Mill's Progressive Principles

ISBN-13: 9780199672141 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013 / 336 str.

David O. Brink

Opis

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.

Recenzje

This is a very substantial study of Mills moral and political philosophy: the most important comprehensive study since Fred Bergers landmark book of 1984 . . . [Brink] proposes a deeply thought-out, unifying new reading of Mills thought, which will attract lasting attention — and, I expect, prove lastingly controversial. It should be read not just by anyone with an interest in Mill but more generally by anyone with an interest in the historical development of Anglophone ethical and political theory, or in the possibilities and varieties of perfectionism. . . . [Brinks] interpretation of Mills fundamental outlook . . . is striking and new.

O autorze

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).