John Stuart Mill

Key ideas

Mill defended utilitarianism: actions are right as they tend to promote happiness. Against the charge that this is a philosophy fit for pigs, he argued that some pleasures, those of the intellect and imagination, are higher in quality than others, and that anyone who has known both prefers them.

In On Liberty he argued that the only good reason for society to interfere with a person's actions is to prevent harm to others. Over their own body and mind, individuals are sovereign. He saw free speech and 'experiments in living' as the means by which humanity discovers truth.

He also wrote an influential System of Logic, which gave a detailed account of inductive reasoning and the uniformity of nature assumption it rests on, and The Subjection of Women, an early argument for full legal equality of the sexes.

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, ch. 2 (1863)

Life, briefly

Mill was educated by his father in an intense experiment: Greek at three, Latin at eight. At twenty he suffered a breakdown and recovered partly by reading poetry, which convinced him that feeling mattered as much as calculation.

He worked for the East India Company for thirty-five years. His long partnership with Harriet Taylor, whom he married in 1851, shaped his later work. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1865 to 1868 and proposed giving women the vote.

Major works

• A System of Logic (1843)
• On Liberty (1859)
• Utilitarianism (1863)
• The Subjection of Women (1869)
• Autobiography (1873)

Schools of thought

Empiricism · Utilitarianism

Further reading

• EncyclopediaStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: John Stuart Mill
• WikipediaJohn Stuart Mill