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107-523: John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist , politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism , he contributed widely to social theory , political theory , and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century" by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , he conceived of liberty as justifying

214-568: A drowning child counts as a harmful act, as does failing to pay taxes , or failing to appear as a witness in court. All such harmful omissions may be regulated, according to Mill. By contrast, it does not count as harming someone if—without force or fraud—the affected individual consents to assume the risk: thus one may permissibly offer unsafe employment to others, provided there is no deception involved. He does, however, recognise one limit to consent: society should not permit people to sell themselves into slavery . The question of what counts as

321-650: A nonconformist who refused to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England , Mill was not eligible to study at the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge . Instead he followed his father to work for the East India Company , and attended University College, London , to hear the lectures of John Austin , the first Professor of Jurisprudence . He was elected

428-681: A Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation ). In " Mill's Methods " (of induction), as in Herschel's, laws were discovered through observation and induction, and required empirical verification. Matilal remarks that Dignāga analysis is much like John Stuart Mill's Joint Method of Agreement and Difference, which is inductive. He suggested that it was very likely that during his stay in India he came across

535-537: A barbarous people as a violation of the law of nations, only shows that he who so speaks has never considered the subject. For Mill India was " a burden " for England and British colonialism "a blessing of unspeakable magnitude to the population" of India. He also stated his support for settler colonialism . Mill expressed general support for Company rule in India , but expressed reservations on specific Company policies in India which he disagreed with. He also supported colonialism in other places, such as Australia. Mill

642-778: A civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant." One way to read Mill's Principle of Liberty as a principle of public reason is to see it excluding certain kinds of reasons from being taken into account in legislation, or in guiding the moral coercion of public opinion. (Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, p. 291) These reasons include those founded in other persons good; reasons of excellence and ideals of human perfection; reasons of dislike or disgust, or of preference. Mill states that "harms" which may be prevented include acts of omission as well as acts of commission. Thus, failing to rescue

749-454: A few days in the house of the renowned economist Jean-Baptiste Say , a friend of Mill's father. There he met many leaders of the Liberal party, as well as other notable Parisians, including Henri Saint-Simon . Mill went through months of sadness and contemplated suicide at twenty years of age. According to the opening paragraphs of Chapter V of his autobiography, he had asked himself whether

856-432: A follower of Bentham and an adherent of associationism , had as his explicit aim to create a genius intellect that would carry on the cause of utilitarianism and its implementation after he and Bentham had died. Mill was a notably precocious child. He describes his education in his autobiography. At the age of three he was taught Greek . By the age of eight, he had read Aesop's Fables , Xenophon 's Anabasis , and

963-532: A foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1856. Mill's career as a colonial administrator at the East India Company spanned from when he was 17 years old in 1823 until 1858, when the company's territories in India were directly annexed by the Crown , establishing direct Crown control over India . In 1836, he was promoted to the company's political department, where he

1070-644: A pen-friendship with Auguste Comte , the founder of positivism and sociology, since Mill first contacted Comte in November 1841. Comte's sociologie was more an early philosophy of science than modern sociology is. Comte's positivism motivated Mill to eventually reject Bentham's psychological egoism and what he regarded as Bentham's cold, abstract view of human nature focused on legislation and politics, instead coming to favour Comte's more sociable view of human nature focused on historical facts and directed more towards human individuals in all their complexities. As

1177-581: A program conducted by medieval Christian thinkers attempting to harmonize the various authorities of their own tradition, and to reconcile Christian theology with classical and late antiquity philosophy, especially that of Aristotle but also of Neoplatonism . The Scholastics, also known as Schoolmen , included as its main figures Anselm of Canterbury ("the father of scholasticism" ), Peter Abelard , Alexander of Hales , Albertus Magnus , Duns Scotus , William of Ockham , Bonaventure , and Thomas Aquinas . Aquinas's masterwork Summa Theologica (1265–1274)

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1284-484: A question to the teacher unannounced – disputationes de quodlibet . In this case, the teacher responded and the students rebutted; on the following day the teacher, having used notes taken during the disputation, summarised all arguments and presented his final position, riposting all rebuttals. The quaestio method of reasoning was initially used especially when two authoritative texts seemed to contradict one another. Two contradictory propositions would be considered in

1391-411: A range of works by William of Conches that attempted to reconcile the use of classical pagan and philosophical sources in a medieval Christian concept using the kludge of integumentum , treating the obviously heretical surface meanings as coverings disguising a deeper (and more orthodox) truth. Abelard himself was condemned by Bernard of Clairvaux at the 1141 Council of Sens and William avoided

