racy was somewhat limited, however, because his distrust of the working class
was almost as profound as his contempt for the traditionalaristocracy. In a
very Aristotelian manner he supported the extra influence for the middle
classes, whom he saw as naturally balancing all interests in the state. In many
ways he was a brilliant propagandist for selling utilitarian ideals to the rising
professional and commercialbourgeoisie, rather than an original or creative
developer of utilitarianism.
Mill, John Stuart
John Stuart Mill (1806–73) was the son of JamesMillwho, with his close
friend and collaborator JeremyBentham, entirely controlled his education,
with the more or less explicit intention of producing a brilliant successor as an
exponent ofutilitarianism. In this they succeeded, although he was to go far
beyond them in some respects, and certainly produced a version of utilitarian-
ism more sophisticated and more suited to Britishliberalismthan that of his
elders. Through a long career as a writer, though he also had much practical
experience, including parliamentary, J. S. Mill worked on a variety of topics.
His most famous works are the three essays,On Liberty(1859),Considerations on
Representative Government(1861) andUtilitarianism(1863), though his purely
philosophical work, especially the System of Logic, is also of continuing
academic interest.
InUtilitarianismhe tries to reduce the harshness and hedonism of Bentham’s
approach, accepting, for example, what Bentham denied, that not all sources of
pleasure were equally valid. (He rejected, for example, Bentham’s notion that it
was better to be a pig satisfied than Socrates dissatisfied.) The essayOn Libertyis
probably the most read of all his works, arguing for a system oflibertarianism
in which the only justification allowable for government interference in
anyone’s life was to prevent them from harming others, and never the claim
that a government might know a person’s true interests better than the
individual. Indeed his great fear, against which the whole essay is directed,
was thetyranny of the majority, the fear of popular pressure against the non-
conformist individual. His justification for such maximum individual liberty,
however, is a brilliant thesis about human progress through the discovery of
new truths only possible, according to Mill, in a society where no interference
in personal belief, or the expression of belief, is tolerated. A beautiful stylist,
with a wide-ranging scholarship, his major essays remain vital elements in
curricula throughout departments of politics and philosophy, and much of the
accepted values of Western society still conforms better to his vision than to
that of almost any other thinker of his period.
Mill, John Stuart