•  8
    The definitive life of John Stuart Mill, one of the heroic giants of Victorian England Richard Reeves' sparkling new biography can be read as an attempt to do justice to this eminent thinker, and it succeeds triumphantly. He reveals Mill as a man of action--a philosopher and radical MP who profoundly shaped Victorian society and whose thinking continues to illuminate our own. The product of an extraordinary and unique education, Mill would become in time the most significant English thinker of t…Read more
  •  33
    The genius of autonomy
    The Philosophers' Magazine 46 (46): 65-70. 2009.
    Mill’s vision of a good, autonomous life demanded a great deal of personal energy. One of the more telling charges that Mill levelled at Christian morality, at least in its existing form, was that its ideal was “passive rather than active”, more concerned with “Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of the Good”.
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    In this essay, I relate material in the original published work – John Stuart Mill – Victorian Firebrand (Atlantic Books, 2007) to the claim that the central features of Mill’s thought can be seen more clearly through a biographical lens. The original contribution of the main work lies in the excavation and application of biographical material to the development of Mill’s philosophy. The poor development of Mill’s utilitarianism results in part from a lack of personal investment and aspiration. …Read more