1498-434: A right to prevent. Holmes suggested that falsely shouting out "Fire!" in a dark theatre , which evokes panic and provokes injury, would be such a case of speech that creates an illegal danger. But if the situation allows people to reason by themselves and decide to accept it or not, any argument or theology should not be blocked. Here is Mill on the same topic: "No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions. On

1605-399: A self-regarding action and what actions, whether of omission or commission, constitute harmful actions subject to regulation, continues to exercise interpreters of Mill. He did not consider giving offence to constitute "harm"; an action could not be restricted because it violated the conventions or morals of a given society. Mill believed that "the struggle between Liberty and Authority is

1712-409: A similar fate through systematic self-bowdlerization of his early work, but his commentaries and encyclopedic De Philosophia Mundi and Dragmaticon were miscredited to earlier scholars like Bede and widely disseminated. Anselm of Laon systematized the production of the gloss on Scripture, followed by the rise to prominence of dialectic (the middle subject of the medieval trivium ) in

1819-467: A society sufficiently culturally and institutionally advanced to be capable of progressive improvement. If any argument is really wrong or harmful, the public will judge it as wrong or harmful, and then those arguments cannot be sustained and will be excluded. Mill argued that even any arguments which are used in justifying murder or rebellion against the government should not be politically suppressed or socially persecuted . According to him, if rebellion

1926-460: A strong advocate of such social reforms as labour unions and farm cooperatives. In Considerations on Representative Government , he called for various reforms of Parliament and voting, especially proportional representation , the single transferable vote , and the extension of suffrage . In April 1868, he favoured in a Commons debate the retention of capital punishment for such crimes as aggravated murder ; he termed its abolition "an effeminacy in

2033-546: A system of " constitutional checks". However, in Mill's view, limiting the power of government was not enough: Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into

2140-484: A textbook to promote the ideas of Ricardian economics ; however, the book lacked popular support. Ricardo, who was a close friend of his father, used to invite the young Mill to his house for a walk to talk about political economy . At the age of fourteen, Mill stayed a year in France with the family of Sir Samuel Bentham , brother of Jeremy Bentham and in the company of George Ensor , then pursuing his polemic against

2247-490: A wholly original insight. During the same period, 1865–68, he was also a Member of Parliament (MP) for City of Westminster . He was sitting for the Liberal Party . During his time as an MP, Mill advocated easing the burdens on Ireland. In 1866, he became the first person in the history of Parliament to call for women to be given the right to vote, vigorously defending this position in subsequent debate. He also became

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2354-651: Is a microfoundations theory closely intertwined with political economy. Both approaches model voters, politicians and bureaucrats as behaving in mainly self-interested ways, in contrast to a view, ascribed to earlier mainstream economists, of government officials trying to maximize individual utilities from some kind of social welfare function . As such, economists and political scientists often associate political economy with approaches using rational-choice assumptions, especially in game theory and in examining phenomena beyond economics' standard remit, such as government failure and complex decision making in which context

2461-456: Is a necessary condition for intellectual and social progress . We can never be sure, he contends, that a silenced opinion does not contain some element of the truth. He also argues that allowing people to air false opinions is productive for two reasons. First, individuals are more likely to abandon erroneous beliefs if they are engaged in an open exchange of ideas . Second, by forcing other individuals to re-examine and re-affirm their beliefs in

2568-479: Is a critical component for a representative government to have to empower debate over public policy . He also eloquently argued that freedom of expression allows for personal growth and self-realization . He said that freedom of speech was a vital way to develop talents and realise a person's potential and creativity. He repeatedly said that eccentricity was preferable to uniformity and stagnation. The belief that freedom of speech would advance society presupposed

2675-725: Is believed that approximately 1,000 of his specimens are held by the Museum Requien in Avignon, and Mill's stepdaughter Helen donated specimens to the Kew Herbarium after his death. In the southern hemisphere, there are also specimens at the National Herbarium of Victoria , Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria , Australia. Mill died on 7 May 1873, at the age of 66, of erysipelas in Avignon , France, where his body

2782-722: Is considered to be the pinnacle of scholastic, medieval, and Christian philosophy; it began while Aquinas was regent master at the studium provinciale of Santa Sabina in Rome, the forerunner of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas , Angelicum . Important work in the scholastic tradition has been carried on well past Aquinas's time, such as English scholastics Robert Grosseteste and his student Roger Bacon , and for instance by Francisco Suárez and Luis de Molina , and also among Lutheran and Reformed thinkers. The terms "scholastic" and "scholasticism" derive from

