I like this piece, Henry. And I like the honorable exchange between Ontiveros and yourself in this comment section. Even if your argument is overcorrection, I'm okay with that as it seems to be pushing in the right direction.
If we take Mill seriously, "in history, as in travelling, men usually see only what they already had in their own minds; and few learn much from history, who do not bring much with them to its study", then our attempts at understanding the past will always miss the mark in one direction or the other.
Mill/Taylor are in a tough spot when in comes to Bentham and Utilitarianism. They have to carve a pathway between the structuralism of the 'innate principles' school and the Empiricism/Associationist worldview. In hindsight we have Darwin and Popper and others to give us a slightly more complete picture of the ideas in play. So there are moments where Mill/Taylor are almost utopian in the way they think about the future...they are living in a disagreeable modernity but hoping for a correction towards a more agreeable stasis in the future.
But their willingness to argue from both sides of the coin for each and every problem usually brings them back to the more palatable, real world situation. And the deep work they put into their ideas led them to little gems like this one from On Liberty, "...in the human mind, one sidedness has always been the rule, and many sidedness has always been the exception. Hence, even in revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while another rises."
It's like an Escher in word form. But does it miss the mark?
I have not ignored Harriet Taylor, but I am wholly ignorant of her. Almost every post you send me scuttling off to add to the TBR pile. So much interesting stuff, so little time.
That said, I think overcorrects on the issue of Harriet Taylor's influence.
The comparison between marriage w/o divorce rights and slavery is in Bentham. So, the idea that Mill got the idea that "patriarchal marriage is similar to the legal status of the master-slave relationship” is likely mistaken. Indeed, Mill has an essay for the Westminster Review making the same comparison written when he was 18 – before he ever met Harriet. There’s a paper called "Bentham on the Rights of Women” documenting this.
It’s incredibly difficult to pin down intellectual influences, but if one were to rank individual intellectual influences on Mill, Harriet Taylor is arguably more influential than Carlyle and and just as important as Comte (for different reasons). Which is saying something. But nowhere near as important as Bentham (or James Mill, of course).
I think that paper elides two things. Bentham does make the point about slave marriage, but Mill doesn't make that point in the Westminster Review article, he simply restates the general position about women's character. So it's not clear that he has taken up that specific idea yet, which is important because it becomes pretty central to the Subjection. (Unless I missed it... issue here: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Westminster_Review/s0pdAAAAMAAJ?q=&gbpv=1#f=false).
There's no doubt that Mill was a Benthamite to start with, but he was hardly a Benthamite later on--he's very much his own thinker, and Harriet is a large part of that. Thinking of influence as only intellectual, in the sense of tracing ideas, is too narrow. The whole dialogue between the Mills, such as the memos about marriage, is what matters. I find it hard to imagine the Mill of the 1820s writing the Subjection, even though in theory he may have agreed with most or all of it back then.
I agree that thinking of influence in the sense of tracing ideas is too narrow. I don't doubt that Harriet significantly shaped the Subjection. I can imagine Mill writing it without Harriet, but it would certainly be a different work. In the world without Harriet it's also very possible he could have believed everything in Subjection, but never written it at all.
But in the sense of tracing ideas, I don't think that the claim that he got the core idea from Harriet is true. The Westminster Review piece has him writing that women must act "as the slaves and drudges of their husbands" otherwise they'll be perceived as masculine. That he has that analogy in mind and that Bentham had made it (first in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation I think) suggests that it's unlikely that Harriet was, strictly, the source of the idea.
Point conceded, I did miss it. I think we can agree that the actual form and prominence of the idea is quite different after Harriet, though. Some people have argued he didn't get anything from Harriet, apart from maybe some socialism, and I think her influence is profound even if you take that view.
Yes, I agree that view underrates Harriet and that she must have had a significant role shaping Subjection and other works.
There's the additional point in the piece too, apart from the content of Mill's work, that the two of them lived out liberalism as a philosophy of life.
Excellent, Henry. I await the joint biography you describe with my pre-order payment ready to be put down at a moment’s notice, especially given the need-as-noted for a new, less dry, less pedantic style of biography to come into fashion.
There’s a point within the piece that I think illustrates something intensely pressing – that on top of being an intellectual of the first rate, and half of one of the great double acts in the history of formal thought, J.S. Mill was a public intellectual. He codified the thought he had developed, singularly and in tandem; took a seat; and tried to cast it in policy. The will and skill to follow in those footsteps seems thin on the ground nowadays. The thinking class are simultaneously contemptuous of and afraid of politics.
Mill’s thoughts on genius ought to be revisited as well – great originality often takes time even for profound thinkers, and I imagine a Millian approach would help in the wider identification of high-level intellect among those in whom it manifests only in independence of apprehension (i.e. more Harriets). I can easily imagine the rediscovery of a lost Borges short-story in which some Eastern Orthodox monk completely isolated from the world rederives E=mc^2, unaware that it had already been derived somewhere far away; would that monk, unaware of his own unoriginality, not be a genius as well?
Agreed it blows my mind that he was an MP! He’s got to be the most under rated thinker and example for rationalists today, I think. Glad you’re enthusiastic--shall let you know if I make any progress!
Perhaps if Taylor had been granted the opportunity to share a byline with Mill on the works issued under his name, we would know and respect her better.
I like this piece, Henry. And I like the honorable exchange between Ontiveros and yourself in this comment section. Even if your argument is overcorrection, I'm okay with that as it seems to be pushing in the right direction.
