Il volume riunisce due testi che vengono di solito presentati separatamente: il saggio sulla definizione dell'economia politica e la parte del Sistema di logica dedicata alle 'scienze morali'. Il che consente di poter disporre di una visione completa delle idee milliane nel campo delle scienze sociali. Dal punto di vista metodologico, John Stuart Mill è colui che ha più compiutamente espresso la posizione dell'utilitarismo, una tradizione culturale che egli ha fortemente contribuito a sviluppare e che, pur rimanendo sotto l'ipoteca psicologistica, costituisce uno dei costanti punti di riferimento nel dibattito metodologico. Di tutto ciò rende conto Lorenzo Infantino nella prefazione all'opera.

Including three of his most famous and important essays, Utilitarianism, On Liberty, and Essay on Bentham, along with formative selections from Jeremy Bentham and John Austin, this volume provides a uniquely perspicuous view of Mill's ethical and political thought.

• Contains Mill's most famous and influential works, Utilitarianism and On Liberty as well as his important Essay on Bentham.
  
• Uses the 1871 edition of Utilitarianism, the last to be published in Mill's lifetime.
  
• Includes selections from Bentham and John Austin, the two thinkers who most influenced Mill.
  
• Introduction written by Mary Warnock, a highly respected figure in 20th-century ethics in her own right.
  
• Provides an extensive, up-to-date bibliography with the best scholarship on Mill, Bentham and Utilitarianism.

The writings of John Stuart Mill have become the cornerstone of political liberalism. Collected for the first time in this volume are Mill’s three seminal and most widely read works: On Liberty, The Subjection of Women, and Utilitarianism. A brilliant defense of individual rights versus the power of the state, On Liberty is essential reading for anyone interested in political thought and theory. As Bertrand Russell reflected, “On Liberty remains a classic . . . the present world would be better than it is, if [Mill’s] principles were more respected.”

This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition includes newly commissioned endnotes and commentary by Dale E. Miller, and an index.

A major contribution in the history of ethics, Mill's brief treatise on utilitarianism lays the theoretical foundation for this branch of philosophy and outlines its relationship to other ethical systems, the arguments in its favor, and its implications for concerns about justice. The appendix contains the text of Mill's 1868 speech on capital punishment. A introductory chapter describes Mill's place in the history of philosophy and his contribution to the study of ethics. Cited in Books for College Libraries, 3d ed. There is no index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

I saggi sull'eguaglianza e l'emancipazione femminile di John Stuart Mill e di sua moglie Harriet Taylor costituiscono un tentativo coerente di imporre all'attenzione del dibattito politico e filosofico la condizione di sottomissione subita dalle donne nella famiglia e nella società, conseguenza di un sistema educativo che faceva apparire l'inferiorità femminile come naturale e legittima. Caratteristici della stagione di riforme istituzionali, che a partire dalla metà dell'Ottocento hanno accompagnato la transizione democratica dei governi e della società civile europea, gli scritti contenuti in questo volume rappresentano una pietra miliare del femminismo teorico contemporaneo.

E' intorno alla libertà che ruotano, secondo Mill, le grandi questioni della felicità umana, del progresso, della responsabilità, e della stessa ricerca della verità. Il saggio è volto a chiarire il carattere inscindibile di questo legame. Quanto al problema della libertà politica in particolare, con l'affermarsi dei sistemi democratici moderni non si tratta più di limitare il potere dello Stato sui cittadini, quanto di salvaguardare la 'sovranità dell'individuo' dal potere pervasivo della società. Con testo inglese a fronte.

La tradizione del liberalismo europeo ha in Mill uno dei suoi rappresentanti ancor oggi più stimolanti e fecondi. Di fronte a una nuova situazione storica segnata dall'avvento delle società di massa, la riflessione di Mill si caratterizza per l'assenza di dogmatismo e la disponibilità al confronto con il socialismo e con i fermenti utopistici. Questo dizionario offre un quadro del suo pensiero che ne privilegia l'aspetto etico-politico, l'analisi dei conflitti sociali, della democrazia, delle dinamiche istituzionali.

