John Stuart Mill

Today I was on an airplane for 5 or 6 hours, and nothing is better for guilt free reading than riding on a plane. I had picked up a biography of John Stuart Mill by Richard Reeves after reading a review of the book in The New Yorker. I knew of Mill from various History of Psych classes (both undergrad and grad) but had never paid him much mind (there's soooo much to cover in those classes all you can get is a very limited understanding of each famous philosopher) until I read the review. Some of Mill's quotes slapped me upside the head and demanded that I pay him some attention.

So I settled in on my plane ride today to see if the book was as entertaining as the review. 125 pages in and I'm going to go with yes. In fact, I began scribbling notes to myself on one of the in-flight magazines.

I'm treating this more like journal at this point than a blog, so feel free to stop paying attention at this point because this will be very stream of conscious and mostly jotting down quotes from the book, so I have something to reference and synthesize later.

pg 4 Mill quote: "I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative"

ZING!

pg 33 Mill quote: "Without knowing the language of a people, we never really know their thoughts, and their character, and unless we do possess this knowledge, of some other people than ourselves , we remain to the hour of our death, with our intellects only half expanded"

This is a great comment and is one of the many reasons why I need to get off my ass and start back with the Spanish lessons.

pg 35 - An amusing anecdote about Godwin's thought experiment about who one should save from a fire, one's wife or an archbishop. Godwin, as a utilitarian, would say the archbishop because he would bring the most happiness to the most people. Reeves quotes Bernard Williams who says: "if we have to throw one person over the side of the lifeboat, our wife or a stranger, and we have to think about it, that's just one thought too many"

pg 37 - Reeves writes that for Mills, the important question is not whether or not God exists, but whether or not the belief in the existence of God adds to human happiness.

My wife has tried to explain this to me on the numerous occasions I rant about the irrationality involved in religion. And I think I now see the point she was making.

pg 46 Mill quote "If to have been to the University be the end of education there is no doubt that by going to University that end may be most effectually attained"

As my adviser always says, you shouldn't let school get in the way of your education. I've found lately that I've had a hunger to read as much non-fiction as I can and in as many topics as I can. Nothing stimulates my mind like a book like this.

pg 54 Mill quote To silence any view, "was to say that the people are better qualified to judge before discussion than after it: which is absurd, since before discussion, if their opinions are true it is only by accident, whereas after it they hold them with a complete conviction, and perfect knowledge of the proofs on which they are grounded"

This is Mill discussing the dangers of mainstream opinion going unchallenged. - Reeves

pg 65 Hume quote "Be a philosopher, but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man"

pg 72-73 Mill on friendship "... the greatest source of friendship between minds of any capacity; this is, not equality, for nothing can be so little interesting to a man as his own double; but, reciprocal superiority. Each of us knows many things the other knows not, & can do many things which the other values but cannot himself do, or not so well"

This is such a great thought and is very close to why I think my wife and I are so perfect for each other.

pg 75 Reeves on Saint-Simon: "History passes through alternating eras of stability and change - 'organic' and 'critical' periods; that conflict of opposites led to a resolution different to either; that societies were continually breeding the seeds of their own destruction; and both ideas and institutions appropriate for one age would become redundant in the next and need replacing"

Shades of William James's stain, Pirsig's static and dynamic quality, and maybe a little Kuhn. I need to think about this so more and integrate it.

pg 76 Reeves paraphrasing Mill "The value of any specific law or institution was necessarily contingent upon the social, political, and economic context of the time"

This is actually how I wish people would interpret the bible. In the proper historical context with an understanding of the intended audience.

pg 78 Mill quote: "But to hear a man gravely pledge himself to be always of the same opinion - bind himself by a solemn promise that the arguments which convince him now, upon his honor shall convince him to his dying day - that what he thinks advisable now he will think advisable always howsoever circumstances may change . . . is utterly ludicrous"

I wish more politicians and scientists would read this. Especially those who blast their colleagues for "flip-flopping"

pg 84-85 Mill quote: "Contemporary education is all cram. The danger then was that the mental light of the nations has lost in intensity at least part of what it has gained in diffusion; whether our 'march of intellect' be not rather a march towards doing without intellect, and supplying a deficiency of giants by the united efforts of a constantly increasing multitude of dwarfs"

A bit elitist sure, but an interesting point that is still valid in regards to school today. For Mills, according to Reeves, a genius was not someone who displayed a dazzling intellect, but a person who was fully self-determining and autonomous. I don't think our schools do a good job at training that (see the discussion of Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa)

to be continued...