Abstract
John Stuart Mill’s attempt to expand the theory of his utilitarian predecessors has led scholars to brand him as inconsistent, confused, and even illogical. However, in challenging these traditional representations of Mill, revisionist interpretations have made use of Mill’s sketch of an “Art of Life,” which appeared in his A System of Logic (London, 1843), to put forward an “enlarged” theory of utility that was consistent with his theory of liberty. As a result, due to a narrow focus on the connection of Mill’s “Art of Life” to crucial arguments in Utilitarianism (London, 1861–3) and On Liberty (London, 1859), its ancient Greek echoes have been widely ignored - even when Mill’s Greco-philia is duly noted.1 To this effect, first, I briefly examine how the “Art of Life” came to be discussed in the last pages of Mill’s Logic; second, I explore the ancient Greek notion of an “Art of Living” third, I turn to the textual connections between the Platonic “political art” and Mill’s “Art of Life"; and, lastly, I proceed to reconstruct Mill’s “Art of Life” by discussing Alan Ryan’s, Jonathan Riley’s, and Wendy Donner’s influential interpretations.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Anon., (1836) ‘Brutus, Lucius Junius,’ in The Penny Cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (London: Charles Knight): V.498–9.
Baker, J.M. (1971) ‘Utilitarianism and ’Secondary Principles’,’ Philosophical Quarterly 21 (82): 69–71.
Bentham, J. (1983) Chrestomathia, eds M.J. Smith and W.H. Burston (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Berger, F. (1984) Happiness, Justice and Freedom; The Moral and Political Philosophy of John Stuart Mill (Berkeley;Los Angeles and London: University of California Press).
Bourriot, F. (1995) Kalos Kagathos-Kalokagathia (Hildersheim: Georg Olms).
Brown, D.G. (1972) ‘Mill on Liberty and Morality,’ The Philosophical Review 81 (2): 133–58.
Coleman, J. (2000) A History of Political Thought, 2 vols. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing).
Coleridge, S.T. (1818) The Friend, in The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. W.G.T. Shedd, vol. 2, 7 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers).
Donner, W. (1998) ‘Mill’s Utilitarianism,’ in The Cambridge Companion to John Stuart Mill, ed. J. Skorupski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 255–92.
Donner, W. (2007) ‘John Stuart Mill on Education and Democracy,’ in J.S. Mill’s Political Thought, eds N. Urbinati and A. Zakaras (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 250–74.
Donner, W. (2010) ‘John Stuart Mill and Virtue Ethics,’ in John Stuart Mill: Thought and Influence - The Saint ofRationalism, eds G. Varouxakis and P. Kelly (London and New York: Routledge): 84–98.
Donner, W. (2011) ‘Morality, Virtue and Aesthetics in Mill’s Art of Life,’ in John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life, eds B. Eggleston, D.E. Miller and D. Weinstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 146–65.
Donner, W. and Fumerton, R. (2009) Mill (Malden, MA; Chichester: Wiley- Blackwell).
Eggleston, B. (2011) ‘Rules and their Reasons: Mill on Morality and Instrumental Rationality,’ in John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life, eds B. Eggleston, D.E. Miller, D. Weinstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 71–93.
Eggleston, B., Miller, D.E. and Weinstein, D., eds (2011a) John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Eggleston, B., Miller, D. E. and Weinstein, D. (2011b) ‘Introduction,’ in John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life, eds B. Eggleston, D. E. Miller, D. Weinstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 3–18.
Fitzpatrick, J.R. (2010) Starting with Mill (Suffolk: Continuum).
Foster, B.O., trans. (1919) Livy, vol. 1 (LOEB 114;Cambridge: Harvard University Press;London: William Heinemann).
Foucault, M. (1986) The Care of the Self, trans. R. Hurley (New York: Random House).
Garrison, J.W. (2004) ‘The Aesthetics of Ethical Virtues and the Ethical Virtues of Aesthetics,’ Interchange 35 (2): 229–41.
Giorgini, G. (2009) ‘Radical Plato: John Stuart Mill, George Grote and the Revival of Plato in Nineteenth-Century England,’ History of Political Thought 30 (4): 617–46.
Gray, J. (1996) Mill on Liberty: A Defence, 2nd edn (London and New York: Routledge).
Haralsson, R. (2011) ‘Taking it to Heart: Mill on Appropriation and the Art of Ethics,’ in John Stuart Mill and The Art of Life, eds B. Eggleston, D.E. Miller and D. Weinstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 215–35.
Heydt, C. (2006) Rethinking Mill’s Ethics: Character and Aesthetic Education (London: Continuum).
Heydt, C. (2011) ‘Mill, Life as an Art, and Problems of Self-Description in an Industrial Age,’ in John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life, eds B. Eggleston, D.E. Miller and D. Weinstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 264–89.
Hume, D. (1826) ‘The Stoic,’ in The Philosophical Works of David Hume, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: Adam Black and William Tait): III.165–74.
