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Western Political Thought

Notes paradigm of Newtonian physics. His essays On Liberty (1859) and The Subjection of Women (1869)
were classic elaborations of liberal thought on important issues like law, rights and liberty. His
The Considerations on Representative Government (1861) provided an outline of his ideal government
based on proportional representation, protection of minorities and institutions of self-government.
His famous pamphlet Utilitarianism (1863) endorsed the Benthamite principle of the greatest
happiness of the greatest number, yet made a significant departure from the Benthamite assumption
by arguing that this principle could only be defended if one distinguished happiness from pleasure.
His essays on Bentham and Coleridge, written between 1838 and 1840, enabled him to critically
dissect Benthamism.

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in
either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury. —Stuart Mill

In 1826, Mill experienced a “mental crisis” when he lost all his capacity for joy in life. He recovered
by discovering the romantic poetry of Coleridge and Wordsworth. He also realized the incompleteness
of his education, namely the lack of the emotional side of life. In his re-examination of Benthamite
philosophy, he attributed its one-sidedness to Bentham’s lack of experience, imagination and emotions.
He made use of Coleridge’s poems to broaden Benthamism, and made room for emotional, aesthetic
and spiritual dimensions. However, he never wavered from the fundamentals of Benthamism, though
the major difference between them was that Bentham followed a more simplistic picturization of the
human nature of the French Utilitarians, whereas Mill followed the more sophisticated Utilitarianism
of Hume. “The distinctive characteristic of Mill’s utilitarianism ... was that he tried to express a
conception of moral character consonant with his own personal idealism”.
Mill acknowledged that both On Liberty and The Subjection of Women were a joint endeavours with
Harriet Hardy Taylor, whom he met in 1830. Though Harriet was married, Mill fell in love with
her. The two maintained an intimate but chaste friendship for the next 19 years. Harriet’s husband
John Taylor died in 1849. In 1851, Mill married Harriet, and described her as the honour and chief
blessing of his existence, a source of great inspiration for his attempts to bring about human
improvement. He was confident that had Harriet lived at a time when women had greater
opportunities, she would have been “eminent among the rulers of mankind”. Mill died in 1873 at
Avignon, England.

13.2 Critique of Utilitarianism
Mill criticized and modified Bentham’s Utilitarianism by taking into account “factors like moral
motives, sociability, feeling of universal altruism, sympathy and a new concept of justice with the
key idea of impartiality”. He asserted that the chief deficiency of Benthamite ethics was the neglect
of individual character, and hence stressed on the cultivation of feelings and imagination as part
of good life. Poetry, drama, music, painting was essential ingredients, both for human happiness
and formation of character. They were “instruments of human culture”. He made happiness and
the dignity of man, and not the principle of pleasure, the chief end of life. He defined happiness
to mean perfection of human nature, cultivation of moral virtues and lofty aspirations, total control
over one’s appetites and desires, and recognition of individual and collective interests.
Mill’s ethics was important for liberalism because in effect it abandoned egoism,
assumed that social welfare is a matter of concern to all men of good will, and regarded
freedom, integrity, self respect, and personal distinction as intrinsic goods apart from
their contribution to happiness.

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