Historical Figures Codexery

John Stuart Mill

English philosopher of liberalism.

Individual freedom against unlimited state and social control was justified by Mill's conception of liberty, and he also formulated the Harm principle.[1]

Life and work

Mill was the eldest son of Harriet Barrow and the Scottish philosopher James Mill, and was born at 13 Rodney Street in Pentonville.[2] At age three Mill was taught Greek, and by eight he had read Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, and the whole of Herodotus.[3] Mill's career as a colonial administrator at the East India Company spanned from 1823 until 1858.[4] He served as a Member of Parliament for City of Westminster from 1865 to 1868, sitting for the Liberal Party.[5]

At age twenty, Mill experienced months of sadness and considered suicide, an episode he recounts in his autobiography.[6][7] After Henry Hunt, Mill was the second MP in Parliament to demand voting rights for women, doing so in 1866.[8] Erysipelas caused Mill's death on 7 May 1873 in Avignon; his body was interred next to his wife's there.[9]

What the cited sources add

Mill's autobiography states that his father made him read and give a verbal account of many books, including Millar's Historical View of the English Government.[10] The Victorian Web account explains that Mill's loss of belief took the form of loss of faith in a secular political philosophy rather than an orthodox religion.[7] That same source notes that Romantic poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge played a crucial role in Mill's description of his depression and his recovery from it.[7] Mill's autobiography records that he fell into friendly intercourse with Frederick Maurice and John Sterling as his intimacy with Roebuck diminished.[10]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "John Stuart Mill" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Utilitarianism and the New Liberalism History of ideas and intellectual history", Cambridge University Press; Brink, "Mill's Progressive Principles", 2013, p. 214–233; Eatwell, "Contemporary Political Ideologies", Continuum International Publishing Group, 1999; Brink, "John Stuart Mill", Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University; "John Stuart Mill's On Liberty", victorianweb, 6 November 2000; "Classical Liberal", Claremont Review of Books; Shah, "The Enigmatic Nature of J. S. Mill’s Classical Liberalism and Utilitarianism", Journa en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "John Stuart Mill" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hamblin, "Fallacies", Menthuen & Co Ltd, 1970, p. 175 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "John Stuart Mill" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Cornell University Library Making of America Collection", collections.library.cornell.edu; "Cornell University Library Making of America Collection", collections.library.cornell.edu; "Cornell University Library Making of America Collection", collections.library.cornell.edu; "Cornell University Library Making of America Collection", collections.library.cornell.edu (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "John Stuart Mill" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Mill, John Stuart. Writings on India. Edited by John M. Robson, Martin Moir, and Zawahir Moir. Toronto: University of Toronto Press; London: Routledge, c. 1990. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "John Stuart Mill" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; Capaldi, Nicholas. John Stuart Mill: A Biography. pp. 321–322, Cambridge, 2004, . (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "John Stuart Mill" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "John Stuart Mill's Mental Breakdown, Victorian Unconversions, and Romantic Poetry", victorianweb.org (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  7. "John Stuart Mill's Mental Breakdown, Victorian Unconversions, and Romantic Poetry", victorianweb.org. facts only, no text reused. victorianweb.org
  8. Wikipedia, "John Stuart Mill" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Sher, George, ed. 2001. Utilitarianism and the 1868 Speech on Capital Punishment, by J.S. Mill. Hackett Publishing Co.; "Report of meeting on Proportional representation or effective voting (1894)", p. 25 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "John Stuart Mill" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Characteristic Will of John Stuart Mill", The New York Times (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  10. "Autobiography, by John Stuart Mill". facts only, no text reused. gutenberg.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article John Stuart Mill (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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