If we take Mill seriously, "in history, as in travelling, men usually see only what they already had in their own minds; and few learn much from history, who do not bring much with them to its study", then our attempts at understanding the past will always miss the mark in one direction or the other.
Mill/Taylor are in a tough spot when in comes to Bentham and Utilitarianism. They have to carve a pathway between the structuralism of the 'innate principles' school and the Empiricism/Associationist worldview. In hindsight we have Darwin and Popper and others to give us a slightly more complete picture of the ideas in play. So there are moments where Mill/Taylor are almost utopian in the way they think about the future...they are living in a disagreeable modernity but hoping for a correction towards a more agreeable stasis in the future.
But their willingness to argue from both sides of the coin for each and every problem usually brings them back to the more palatable, real world situation. And the deep work they put into their ideas led them to little gems like this one from On Liberty, "...in the human mind, one sidedness has always been the rule, and many sidedness has always been the exception. Hence, even in revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while another rises."
It's like an Escher in word form. But does it miss the mark?
I love that quote. The prose style of that book is so good.
I have not ignored Harriet Taylor, but I am wholly ignorant of her. Almost every post you send me scuttling off to add to the TBR pile. So much interesting stuff, so little time.
vita brevis and all that
Good piece.
That said, I think overcorrects on the issue of Harriet Taylor's influence.
The comparison between marriage w/o divorce rights and slavery is in Bentham. So, the idea that Mill got the idea that "patriarchal marriage is similar to the legal status of the master-slave relationship” is likely mistaken. Indeed, Mill has an essay for the Westminster Review making the same comparison written when he was 18 – before he ever met Harriet. There’s a paper called "Bentham on the Rights of Women” documenting this.
It’s incredibly difficult to pin down intellectual influences, but if one were to rank individual intellectual influences on Mill, Harriet Taylor is arguably more influential than Carlyle and and just as important as Comte (for different reasons). Which is saying something. But nowhere near as important as Bentham (or James Mill, of course).
I think that paper elides two things. Bentham does make the point about slave marriage, but Mill doesn't make that point in the Westminster Review article, he simply restates the general position about women's character. So it's not clear that he has taken up that specific idea yet, which is important because it becomes pretty central to the Subjection. (Unless I missed it... issue here: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Westminster_Review/s0pdAAAAMAAJ?q=&gbpv=1#f=false).
There's no doubt that Mill was a Benthamite to start with, but he was hardly a Benthamite later on--he's very much his own thinker, and Harriet is a large part of that. Thinking of influence as only intellectual, in the sense of tracing ideas, is too narrow. The whole dialogue between the Mills, such as the memos about marriage, is what matters. I find it hard to imagine the Mill of the 1820s writing the Subjection, even though in theory he may have agreed with most or all of it back then.
I agree that thinking of influence in the sense of tracing ideas is too narrow. I don't doubt that Harriet significantly shaped the Subjection. I can imagine Mill writing it without Harriet, but it would certainly be a different work. In the world without Harriet it's also very possible he could have believed everything in Subjection, but never written it at all.
But in the sense of tracing ideas, I don't think that the claim that he got the core idea from Harriet is true. The Westminster Review piece has him writing that women must act "as the slaves and drudges of their husbands" otherwise they'll be perceived as masculine. That he has that analogy in mind and that Bentham had made it (first in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation I think) suggests that it's unlikely that Harriet was, strictly, the source of the idea.
Point conceded, I did miss it. I think we can agree that the actual form and prominence of the idea is quite different after Harriet, though. Some people have argued he didn't get anything from Harriet, apart from maybe some socialism, and I think her influence is profound even if you take that view.
Yes, I agree that view underrates Harriet and that she must have had a significant role shaping Subjection and other works.
There's the additional point in the piece too, apart from the content of Mill's work, that the two of them lived out liberalism as a philosophy of life.
For me that’s the most important thing in a way
Excellent, Henry. I await the joint biography you describe with my pre-order payment ready to be put down at a moment’s notice, especially given the need-as-noted for a new, less dry, less pedantic style of biography to come into fashion.
There’s a point within the piece that I think illustrates something intensely pressing – that on top of being an intellectual of the first rate, and half of one of the great double acts in the history of formal thought, J.S. Mill was a public intellectual. He codified the thought he had developed, singularly and in tandem; took a seat; and tried to cast it in policy. The will and skill to follow in those footsteps seems thin on the ground nowadays. The thinking class are simultaneously contemptuous of and afraid of politics.
Mill’s thoughts on genius ought to be revisited as well – great originality often takes time even for profound thinkers, and I imagine a Millian approach would help in the wider identification of high-level intellect among those in whom it manifests only in independence of apprehension (i.e. more Harriets). I can easily imagine the rediscovery of a lost Borges short-story in which some Eastern Orthodox monk completely isolated from the world rederives E=mc^2, unaware that it had already been derived somewhere far away; would that monk, unaware of his own unoriginality, not be a genius as well?
Agreed it blows my mind that he was an MP! He’s got to be the most under rated thinker and example for rationalists today, I think. Glad you’re enthusiastic--shall let you know if I make any progress!
Ah, modesty.
She didn’t like the gossip
Perhaps if Taylor had been granted the opportunity to share a byline with Mill on the works issued under his name, we would know and respect her better.
She didn’t want it
Yes, I was having similar thoughts!
Good for you! I heartily approve