دانلود کتاب John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill looms in the central massif of nineteenth century thought; one of its highest
peaks, gaunt in appearance, cloud-capped, chilly. The outline casts its shadow on lower hills—it is
regularly used to take bearings on them—but climbers on its high ridges remain few.

The same could be said of other major nineteenth-century philosophers; we are only slowly beginning
to take stock of their legacy, and to locate ourselves, as the heroic phase of twentieth- century
philosophy recedes, in relation to it. But it is particularly true, I think in the case of Mill.
Though his reputation continues to revive, there is still no accurate revaluation of the most
fundamental points in his philosophy. Yet his questions, his answers, and their difficulties are
all readily understandable in today’s perspective. Not every vast nineteenth-century canvas repays
the painstaking work of restoration, but in this case the result is incisive and fresh.

This book traces Mill’s arguments, tests their strength and suggests alternatives. Some of it,
inevitably, enters into complicated detail, but I have tried to keep the larger picture in view. In
the first chapter I sketch out the main themes of Mill’s philosophical thought. There is an
impressive steadiness and scope in Mill’s vision; he tackles very big themes right out in the open,
for an audience of intelligent readers; he tries to bring pure philosophy into contact with life
and thought.

Anyone who does that runs the dangers of pontificating, spreading himself too thinly, hurrying over
difficult issues too quickly. Mill can be absolved of none of these things. And it must be
confessed that there is something glacial about the philosopher as public figure. Mill fits into no
cosy group, no shared esoteric language—but neither does he cast himself as the romantic outsider,
observing human society from the desert or the bush. His chosen role is to educate the
serious-minded; his philosophical stance is numbingly comprehensive, lucid and systematic. He
magisterially treats of mind, society, politics, economics, culture. If Bacon wrote philosophy like
a Lord Chancellor, Mill all too often writes it like a self-appointed Royal Commission.

The grand manner risks sounding hollow—especially when expressed in plain and sober prose which
mercilessly exposes bits of mere blur or filling. Some of Mill’s more substantive political
writings suffer badly from a lack of the nuance and self-irony which attractive political writing
needs. They generate ‘horror Victorianorum’. But his more purely philosophical works are saved by
their incisiveness and humanity. There is little pot-boiling in them; they are packed with crisp
argument. We can learn a great deal from these arguments, but it is from Mill’s strategic vision
that we have most to learn—expecially about the necessary relations between philosophy, culture and
politics.

Mill is very English. The English tradition of the philosopher and practical man of sense, and the
English paradox of the conservative radical, go far to explain the strengths and weaknesses of his
mind. Like Locke or Butler he values intelligibility above laboriously achieved precision. He is
humane and balanced rather than playful and ingenious, incisive and strategic rather than carefully
worked-over and exact. Another comparison would be with George Orwell: Mill has
the same conservative radicalism, centring on hatred of domination but fear of the atomised human mass, the same liking for honest language, the same wistfully prosaic mind. He liked to lecture his compatriots about the virtues of continental thought, but it was from the island of Albion that he did so.

The layout of this book is determined by four of Mill’s works: the System of Logic, the Examination
of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, Utilitarianism and On Liberty. Many of Mill’s other writings
contain philosophical discussions of importance—I refer to some of them when it is relevant to do
so. But these are the four texts by which Mill’s more purely philosophical reputation is likely to
stand or fall, The most obvious omission from this canon is his Three Essays on Religion’. I would
have liked to have a chapter on Mill on religion—but though the essays contain dispassionate and
telling argument, they are not, I think, philosophically creative. They fascinatingly display a
major predicament of the Victorian mind, but they do not break new paths in our understanding of
what religion is. Nor are they essential to Mill’s philosophy in the way that Hume’s Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion are essential to his.

The topics in Mill chosen, and the balance among them, are meant to give a picture of Mill
specifically as a philosopher. I have given a lot of space to the System of Logic, because it is
fundamental in Mill’s thought and because there is a desperate lack of up-to-date commentary on it.
Mill thought the two works by him which would survive longest were Liberty and the System. He was
not wrong to pick out these two. Understanding Mill’s project in the System of Logic, its strength
and historical standing, must be the basis for any full revaluation of Mill, so I have tried to be
comprehensive. I have less to say about Mill’s fine analysis of causation than about other topics
because this has already been well treated by the late J.L.Mackie. Mackie also analysed Mill’s
‘eliminative methods of induction’ very fully; I have covered these in more detail because they are
needed for an overall picture of Mill’s view of the ‘inductive process’. The Examination of Sir
William Hamilton’s Philosophy is discussed in chapter 7, which extends the basic lines of argument
in the previous chapters—I concentrate on the tension between Mill’s naturalism, his inductivism
and his subjectivist epistemology.

On Mill as a liberal and utilitarian there is now a vast literature, much of it very elaborate, and
a lot of it very good. On these topics one can assume at least broad agreement about what Mill
actually said. In chapters 8, 9 and 10 I have stressed the distinctive quality of Mill’s
liberalism— the fact that it is founded on an appeal not to irreducible individual rights but to
the general good. To approach liberty and equality in this way places great weight on a substantive
view of human nature and a substantive analysis of human ends. In this respect Mill differs markedly from the wanly formalistic and subjectivist strains of liberal philosophy in the present century. His is not
a defensive liberalism, desperately eliminating hostages to fortune, or a sleight-of-hand
liberalism, trying to conjure political principles out of tautologies. It makes deep assumptions
about human beings, their possibilities and their ends. Certainly the assumptions were not fully
thought through by Mill—they conflicted at many points with his associationist and hedonistic
Benthamite inheritance. That means that Mill leaves his followers with a lot of ground-clearing
to do. But I argue that there is no alternative foundation for liberalism; if I am right, then to
examine the prospects of rebuilding liberalism on cleared but essentially Millian ground is to ask
about the fortunes of liberalism itself.

I have been writing this book (though with many interruptions) for nine years. Intensive study of
any great philosopher must be simultaneously humbling and life-enhancing; I have certainly found it
to be so with Mill. I have come to appreciate the depth and difficulty of what he did, and have
found myself rethinking virtually every topic he touched.