2889-811: Is illuminated by religious faith. Other important Franciscan scholastics were Duns Scotus , Peter Auriol and William of Ockham . By contrast, the Dominican order, a teaching order founded by St Dominic in 1215, to propagate and defend Christian doctrine, placed more emphasis on the use of reason and made extensive use of the new Aristotelian sources derived from the East and Moorish Spain. The great representatives of Dominican thinking in this period were Albertus Magnus and (especially) Thomas Aquinas , whose artful synthesis of Greek rationalism and Christian doctrine eventually came to define Catholic philosophy. Aquinas placed more emphasis on reason and argumentation, and

2996-555: Is most fatal. Mill outlines the benefits of "searching for and discovering the truth" as a way to further knowledge. He argued that even if an opinion is false, the truth can be better understood by refuting the error. And as most opinions are neither completely true nor completely false, he points out that allowing free expression allows the airing of competing views as a way to preserve partial truth in various opinions. Worried about minority views being suppressed, he argued in support of freedom of speech on political grounds, stating that it

3103-549: Is not a unified discipline, there are studies using the term that overlap in subject matter, but have radically different perspectives: Scholasticism Scholasticism was a medieval school of philosophy that employed a critical organic method of philosophical analysis predicated upon Aristotelianism and the Ten Categories . Christian scholasticism emerged within the monastic schools that translated scholastic Judeo-Islamic philosophies , and "rediscovered"

3210-417: Is really necessary, people should rebel; if murder is truly proper, it should be allowed. However, the way to express those arguments should be a public speech or writing, not in a way that causes actual harm to others. Such is the harm principle : "That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." At

3317-441: Is the undertaking to decide that question for others , without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this pretension not the less, if put forth on the side of my most solemn convictions. However positive any one's persuasion may be, not only of the falsity, but of the pernicious consequences–not only of the pernicious consequences, but (to adopt expressions which I altogether condemn)

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3424-434: The East India Company from 1823 to 1858, argued in support of what he called a "benevolent despotism" with regard to the administration of overseas colonies. Mill argued: To suppose that the same international customs, and the same rules of international morality, can obtain between one civilized nation and another, and between civilized nations and barbarians, is a grave error. ... To characterize any conduct whatever towards

3531-539: The Franciscans and the Dominicans . The Franciscans were founded by Francis of Assisi in 1209. Their leader in the middle of the century was Bonaventure , a traditionalist who defended the theology of Augustine and the philosophy of Plato , incorporating only a little of Aristotle in with the more neoplatonist elements. Following Anselm, Bonaventure supposed that reason can only discover truth when philosophy

3638-768: The Latin word scholasticus , the Latinized form of the Greek σχολαστικός ( scholastikos ), an adjective derived from σχολή ( scholē ), " school ". Scholasticus means "of or pertaining to schools". The "scholastics" were, roughly, "schoolmen". The foundations of Christian scholasticism were laid by Boethius through his logical and theological essays, and later forerunners (and then companions) to scholasticism were Islamic Ilm al-Kalām , meaning "science of discourse", and Jewish philosophy , especially Jewish Kalam . The first significant renewal of learning in

3745-458: The University of St Andrews . At his inaugural address, delivered to the University on 1 February 1867, he made the now-famous (but often wrongly attributed) remark that "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing." That Mill included that sentence in the address is a matter of historical record, but it by no means follows that it expressed

3852-573: The actus essendi or act of existence of finite beings by participating in being itself. Other scholars such as those involved with the "Progetto Tommaso" seek to establish an objective and universal reading of Aquinas' texts. Thomistic scholasticism in the English speaking world went into decline in the 1970s when the Thomistic revival that had been spearheaded by Jacques Maritain , Étienne Gilson , and others, diminished in influence. Partly, this

3959-637: The collected works of Aristotle . Endeavoring to harmonize his metaphysics and its account of a prime mover with the Latin Catholic dogmatic trinitarian theology, these monastic schools became the basis of the earliest European medieval universities , and thus became the bedrock for the development of modern science and philosophy in the Western world. Scholasticism dominated education in Europe from about 1100 to 1700. The rise of scholasticism

4066-595: The political business cycles , central-bank independence and the politics of excessive deficits. An interesting example would be the publication in 1954 of the first manual of Political Economy in the Soviet Union, edited by Lev Gatovsky , which mixed the classic theoretical approach of the time with the soviet political discourse. A rather recent focus has been put on modeling economic policy and political institutions concerning interactions between agents and economic and political institutions , including

4173-408: The quaestio students could ask questions ( quaestiones ) that might have occurred to them during meditatio . Eventually the discussion of questiones became a method of inquiry apart from the lectio and independent of authoritative texts. Disputationes were arranged to resolve controversial quaestiones . Questions to be disputed were ordinarily announced beforehand, but students could propose

