James and John Stuart Mill: Father and Son in the Nineteenth CenturyThe story of James and John Stuart Mill is one of the great dramas of the 19thcentury. In the tense yet loving struggle of this extraordinarily influential father and son, we can see the genesis of evolution of Liberal ideas-about love, sex, and women, wealth and work, authority and rebellion-which ushered in the modern age. The result of more than a decade of research and reflection, this is a study of the relationship between James Mill, the self-made utilitarian philosopher who tried (with only partial success) to shape his son in his own image. Mazlish integrates psychology and intellectual history as part of his larger and continuing effort to spur deeper understanding of the character, limitations, and possibilities of the social sciences. John Stuart Mill's rebellion against a joyless, loveless upbringing, one in strict accordance with the principles of Utilitarianism, was rooted ina powerful Oedipal struggle against his father's authority. Mazlish describes this rebellion as playing an important role in the genesis of classical nineteenth century liberalism. Behind this intellectual development were the women in Mills' life: Harriet the mother, never mentioned by her son in his autobiography, and Harriet Taylor, with whom Mill lived in a scandalous, if chaste, ménage a trois. It was this long relationship which informed his famous essay â The Subjection of Women,â one of the most eloquent feminist statements ever written. A work of brilliant historical research and psychological insights, James and John Stuart Mill shows how the nineteenth-century struggle of fathers and sons shaped the social transformation of society. |
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... middle - class elite thinkers had not previously been aware of the irrationality and primitive urges of the masses . But , like both Mills , they thought the lower classes could be uplifted and guided to reason , once emancipated from ...
... middle class . Moreover , the fathers too must be seen as suffering , almost as much as the sons , though without the public lamentations . A relationship expressing an eternal biological aspect of development — for " sons " succeeding ...
... middle - class society than at least by those societies that had survived the pressures of differentiation , Eng- land and the United States . " We have already referred to many of these " favorable circum- stances " in our discussion ...
... middle class desirous of supporting a man such as Mill within the Establish- ment , rather than forcing him into revolutionary activity . In fact , the middle class needed men like Mill , steeled to lead it into the Establish- ment ...
... middle rank . " Mill announced their claim to rule in no uncertain terms : There can be no doubt that the middle ... class ( whose " wis- dom " the lower classes will always allow to guide them ) ! Anxiety THE COMPULSION to work arose ...