Irwin, T.H. (1992) ‘Eminent Victorians and Greek Ethics: Sidgwick, Green and Aristotle,’ in Essays on Henry Sidgwick, ed. B. Schultz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 279–310.
Kahn, C.H. (1996) Plato and the Socratic Dialogue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Lianeri, A. (2007) ‘Effacing Socratic Irony: Philosophy and Techne in John Stuart Mill’s Translation of the Protagoras, in Socrates in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. M.B. Trapp (Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing): 165–84.
Long, A.A. (2001) ‘Ancient Philosophy’s Hardest Question: What to Make of Oneself?,’ Representations 74 (Spring): 19–36.
Mansfeld, J. (2003) ‘Zeno on the Unity of Philosophy,’ Phronesis 48 (2): 116–31.
Mill, J. (1802) ‘Belsham’s Elements of the Philosophy of the Mind,’ Anti-Jacobin Review 12(47): 1–13.
Mill, J. (1804a) ‘Taylor’s Translation of Plato,’ Literary Journal 3 (8): 449–61.
Mill, J. (1804b) ‘Taylor’s Translation of Plato,’ Literary Journal 3 (10): 577–89.
Mill, J. (1819) ‘Education,’ in Essays (London: J. Innes, n.d. [1825]): 1–46.
Mill, J. (1835) A Fragment on Mackintosh (London: Baldwin and Cradock).
Mill, J. Commonplace Books, eds R.A. Fenn and K. Grint, 5 vols. (vols. 1–4 can be accessed online at: http://www.intellectualhistory.net/mill;vol. 5 is located at LSE Archives, Mill-Taylor Collection).
Miller, D.E. (2011) ‘Mill, Rule Utilitarianism, and the Incoherence Objection,’ in John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life, eds B. Eggleston, D.E. Miller, D. Weinstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 94–116.
Nehamas, A. (1998) The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (Berkeley, LA and London: University of California Press).
Niebuhr, R. (1851) The History of Rome, trans. J. C. Hare and C. Thirlwall, 2 vols. (London: Taylor, Walton and Maberly).
Nussbaum, M. (2001) The Fragility of Goodness, upd. edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Plutarch, Parallel Lives, trans B. Perrin, 10 vols. (London: William Heinemann, 1918).
Raphael, D.D. (1955) ‘Fallacies in and about Mill’s ‘Utilitarianism,’ Philosophy 30 (115): 344–57.
Riley, J. (1998) Liberal Utilitarianism: Social Choice Theory and J.S. Mill’s Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Riley, J. (2010) ‘Justice as Higher Pleasure,’ in John Stuart Mill: Thought and Influence - The Saint of Rationalism, eds G. Varouxakis and P. Kelly (London and New York: Routledge): 119–45.
Riley, J. (2011) ‘Optimal Moral Rules and Supererogatory Acts,’ in John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life, eds B. Eggleston, D.E. Miller and D. Weinstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 119–45.
Robson, J.M. (1998) ‘Civilization and Culture as Moral Concepts,’ in The Cambridge Companion to John Stuart Mill, ed. J. Skorupski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 338–71.
Rosen, F. (2003) Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill (London and New York: Routledge).
Ryan, A. (1964) ‘Mr. McCloskey on Mill’s Liberalism,’ The Philosophical Quarterly 14 (56): 253–60.
Ryan, A. (1965) ‘John Stuart Mill’s Art of Living,’ in J.S. Mill on Liberty in Focus, eds John Gray and G.W. Smith (London and New York: Routledge, 1991): 162–8.
Ryan, A. (1974) J.S. Mill (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul).
Ryan, A. (1990) The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, 2nd edn (New Jersey: Humanities Press International).
Schofield, M. (2006) Plato: Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Sellars, J. (2003) The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy (Hants: Ashgate).
Sparshott, F.E. (1978) ‘Zeno on Art: Anatomy of a Definition,’ in The Stoics, ed. J.M. Rist (Los Angeles: University of California Press): 273–90.
Stewart, M.A. (1991) ‘The Stoic Legacy in the Early Scottish Enlightenment,’ in Atoms, Pneuma, and Tranquillity, ed. M.J. Osier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 273–96.
Urbinati, N. (2011) ‘An Alternative Modernity;Mill on Capitalism and the Quality of Life,’ in John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life, ed. B. Eggleston, D.E. Miller and D. Weinstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 236–63.
Weinstein, D. (2011) ‘Interpreting Mill,’ in John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life, eds B. Eggleston, D.E. Miller and D. Weinstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 44–70.
White, N. (1995) ‘Conflicting Parts of Happiness in Aristotle’s Ethics,’ Ethics 105 (2): 258–83.
White, N. (1999) ‘Harmonizing Plato,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (2): 497–512.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 Antis Loizides
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Loizides, A. (2013). The Socratic Origins of John Stuart Mill’s “Art of Life”. In: Demetriou, K.N., Loizides, A. (eds) John Stuart Mill. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137321718_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137321718_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-35041-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-32171-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Economics & Finance CollectionEconomics and Finance (R0)