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John Stuart Mill Research Paper

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John Stuart Mill was born in 1806 in London and died in 1873 in Aix-en-Provence in France. Mill was one of the most important English philosophers who influenced the shape of the nineteenth century in British thought and political speech. He made many significant contributions to political and moral philosophy, and along with Jeremy Bentham, he was a key architect of utilitarianism. The Prime Minister William Gladstone viewed John Stuart Mill as one of the most open-minded men in England. He has eight siblings and is the son of the Scottish philosopher, economist and East India Company official, James Mill and Harriet Barrow. Mill was homeschooled, and he therefore never attended a college or university after advice and assistance from Jeremy …show more content…

When he was twelve he was a competent logician and at age sixteen he was a well-trained economist. Since Mill was homeschooled, he had to teach his siblings all the knowledge that he got. He worked with the East India Company as an administrator and was a Liberal MP for Westminster. He made many contributions to science, logic, ethics, economics and political theory. He is assigned to be one of the most intelligent people in the world. Mill and his wife, Harriet Taylor, penned the first major feminist work about how people treat women in The Subjection of Women. Along with his extraordinary education, he gave a moving account of his life in The Autobiography. Some of his most famous works are "Bentham", "Coleridge", System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Principles of Political Economy, On Liberty, …show more content…

Mill said that if there is one person that disagrees with the majority of people, it is not justified to silence that one person. An example is the formation of democratic socialism in which people tried to combine socialism with liberal democracy; people did not like this idea. Many of the ideas during this time would be censored and laughed at. An example of this is when women tried to have the right to education. When Mill thought about those ideas, he believed that the most important principle is to think about freedom of thought. We should be open to ideas and scrutinize them instead of repressing them in order to support them or find out errors in the ideas. In either case, truth prevails. His critiques start with the rejection of rights and the principle that if you get rid of rights, you get rid of everything. Along with his godfather, Jeremy Bentham, they viewed rights as "non-sense" rights. Mill said that a right requires an external body and either God or a state that gave you those

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