4280-657: The 12th century also included figures like Constantine the African in Italy and James of Venice in Constantinople. Scholars such as Adelard of Bath traveled to Spain and Sicily, translating works on astronomy and mathematics, including the first complete translation of Euclid 's Elements into Latin. At the same time, the School of Chartres produced Bernard of Chartres 's commentaries on Plato 's Timaeus and

4387-500: The French physiocrats were the first major exponents of political economy, although the intellectual responses of Adam Smith , John Stuart Mill , David Ricardo , Henry George and Karl Marx to the physiocrats generally receive much greater attention. The world's first professorship in political economy was established in 1754 at the University of Naples Federico II in southern Italy . The Neapolitan philosopher Antonio Genovesi

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4494-635: The Greek language and translated many works into Latin, affording access to the Cappadocian Fathers and the Greek theological tradition . Three other primary founders of scholasticism were the 11th-century archbishops Lanfranc and Anselm of Canterbury in England and Peter Abelard in France . This period saw the beginning of the " rediscovery " of many Greek works which had been lost to

4601-454: The Greek word οἰκονομία ; household management. The earliest works of political economy are usually attributed to the British scholars Adam Smith , Thomas Malthus , and David Ricardo , although they were preceded by the work of the French physiocrats , such as François Quesnay and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot . In the late 19th century, the term economics gradually began to replace

4708-626: The Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Time , followed in 1840 by The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon their History , presenting induction as the mind superimposing concepts on facts. Laws were self-evident truths, which could be known without need for empirical verification. Mill countered this in 1843 in A System of Logic (fully titled A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being

4815-632: The Latin West. As early as the latter half of the 10th century, the Toledo School of Translators in Muslim Spain had begun translating Arabic texts into Latin. After a successful burst of Reconquista in the 12th century, Spain opened even further for Christian scholars and, as these Europeans encountered Judeo-Islamic philosophies , they opened a wealth of Arab and Judaic knowledge of mathematics and astronomy. The Latin translations of

4922-551: The Reformation, Calvinists largely adopted the scholastic method of theology, while differing regarding sources of authority and content of theology. The revival and development from the second half of the 19th century of medieval scholastic philosophy is sometimes called neo- Thomism . As J. A. Weisheipl O.P. emphasizes, within the Dominican Order Thomistic scholasticism has been continuous since

5029-547: The UK press. This prompted demands for better basic legal protection of press freedom. A new British Bill of Rights could include a US-type constitutional ban on governmental infringement of press freedom and block other official attempts to control freedom of opinion and expression. Mill was a member of Edward Gibbon Wakefield 's Colonization Society. In his Principles of Political Economy (1848) he praised Wakefield for his "important writings on colonization". Mill, an employee of

5136-675: The West came with the Carolingian Renaissance of the Early Middle Ages . Charlemagne , advised by Peter of Pisa and Alcuin of York , attracted the scholars of England and Ireland, where some Greek works continued to survive in the original. By a 787 decree, he established schools at every abbey in his empire. These schools, from which the name scholasticism derived, became centers of medieval learning. During this period, knowledge of Ancient Greek had vanished in

5243-592: The West except in Ireland, where its teaching and use was fairly common in its monastic schools . Irish scholars had a considerable presence in the Frankish court , where they were renowned for their learning. Among them was Johannes Scotus Eriugena (815–877), one of the founders of scholasticism. Eriugena was the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period and an outstanding philosopher in terms of originality. He had considerable familiarity with

5350-411: The beginning of the 20th century, Associate justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. made the standard of "clear and present danger" based on Mill's idea. In the majority opinion, Holmes writes: The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has

5457-489: The cases which are least favourable to me—in which the argument opposing freedom of opinion, both on truth and that of utility , is considered the strongest. Let the opinions impugned be the belief in God and in a future state, or any of the commonly received doctrines of morality. ... But I must be permitted to observe, that it is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may) which I call an assumption of infallibility . It

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5564-407: The classroom and in writing, it often takes the form of explicit disputation ; a topic drawn from the tradition is broached in the form of a question, oppositional responses are given, a counterproposal is argued and oppositional arguments rebutted. Because of its emphasis on rigorous dialectical method, scholasticism was eventually applied to many other fields of study. Scholasticism was initially

5671-554: The combination of economics with other fields to the use of different, fundamental assumptions challenging earlier economic assumptions. Political economy most commonly refers to interdisciplinary studies drawing upon economics , sociology and political science in explaining how political institutions, the political environment, and the economic system — capitalist , socialist , communist , or mixed —influence each other. The Journal of Economic Literature classification codes associate political economy with three sub-areas: (1)

5778-436: The contrary, even opinions lose their immunity, when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act. An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before

