A Cultivated Mind: Essays on JS Mill Presented to John M Robson

Michael P. Bradley is a political science sessional instructor at the
University of Edmonton.

A Cultivated Mind is a worthy product of the momentous effort directed
by John M. Robson to assemble Mill’s Collected Works. Most of the nine
essays offer scholarly accounts of different historical and biographical
dimensions of Mill’s life. Some essays, including Trevor Lloyd’s
“East India Company” and Bruce Kinzer’s “Experience of Political
Engagement,” integrate aspects of Mill’s public life with the
development of his social and political thought. Stefan Collini’s
“English Culture” is important as an exposition of self-reflective
English political culture and as a vehicle for assessing the current
value of Mill’s work.

Three essays deserve detailed comment. Marion Filipiuk’s article
“Mill and France” is an indispensable introduction to Mill’s
understanding of French political development as a “laboratory,” and
his endorsement of it. It also exposes his important relationships with
Tocqueville, Comte, Carrel, Guizot, and Michelet.

In “Sense and Sensibility,” Alan Ryan speculates interestingly that
“we learn something about the content” of On Liberty by considering
motivations uncovered in the Autobiography. Yet Ryan agrees that On
Liberty is “a pure defense of individual moral and intellectual
sovereignty,” albeit justified under utilitarianism. The thesis is
problematic, because serious students reach the same conclusion without
reference to psychological origins. Further, Mill is a self-conscious
political theorist with the role-related motivations one would expect.
These likely outweigh possible desires to prove himself the opposite of
a “made-man.” In the end, the critical effort to locate the merit of
On Liberty remains unaffected by hidden psychological grounds.

Joseph Hamburger’s “Religion and On Liberty,” defends the bold
thesis that Christianity is Mill’s “prime target” in On Liberty,
constituting part of a life plan to replace Christianity with a Comtean
and utilitarian-flavored “Religion of Humanity.” Hamburger’s
reasoning and use of historical and biographical detail demonstrate the
plausibility of this thesis. From a critical standpoint, the thesis
illuminates an old and still-unresolved problem, for in this
pseudoreligious context, the tension between individualism and the
legitimacy of social pressure seems even more profound.

Overall, A Cultivated Mind makes for helpful and sometimes provocative
reading for students of Mill.