‘Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.’ To this ‘one very simple principle’ the whole of Mill’s essay On Liberty is dedicated. While many of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries, from Adam Smith to Godwin and Thoreau, had celebrated liberty, it was Mill who organized the idea into a philosophy, and put it into the form in which it is generally known today.
In her introduction the editor discusses Mill's precocious, utilitarian education and his reverence for the 'unrivaled wisdom' of his wife, hinting intriguingly at his unconscious motives. She records, too, responses to Mill's books and comments on his fear of 'the tyranny of the majority.' Dr. Himmelfarb concludes that the same inconsistencies which underlies On Liberty continue to complicate the moral and political stance of liberals today.
Edited With an Introduction by Gertrude Himmelfarb
Editorial Review(s)
"On Liberty remains a classic....The present world would be better than it is if [Mill's] principles were more respected." --Bertrand Russell
About the Author
John Stuart Mill was born in a suburb of London on May 20, 1806. By the age of ten he was reading classical authors in the original Greek and Latin, was proficient in history, algebra, and geometry, and soon after began to study logic, political economy, and law. He was elected to Parliament in 1865 and held the Radical seat for Westminster for the next three years. Mill died in Avignon, France, on May 7, 1873.
