John Stuart Mill biography

Synopsis

Background: James Mill

The life and thought of John Stuart Mill might best be understood in the context of his father, who was a huge influence on the younger Mill. John Stuart Mill’s father, James Mill, met political theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1808 and received financial assistance from him while Mill struggled to establish himself. The two men’s friendship and similar political thought prompted them to start and lead the movement of “philosophic radicals.” The group, which was in direct opposition to the Whigs and the Tories, pushed for legal and political reform by way of universal voting rights (for men), a new place for economic theory in political decision making, and politics that took into account human happiness instead of “natural rights.” The group also sought to restructure social and political institutions under the guidance of principles of what would become known as utilitarianism, a school of social thought founded by Bentham.

Early Years

Born in 1806, John Stuart Mill was the eldest son of James Mill and Harriet Barrow (whose influence on Mill was vastly overshadowed by that of his father). A struggling man of letters, James Mill wrote History of British India (1818), and the work landed him a coveted position in the East India Company, where he rose to the post of chief examiner. When not carrying out his administrative duties, James Mill spent considerable time educating his son John, who began to learn Greek at age three and Latin at age eight. By the age of 14, John was extremely well versed in the Greek and Latin classics; had studied world history, logic and mathematics; and had mastered the basics of economic theory, all of which was part of his father’s plan to make John Stuart Mill a young proponent of the views of the philosophical radicals.

By his late teens, Mill spent many hours editing Jeremy Bentham’s manuscripts, and he threw himself into the work of the philosophic radicals (still guided by his father). He also founded a number of intellectual societies and began to contribute to periodicals, including the Westminster Review (which was founded by Bentham and James Mill). In 1823, his father secured him a junior position in the East India Company, and he, like his father before him, rose in the ranks, eventually taking his father's position of chief examiner.

Crisis and Evolution of the Thinker

In 1826, John Stuart Mill experienced what he would later call in his autobiography a “mental crisis,” during which he suffered a nervous breakdown marked by depression. It was likely triggered by the intense stress of his education, the continual influence of his domineering father, and other factors, but what emerged from this period is in the end more important than what caused it: Because of the depression, Mill started to rethink his entire life’s work thus far and to reformulate theories he had previously wholly embraced.

Mill’s new path began with a struggle to revise his father’s and Bentham’s work, which he suddenly saw as limited in a number of ways. This new drive was perhaps triggered by the poetry he had begun reading, most notably that of William Wordsworth. Mill found something of a mental balm in the verses of Wordsworth. Over the course of several months, his depression disappeared, and with it many of his former firmly held ideals.

Mill came to believe that he had been emotionally stunted by his father's demanding analytical training, that his ability to feel had been compromised by the constant cultivation of his intellect, and that this emotional component was lacking from what the radical philosophers had been espousing. He therefore sought a philosophy that could overcome the limits imposed by culture and history (e.g., natural rights) on any possible reform movement and would advance the roles of feeling and imagination.

Mill began to dismantle much of the negative (and therefore limited) polemic of Bentham and his father.