and compose poetry. One
of Mill's earliest poetic compositions was a continuation of the Iliad. In his spare time, he
also enjoyed reading about natural sciences and popular novels, such as Don Quixote
and Robinson Crusoe.
• At about the age of twelve, Mill began a thorough study of the scholastic logic, at the
same time reading Aristotle's logical treatises in the original language.
• In the following year he was introduced to political economy and studied Adam Smith
and David Ricardo with his father.
• At the age of fourteen, Mill stayed a year in France with the family of Sir Samuel
Bentham. In Montpellier, he attended the winter courses on chemistry, zoology, logic of
the Faculté des Sciences, as well as taking a course in higher mathematics.

School
• As a nonconformist who refused to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of
England, Mill was not eligible to study at the University of Oxford or the University of
Cambridge. Instead he followed his father to work for the East India Company, and
attended University College, London, to hear the lectures of John Austin, the first
Professor of Jurisprudence.
• He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences in 1856.

Career
• Mill's career as a colonial administrator at the British East India Company spanned from
when he was 17 years old in 1823 until 1858, when the Company was abolished in favor
of direct rule by the British crown over India.
• In 1836, he was promoted to the Company's Political Department, where he was
responsible for correspondence pertaining to the Company's relations with the princely
states.
• And in 1856, was finally promoted to the position of Examiner of Indian
Correspondence.
Mill’s Health
• Mill went through months of sadness and pondered suicide at twenty years of age. He
had asked himself whether the creation of a just society, his life's objective, would
actually make him happy. His heart answered "no", and unsurprisingly he lost the
happiness of striving towards this objective.
• Eventually, the poetry of William Wordsworth showed him that beauty generates
compassion for others and stimulates joy. With renewed joy he continued to work
towards a just society, but with more relish for the journey. He considered this one of the
most pivotal shifts in his thinking. In fact, many of the differences between him and his
father stemmed from this expanded source of joy.

Marriage Life
• In 1851, Mill married Harriet Taylor after 21 years of an intimate friendship. Taylor was
married when they met, and their relationship was close but generally believed to be
chaste during the years before her first husband died. Brilliant in her own right, Taylor
was a significant influence on Mill's work and ideas during both friendship and marriage.
• His relationship with Harriet Taylor reinforced Mill's advocacy of women's rights. He
cites her influence in his final revision of On Liberty, which was published shortly after
her death. Taylor died in 1858 after developing severe lung congestion, after only seven
years of marriage to Mill.

Harriet Taylor Mill (John Mill’s Wife)

Mill’s Work
John Stuart Mill’s famous works are:
• On Liberty
• Utilitarianism
• The Subjection of Women