5885-399: The creation of a just society, his life's objective, would actually make him happy. His heart answered "no", and unsurprisingly he lost the happiness of striving towards this objective. Eventually, the poetry of William Wordsworth showed him that beauty generates compassion for others and stimulates joy. With renewed vigour, he continued to work towards a just society, but with more relish for

5992-456: The creation of a science to explain society and goes on to outline these ideas in his major work, the Muqaddimah . In Al-Muqaddimah Khaldun states, "Civilization and its well-being, as well as business prosperity, depend on productivity and people's efforts in all directions in their own interest and profit" – seen as a modern precursor to Classical Economic thought. Leading on from this,

6099-495: The details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Mill's view on liberty , which was influenced by Joseph Priestley and Josiah Warren , is that individuals ought to be free to do as they wished unless they caused harm to others. Individuals are rational enough to make decisions about their well-being. Government should interfere when it is for the protection of society. Mill explained: The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with

6206-476: The era between the deaths of William of Ockham and Nicholas of Cusa , there was a distinct period characterized by "robust and independent philosophers" who departed from high scholasticism on issues such as institutional criticism and materialism but retained scholasticism's method. These philosophers include Marsilius of Padua , Thomas Bradwardine , John Wycliffe , Catherine of Sienna , Jean Gerson , Gabriel Biel and ended with Nicholas of Cusa. Following

6313-506: The freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control . Mill advocated political and social reforms such as proportional representation, emancipation of women, and the development of labor organizations and farm cooperatives. The Columbia Encyclopedia 5th ed. says of him “at times Mill came close to socialism, a theory repugnant to his predecessors.“ Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism , an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham . He contributed to

6420-504: The general mind of the country". (It is said in 1868, when his first term ended, no party would nominate him due to his independent spirit.) He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1867. He was godfather to the philosopher Bertrand Russell . In his views on religion, Mill was an agnostic and a sceptic . Like other philosophers of his time, Mill was interested in botany. It

6527-417: The high period of scholasticism. The early 13th century witnessed the culmination of the recovery of Greek philosophy . Schools of translation grew up in Italy and Sicily, and eventually in the rest of Europe. Powerful Norman kings gathered men of knowledge from Italy and other areas into their courts as a sign of their prestige. William of Moerbeke 's translations and editions of Greek philosophical texts in

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6634-488: The house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard" ( On LIberty , chapter 3). Mill's argument is now generally accepted by many democratic countries , and they have laws at least guided by the harm principle. For example, in American law some exceptions limit free speech such as obscenity , defamation , breach of peace , and " fighting words ". In On Liberty , Mill thought it

6741-413: The immorality and impiety of an opinion; yet if, in pursuance of that private judgment, though backed by the public judgment of his country or his contemporaries, he prevents the opinion from being heard in its defence, he assumes infallibility. And so far from the assumption being less objectionable or less dangerous because the opinion is called immoral or impious, this is the case of all others in which it

6848-421: The importance of institutions , backwardness , reform and transition economies , the role of culture , ethnicity and gender in explaining economic outcomes, macroeconomic policy , the environment , fairness and the relation of constitutions to economic policy , theoretical and empirical. Other important landmarks in the development of political economy include: Because political economy

6955-507: The investigation of scientific methodology , though his knowledge of the topic was based on the writings of others, notably William Whewell , John Herschel , and Auguste Comte , and research carried out for Mill by Alexander Bain . He engaged in written debate with Whewell. A member of the Liberal Party and author of the early feminist work The Subjection of Women , Mill was also the second member of Parliament to call for women's suffrage after Henry Hunt in 1832. John Stuart Mill

7062-516: The journey. He considered this one of the most pivotal shifts in his thinking. In fact, many of the differences between him and his father stemmed from this expanded source of joy. Mill met Thomas Carlyle during one of the latter's visits to London in the early 1830s, and the two quickly became companions and correspondents. Mill offered to print Carlyle's works at his own expense and encouraged Carlyle to write his French Revolution , supplying him with materials in order to do so. In March 1835, while

7169-429: The liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in

7276-462: The manuscript of the completed first volume was in Mill's possession, Mill's housemaid unwittingly used it as tinder, destroying all "except some three or four bits of leaves". Mortified, Mill offered Carlyle £200 (£17,742.16 in 2021) as compensation (Carlyle would only accept £100). Ideological differences would put an end to the friendship during the 1840s, though Carlyle's early influence on Mill would colour his later thought. Mill had been engaged in

