Mill's Progressive Principles - Hardcover

Brink, David O.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199672148 ISBN 13: 9780199672141

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2013

Synopsis

In Mill's Progressive Principles David Brink provides a systematic reconstruction and assessment of John Stuart Mill's contributions to the utilitarian and liberal traditions, examining his first principles and their application to issues of representative democracy and sexual equality. Brink defends novel interpretations of key elements in Mill's moral and political philosophy, including his concepts of motivation, happiness, duty, proof, harm and the harm principle, freedom of expression, anti-paternalism, representative democracy and weighted voting, and sexual equality. However, the most distinctive aspect of this account of Mill's commitments is the case it makes for a perfectionist reading of his conception of happiness and the significance this has for other aspects of his moral and political philosophy. On this perfectionist conception, the chief ingredients of happiness involve the exercise of a person's capacities for practical deliberation and decision that mark us as progressive beings. Once this perfectionist theme is made explicit, it can be shown to be central to Mill's views about utilitarianism, liberalism, rights, democratic government, and sexual equality.

About this title

About the Author:

David O. Brink, University of California

David O. Brink is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego and a Director of the Institute for Law and Philosophy at the University of San Diego School of Law. His research interests are in ethical theory, history of ethics, and jurisprudence. He is the author of Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (CUP, 1989) and Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Philosophy of T.H. Green (OUP, 2003).

Review:

"This book deserves study by all Mill scholars, whether traditionalist or revisionist, and anyone interested in the tension between liberalism and utilitarianism among the nineteenth-century Philosophical Radicals culminating in Mill's thought." -- Ethics

"Brink's book raises all the important issues in Mill's moral and political theory, but, as always, the complexities of Mill's thought defy a final settlement. The book is an outstanding contribution not only to Mill scholarship, but also to moral and political philosophy more generally." -- Mind

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0199672148
• ISBN 13: 9780199672141
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336