Mill: Texts, Commentaries

Front Cover
W.W. Norton, 1997 - Fiction - 365 pages

Alan Ryan's provocative introduction lays out the central issues debated by John Stuart Mill's many interpreters; in addition, it assesses Mill's historical significance and provides a brief account of his life. In recent years, scholars have increasingly focused on the connection between On Liberty and Mill's other writings. This Norton Critical Edition brings together three major essays that illustrate Mill's liberal political philosophy over the course of his life: "The Spirit of the Age" (1831), On Liberty (1859), and The Subjection of Women (1869). Related excerpts from John Stuart Mill's Autobiography (1873, published posthumously) are also included. Each text is accompanied by explanatory annotations.

"Commentary" collects seven major assessments of Mill's writings. The contemporary perspectives of R. H. Hutton and James Fitzjames Stephen and the more recent analyses of Isaiah Berlin, Gertrude Himmelfarb, John C. Rees, Jeremy Waldron, and Susan Moller Okin provide readers with a critical overview of one of the most important of modern political philosophers.

A Selected Bibliography and an Index are included.

About the author (1997)

John Stuart Mill, Classical economist, was born in 1806. His father was the Ricardian economist, James Mill. John Stuart Mill's writings on economics and philosophy were prodigious. His "Principles of Political Economy, With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy," published in 1848, was the leading economics textbook of the English-speaking world during the second half of the 19th century. Some of Mill's other works include "Considerations on Representative Government," "Auguste Comte and Positivism," "The Subjection of Women," and "Three Essays on Religion." John Mill died in 1873.

Alan Ryan was warden of New College, Oxford University, where he was a professor of political theory. He is the author of John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism, Bertrand Russell: A Political Life, and On Politics: A History of Political Thought from Herodotus to the Present.

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