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).
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?
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 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.
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).
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?
Ah, modesty.
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.