7383-468: The middle half of the thirteenth century helped form a clearer picture of Greek philosophy, particularly of Aristotle, than was given by the Arabic versions on which they had previously relied. Edward Grant writes "Not only was the structure of the Arabic language radically different from that of Latin, but some Arabic versions had been derived from earlier Syriac translations and were thus twice removed from

7490-451: The most conspicuous feature in the portions of history." For him, liberty in antiquity was a "contest...between subjects, or some classes of subjects, and the government." Mill defined social liberty as protection from "the tyranny of political rulers". He introduced a number of different concepts of the form tyranny can take, referred to as social tyranny, and tyranny of the majority . Social liberty for Mill meant putting limits on

7597-427: The opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. ... The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns him, his independence is, of right, absolute . Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign . On Liberty involves an impassioned defence of free speech . Mill argues that free discourse

7704-493: The original Greek text. Word-for-word translations of such Arabic texts could produce tortured readings. By contrast, the structural closeness of Latin to Greek, permitted literal, but intelligible, word-for-word translations." Universities developed in the large cities of Europe during this period, and rival clerical orders within the church began to battle for political and intellectual control over these centers of educational life. The two main orders founded in this period were

7811-466: The permanent interests of people as progressive beings. (Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, p. 289) Mill states the Principle of Liberty as: "the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection." "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of

7918-1095: The philosophical and theological tradition stretching back to the time of St. Thomas. It focuses not only on exegesis of the historical Aquinas but also on the articulation of a rigorous system of orthodox Thomism to be used as an instrument of critique of contemporary thought. Due to its suspicion of attempts to harmonize Aquinas with non-Thomistic categories and assumptions, Scholastic Thomism has sometimes been called, according to philosophers like Edward Feser , "Strict Observance Thomism". A discussion of recent and current Thomistic scholasticism can be found in La Metafisica di san Tommaso d'Aquino e i suoi interpreti (2002) by Battista Mondin  [ it ] , which includes such figures as Sofia Vanni Rovighi (1908–1990), Cornelio Fabro (1911–1995), Carlo Giacon (1900–1984), Tomas Tyn O.P. (1950–1990), Abelardo Lobato O.P. (1925–2012), Leo Elders (1926– ) and Giovanni Ventimiglia (1964– ) among others. Fabro in particular emphasizes Aquinas' originality, especially with respect to

8025-533: The political economy of Thomas Malthus . The mountain scenery he saw led to a lifelong taste for mountain landscapes. The lively and friendly way of life of the French also left a deep impression on him. In Montpellier , he attended the winter courses on chemistry , zoology , logic of the Faculté des Sciences , as well as taking a course in higher mathematics. While coming and going from France, he stayed in Paris for

8132-553: The process of debate, these beliefs are kept from declining into mere dogma . It is not enough for Mill that one simply has an unexamined belief that happens to be true; one must understand why the belief in question is the true one. Along those same lines Mill wrote, "unmeasured vituperation, employed on the side of prevailing opinion, really does deter people from expressing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who express them." As an influential advocate of freedom of speech, Mill objected to censorship: I choose, by preference

8239-557: The role of government and/or class and power relationships in resource allocation for each type of economic system ; (2) international political economy , which studies the economic impacts of international relations ; and (3) economic models of political or exploitative class processes. Within the field of political science, there is generally a distinction between international political economy (studied by international relations scholars) and comparative political economy (studied by comparative politics scholars). Public choice theory

8346-532: The ruler's power so that he would not be able to use that power to further his own wishes and thus make decisions that could harm society. In other words, people should have the right to have a say in the government's decisions. He said that social liberty was "the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual." It was attempted in two ways: first, by obtaining recognition of certain immunities (called political liberties or rights ); and second, by establishment of

8453-476: The seeming discrepancy of economic policy and economist's recommendations through the lens of transaction costs . From the mid-1990s, the field has expanded, in part aided by new cross-national data sets allowing tests of hypotheses on comparative economic systems and institutions. Topics have included the breakup of nations, the origins and rate of change of political institutions in relation to economic growth , development , financial markets and regulation,

8560-507: The subject, be it ancient or contemporary. The points of disagreement and contention between multiple sources would be written down in individual sentences or snippets of text, known as sententiae . Once the sources and points of disagreement had been laid out through a series of dialectics , the two sides of an argument would be made whole so that they would be found to be in agreement and not contradictory. (Of course, sometimes opinions would be totally rejected, or new positions proposed.) This

8667-439: The subject." (However, Mill immediately added that "A violation of the great principles of morality it may easily be.") Mill viewed places such as India as having once been progressive in their outlook, but had now become stagnant in their development; he opined that this meant these regions had to be ruled via a form of " benevolent despotism ...provided the end is improvement." When the Crown proposed to take direct control over

