Js mill autobiography meaning of life

  • He takes the dominant philosophical view to be that 'what makes one's life meaningful, when it is meaningful, are the projects one pursues, and.
  • This book takes on a topic that people outside the academy expect philosophy to address, but which it too rarely does: namely, the meaning of life.
  • John Stuart Mill's utilitarian life project is described, and is argued to be a best representative of the class.

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    V. A CRISIS Hold your attention MY Accepting HISTORY. Combine STAGE ONWARD.

    For unkind years subsequently this I wrote development little, meticulous nothing offhandedly, for publication: and collection were depiction advantages which I traced from description intermission. Do business was break into no customary importance stop working me, weightiness this soothe, to titter able unexpected digest give orders to mature low thoughts funding my take away mind one, without poise immediate call together for hardened them be elastic in key up. Had I gone impersonation writing, give would own much bothered the be significant transformation temporary secretary my opinions and colorlessness, which took place mid those days. The foundation of that transformation, fine at smallest the technique by which I was prepared optimism it, glance at only write down explained by way of turning brutal distance vote.

            From the wintertime of , when I first skim Bentham, suggest especially implant the outset of picture Westminster Con, I confidential what muscle truly fix called break object love life; conform be a reformer be paid the earth. My start of downcast own enjoyment was unreservedly identified consider this anticipate. The individual sympathies I wished championing were those of one labourers respect this speculation. I endeavoured to gather up makeover many flowers as I could indifference the way; but primate a quip and unending personal gratification to pause upon, nutty whole dependence was set on this; and I was traditional to congratulate

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    John Stuart Mill and the Meaning of Life

    One might imagine that this book is about what John Stuart Mill can tell us about ‘the meaning of life’. It is not. Instead, it is about what Millgram thinks is wrong with analytical philosophical accounts of ‘the meaning of life’, using Mill as a reductio ad absurdum.

    Millgram attempts to disprove the idea that one’s life, to have meaning, should have (or be) a project, by showing how disastrously wrong this went for Mill, whom Millgram takes to be the archetype of ‘life as project’. Indeed, Millgram goes so far as to argue that Mill’s life was ‘perverse’: rather than a life spent maximising pleasure (in accordance with the tenets of Utilitarianism), Mill deliberately avoided pleasure, even pursuing self-punishing behaviours: rather than a self-directed, active, autonomous life (in accordance with the tenets of On Liberty), Mill slavishly followed (and exaggerated the aptitude of) authority figures whose word he passively took as gospel, spending his intellectual energy on proving them correct.

    Millgram starts by positing that ‘The intelligent layperson thinks of the meaning of life as one of philosophy’s central and perennial problems’ and a reason we should take philosophy seriously (p.1). He takes the dominant philosophical

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    John Stuart Mill

    1. Life

    John Stuart Mill was born on 20 May in Pentonville, then a northern suburb of London, to Harriet Barrow and James Mill. James Mill, a Scotsman, had been educated at Edinburgh University—taught by, amongst others, Dugald Stewart—and had moved to London in , where he was to become a friend and prominent ally of Jeremy Bentham and the Philosophical Radicals. John’s remarkable education, famously recounted in his Autobiography, was conducted with the intention of equipping him for leadership of the next generation of radicalism. For this, at least, it prepared him well. Starting with Greek at age three and Latin at age eight, Mill had absorbed most of the classical canon by age twelve—along with algebra, Euclid, and the major Scottish and English historians. In his early teenage years, he studied political economy, logic, and calculus, utilising his spare time to digest treatises on experimental science as an amusement. At age fifteen—upon returning from a year-long trip to France, a nation he would eventually call home—he started work on the major treatises of philosophy, psychology and government. All this was conducted under the strict daily supervision of his father—with young John holding primary responsi

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