Mill predicted that '[t]he Liberty is likely to survive longer than anything else that I have written...because the conjunction of [Harriet Taylor’s] mind with mine has rendered it a kind of philosophic text-book of a single truth, which the changes progressively taking place in modern society tend to bring out in ever greater relief.' Indeed, On Liberty is one of the most influential books ever written, and remains a foundational document for the understanding of vital political, philosophical and social issues. In addition to its many useful appendices, this new edition includes a chronology, bibliography, and a substantial introduction which outlines Mill’s life and works, and sets this central work of 1859 in the context of both his own intellectual development and of the play of ideas and political forces in Victorian society.

Published between 1850 and 1870, English social and political philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) offers his most sustained analysis of religious belief. Though not prepared to abandon the idea of an overall design in nature, Mill nonetheless argues that its violence and capriciousness mitigate against moral ends in nature's workings. Moreover, any designer of such a world as we experience cannot be all powerful and all good, for nature is 'too clumsily made and capriciously governed.'

Together these two essays mark the philosophic cornerstone of democratic morality and represent a thought-provoking search for the true balance between the rights of the individual and the power of the state. Thoroughly schooled in the principles of the utilitarian movement founded by Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill nevertheless brings his own unique intellectual energy to issues such as individual freedom, equality, authority, happiness, justice, and virtue.

On Liberty is Mill's famous examination of the nature of individuality and its crucial role in any social system that expects to remain creative and vital. Utilitarianism brilliantly expounds a pragmatic ethic based on one controversial proposition: actions are right only if they promote the common good and wrong if they do not. While much of Mill's thinking was eventually adopted by socialists, it is in today's democratic societies—with their troubling issues of crime, freedom of speech, and the boundaries of personal liberty—that his work resounds most powerfully.

In this powerful work, John Stuart Mill sets forth representative government as the most sensible compromise between unreflective rule by the masses and the self-indulgence of the few. The reader of this volume senses that Mill is being pulled in opposing directions: steadfastly committed to majority rule with minority rights while at the same time being just enough of an aristocrat to believe that the masses need examplars to emulate.

On Representative Government is one of the most compelling political essays of the 19th century.

One of the greatest prodigies of his era, John Stuart Mill (1806-73) was studying arithmetic and Greek by the age of three, as part of an astonishingly intense education at his father's hand. Intellectually brilliant, fearless and profound, he became a leading Victorian liberal thinker, whose works - including On Liberty, Utilitarianism, The Subjection of Women and this Autobiography - are among the crowning achievements of the age. Here he describes the pressures placed on him by his childhood, the mental breakdown he suffered as a young man, his struggle to understand a world of feelings and emotions far removed from his father's strict didacticism, and the later development of his own radical beliefs. A moving account of an extraordinary life, this great autobiography reveals a man of deep integrity, constantly searching for truth.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The interests and activities of John Stuart Mill (1806–73) were so wide-ranging that even the varied subjects of thirty previously published volumes of Collected Works cannot encompass them all. In this volume are brought together diverse and interesting instances of his polymathic career, none before republished and some previously unpublished.

Neatly framing Mill’s writing career are his editorial prefaces and extensive notes to Jeremy Bentham;s Rationale of Judicial Evidence (1827) and James Mill’s Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1869). Both demonstrate his extraordinary powers of mind and diligence as well as his fealty. His constant avocation, field botany, is shown in his botanical writings, which open a window on an almost unknown activity that sustained and delighted him. Brief comments on two medical works hint at another interest. Two articles of which he was co-author demonstrate his work as editor of the London and Westminster Review, and a calendar of his contributions to the Political Economy Club provides yet another glimpse into his chosen activities and concerns. Published for the first time are Mill’s English and French wills, providing still further biographical detail.

One of the most important nineteenth-century schools of thought, Utilitarianism propounds the view that the value or rightness of an action rests in how well it promotes the welfare of those affected by it, aiming for 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was the movement's founder, as much a social reformer as a philosopher. His greatest interpreter, John Stuart Mill (1806-73), set out to humanize Bentham's pragmatic Utilitarianism by balancing the claims of reason and the imagination, individuality and social well-being in essays such as 'Bentham', 'Coleridge' and, above all, Utilitarianism. The works by Bentham and Mill collected in this volume show the creation and development of a system of ethics that has had an enduring influence on moral philosophy and legislative policy.