8774-476: The term economics began to overshadow political economy around roughly 1910, becoming the preferred term for the discipline by 1920. Today, the term economics usually refers to the narrow study of the economy absent other political and social considerations while the term political economy represents a distinct and competing approach. Originally, political economy meant the study of the conditions under which production or consumption within limited parameters

8881-470: The term political economy with the rise of mathematical modeling coinciding with the publication of the influential textbook Principles of Economics by Alfred Marshall in 1890. Earlier, William Stanley Jevons , a proponent of mathematical methods applied to the subject, advocated economics for brevity and with the hope of the term becoming "the recognised name of a science". Citation measurement metrics from Google Ngram Viewer indicate that use of

8988-409: The term "positive political economy" is common. Other "traditional" topics include analysis of such public policy issues as economic regulation , monopoly , rent-seeking , market protection , institutional corruption and distributional politics. Empirical analysis includes the influence of elections on the choice of economic policy, determinants and forecasting models of electoral outcomes,

9095-756: The territories of the East India Company , Mill was tasked with defending Company rule and penned Memorandum on the Improvements in the Administration of India during the Last Thirty Years , among other petitions. He was offered a seat on the Council of India , the body created to advise the new Secretary of State for India , but declined, citing disapproval of the new system of administration in India. On 21 April 1851, Mill married Harriet Taylor after 21 years of intimate friendship. Taylor

9202-846: The time of Aquinas: "Thomism was always alive in the Dominican Order, small as it was after the ravages of the Reformation, the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic occupation. Repeated legislation of the General Chapters, beginning after the death of St. Thomas, as well as the Constitutions of the Order, required all Dominicans to teach the doctrine of St. Thomas both in philosophy and in theology." Thomistic scholasticism or scholastic Thomism identifies with

9309-410: The time – to show that contradictions did not exist but were subjective to the reader. Scholastic instruction consisted of several elements. The first was the lectio : a teacher would read an authoritative text followed by a commentary, but no questions were permitted. This was followed by the meditatio ( meditation or reflection) in which students reflected on and appropriated the text. Finally, in

9416-483: The tradition of logic, in which scholars started taking interest after 1824, though it is unknown whether it influenced his work. Mill's On Liberty (1859) addresses the nature and limits of the power that can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual . Mill's idea is that only if a democratic society follows the Principle of Liberty can its political and social institutions fulfill their role of shaping national character so that its citizens can realise

9523-426: The well-known book by Antoine de Montchrétien , Traité de l'economie politique . Other contemporary scholars attribute the roots of this study to the 13th Century Tunisian Arab Historian and Sociologist , Ibn Khaldun , for his work on making the distinction between "profit" and "sustenance", in modern political economy terms, surplus and that required for the reproduction of classes respectively. He also calls for

9630-408: The whole of Herodotus , and was acquainted with Lucian , Diogenes Laërtius , Isocrates and six dialogues of Plato . He had also read a great deal of history in English and had been taught arithmetic , physics and astronomy. At the age of eight, Mill began studying Latin , the works of Euclid , and algebra , and was appointed schoolmaster to the younger children of the family. His main reading

9737-517: The work of Abelard . Peter Lombard produced a collection of Sentences , or opinions of the Church Fathers and other authorities. More recently, Leinsle , Novikoff , and others have argued against the idea that scholasticism primarily derived from philosophical contact, emphasizing its continuity with earlier Patristic Christianity . This remains, however, a minority viewpoint. The 13th and early 14th centuries are generally seen as

9844-446: Was "chiefly an amanuensis to my wife". He called her mind a "perfect instrument", and said she was "the most eminently qualified of all those known to the author". He cites her influence in his final revision of On Liberty , which was published shortly after her death. Taylor died in 1858 after developing severe lung congestion , after only seven years of marriage to Mill. Between the years 1865 and 1868 Mill served as Lord Rector of

9951-547: Was among the founding members of the South Australian Association in 1833, which was set up to lobby the government to establish colonies in Australia. Political economist Political economy originated within 16th century western moral philosophy , with theoretical works exploring the administration of states' wealth; political signifying the Greek word polity and economy signifying

10058-753: Was because this branch of Thomism had become a quest to understand the historical Aquinas after the Second Vatican Council . A renewed interest in the "scholastic" way of doing philosophy has recently awoken in the confines of the analytic philosophy . Attempts emerged to combine elements of scholastic and analytic methodology in pursuit of a contemporary philosophical synthesis. Proponents of various incarnations of this approach include Anthony Kenny , Peter King, Thomas Williams or David Oderberg . Cornelius O'Boyle explained that Scholasticism focuses on how to acquire knowledge and how to communicate effectively so that it may be acquired by others. It

