The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill

Sextus Empiricus: Outlines of Scepticism Translated by Julia Annas &; Jonathan Barnes Cambridge University Press 1994 ISBN‐0–521–30950–6 Hardback (£32.50) ISBN 0–521–31205‐X Paperback (£10.95)

Republicanism, Liberty and Commercial Society 1649–1776 David Wootton (ed) Stanford University Press, 1994 viii, 497 pp. £35 ISBN 0804723567

John Marshall: John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility Cambridge University Press, 1994 Pp. xxi + 485. ISBN 0–521–44380–6 (hardback) £55 0–521–44687–3 (paperback) £22.95

Ian Harris: The Mind of John Locke: A Study of Political Theory in its Intellectual Setting Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 Pp. xv + 429. ISBN 0–521–35603–2

Lawrence E. Klein: Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness Cambridge University Press, xii, 217 pp. £30

Cahiers Montesquieu: Lectures de Montesquieu, Actes du Colloque de Wolfenbuttel (26–28 Octobre 1989) réunis par Edgar Mass et Alberto Postigliola Liguori Editore, Napoli; Universitas, Paris; Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, 1993. ISBN 0–7294–0462–5. £18.00

George Armstrong Kelly: The Humane Comedy: Constant, Tocqueville, and French Liberalism with a foreword by Stephen R. Graubard, Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN 0–521–41227–7. £35.00

Christopher J. Berry: The Idea of Luxury. A Conceptual and Historical Investigation Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 xiv + 271 pp., 0–521–466911 pbk

Sarah Gibbons: Kant's Theory of Imagination. Bridging Gaps in Judgement and Experience Oxford Philosophical Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1994 pp. 205 plus x. £27.50

Andrew Brook: Kant and the Mind Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1994. pp. 327 plus xii. £35.00

The Correspondence of John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte trans. and ed. by Oscar A. Haac New Brunswick (USA) and London: Transaction Publishers, 1995 pp. xxvi + 403. £31.95 ISBN 1–56000–148–8

Alan P. F. Sell: Philosophical Idealism and Christian Belief University of Wales Press, 1995 ISBN 0–7083–1310–8. 338 pp. £35.00

Agnosticism: Contemporary Responses to Spencer and Huxley Ed. Andrew Pyle Thoemmes Press, Bristol, 1995 (Key Issues 4), pp. xxvi + 301 ISBN (paper) 1–85506–404–9 £14.95, (cloth) 1–85506–405–7 £45.00     

John Stuart Mill and the Conflicts of Equality

John Stuart Mill commented on the relationship between equality and liberty in general terms, and he also discussed the relationships between equality and four more concrete social goals: equality vs. diversity and individual spontaneity, equality vs. freedom of trade and entrepreneurial activity, equality vs. economic incentives for workpeople, and equality vs. welfare. In his more general statements he wrote off potential conflicts between equality and liberty, claiming that only those liberties that can be enjoyed by all are real liberties—or at least they are the only ones worth defending. However, in several of his more concrete discussions he gave higher priority to various liberty-related goals than to equality. This seeming contradiction can be resolved if we assume that he distinguished between valuing a liberty per se and valuing it as a means to achieve something else.

     

John Stuart Mill,Determinism, and the Problem of Induction

Auguste Comte's doctrine of the three phases through which sciences pass (the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive) allows us to explain what John Stuart Mill was attempting in his magnum opus, the System of Logic: namely, to move the science of logic to its terminal and ‘positive’ stage. Both Mill's startling account of deduction and his unremarked solution to the Humean problem of induction eliminate the notions of necessity or force—in this case, the ‘logical must’—characteristic of a science's metaphysical stage. Mill's treatment had a further surprising payoff: his solution to the Problem of Necessity (what today we call the problem of determinism and freedom of the will).