Mill’s Life

Abstract

Mill is among the great figures of the Western world. He exercised a considerable influence in his own day, and his influence seems certain to continue long beyond the present time. Yet, although he made important, lasting contributions to philosophy, Mill is not among the greatest philosophers of the Western world, and even within the British Empiricists, Hume, Locke and Berkeley rank ahead of him. As a philosopher he was unusual in the immediate recognition his work received, in being a man of parts, an economist whose work, while lacking any great claim to originality, was an immediate popular success, a publicist, a leader of thought, a power in the sphere of politics, albeit only briefly a Member of Parliament, and an administrator when he became Chief Examiner in the East India Company. Mill was educated to be a utilitarian and political radical, but because he was ready to examine and attend to the views of all but a few contemporary opponents, his writings are important as meeting places of much of the thought of his times.