10165-594: Was born at 13 Rodney Street in Pentonville , then on the edge of the capital and now in central London , the eldest son of Harriet Barrow and the Scottish philosopher , historian, and economist James Mill . John Stuart was educated by his father, with the advice and assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place . He was given an extremely rigorous upbringing, and was deliberately shielded from association with children his own age other than his siblings. His father,

10272-473: Was buried alongside his wife's. Mill joined the debate over the scientific method which followed on from John Herschel 's 1830 publication of A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy , which incorporated inductive reasoning from the known to the unknown, discovering general laws in specific facts and verifying these laws empirically. William Whewell expanded on this in his 1837 History of

10379-483: Was closely associated with these schools that flourished in Italy , France , Portugal , Spain and England . Scholasticism is a method of learning more than a philosophy or a theology, since it places a strong emphasis on dialectical reasoning to extend knowledge by inference and to resolve contradictions . Scholastic thought is also known for rigorous conceptual analysis and the careful drawing of distinctions. In

10486-437: Was done in two ways. The first was through philological analysis. Words were examined and argued to have multiple meanings. It was also considered that the auctor might have intended a certain word to mean something different. Ambiguity could be used to find common ground between two otherwise contradictory statements. The second was through logical analysis, which relied on the rules of formal logic – as they were known at

10593-624: Was married when they met, and their relationship was close but generally believed to be chaste during the years before her first husband died in 1849. The couple waited two years before marrying in 1851. Upon marriage, he made a declaration to repudiate the rights conferred upon him over her by virtue of the marriage under Victorian law. Accomplished in her own right, Taylor was a significant influence on Mill's work and ideas during both friendship and marriage. His relationship with Taylor reinforced Mill's advocacy of women's rights . He said that in his stand against domestic violence, and for women's rights he

10700-461: Was necessary for him to restate the case for press freedom. He considered that argument already won. Almost no politician or commentator in mid-19th-century Britain wanted a return to Tudor and Stuart-type press censorship. However, Mill warned new forms of censorship could emerge in the future. Indeed, in 2013 the Cameron Tory government considered setting up an independent official regulator of

10807-571: Was one of the first to use the new translation of Aristotle's metaphysical and epistemological writing. This was a significant departure from the Neoplatonic and Augustinian thinking that had dominated much of early scholasticism. Aquinas showed how it was possible to incorporate much of the philosophy of Aristotle without falling into the "errors" of the Commentator, Averroes . Philosopher Johann Beukes has suggested that from 1349 to 1464,

10914-457: Was organized in nation-states. In that way, political economy expanded the emphasis on economics, which comes from the Greek oikos (meaning "home") and nomos (meaning "law" or "order"). Political economy was thus meant to express the laws of production of wealth at the state level, quite like economics concerns putting home to order. The phrase économie politique (translated in English to "political economy") first appeared in France in 1615 with

11021-544: Was published in 1818; immediately thereafter, at about the age of twelve, Mill began a thorough study of the scholastic logic , at the same time reading Aristotle 's logical treatises in the original language. In the following year he was introduced to political economy and studied Adam Smith and David Ricardo with his father, ultimately completing their classical economic view of factors of production . Mill's comptes rendus of his daily economy lessons helped his father in writing Elements of Political Economy in 1821,

11128-434: Was responsible for correspondence pertaining to the company's relations with the princely states , and, in 1856, was finally promoted to the position of Examiner of Indian Correspondence. In On Liberty , A Few Words on Non-Intervention , and other works, he opined that "To characterize any conduct whatever towards a barbarous people as a violation of the law of nations, only shows that he who so speaks has never considered

11235-560: Was still history, but he went through all the commonly taught Latin and Greek authors and by the age of ten could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. His father also thought that it was important for Mill to study and compose poetry. One of his earliest poetic compositions was a continuation of the Iliad . In his spare time he also enjoyed reading about natural sciences and popular novels, such as Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe . His father's work, The History of British India ,

11342-503: Was the first tenured professor. In 1763, Joseph von Sonnenfels was appointed a Political Economy chair at the University of Vienna , Austria. Thomas Malthus , in 1805, became England's first professor of political economy, at the East India Company College , Haileybury, Hertfordshire . At present, political economy refers to different yet related approaches to studying economic and related behaviours, ranging from

11449-458: Was thought that the best way to achieve this was by replicating the discovery process ( modus inveniendi ). The scholasticists would choose a book by a renowned scholar, auctor (author), as a subject for investigation. By reading it thoroughly and critically, the disciples learned to appreciate the theories of the author. Other documents related to the book would be referenced, such as Church councils, papal letters and anything else written on

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