Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are doing
something a little bit different. A little bit.
Usually we take a topic, you know, a concept
or an event, and we rip it open to see what makes
it tick. But today we were looking at a man who
was, well, he was quite literally designed to
be a machine. That's not an exaggeration either.
No, not at all. We're tackling a figure who the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls, and
I'm quoting here, the most influential English
-speaking philologist of the 19th century. It's
a massive title, but honestly, it might even
be an understatement. I mean, if you look at
the way modern democracies function, how we think
about free scooch, how we argue about gender
equality, even how we define happiness itself.
It all traces back to this one guy. It all, in
some way, comes back to John Stuart Mill. But
the thing that hooked me, looking through all
these sources, isn't just the philosophy, as
fascinating as it is, it's the biography. I mean,
we're about to unpack the life of a man who is
essentially bred in a lab to be a genius. Bred
in a lab is a very colorful way to put it, but
it's really not far from the truth at all. And
because of that, he suffers this massive mental
breakdown. He falls deeply in love with a married
woman and, you know, waits over 20 years for
her. And somehow, through all of that... He manages
to reconcile cold, hard logic with deep human
emotion. And that tension, that's really the
key to understanding him, isn't it? The tension
between the rigid, almost brutal logic he was
raised on and the messy, complicated human emotion
he discovered for himself. Exactly. So that's
our mission today. We want to understand how
he navigated that tension. We want to see how
his ideas on things like the harm principle,
utilitarianism, and the subjection of women became,
well, the bedrock for modern liberal democracy.
And we have a huge stack of sources to draw from.
It's really a remarkably well -documented life.
It is. We're looking at extensive biographical
records, his own autobiography, which, by the
way, reads like a psychological thriller in some
parts. It's incredible. It really is. And then,
of course, his major works. We're digging into
on liberty, utilitarianism, the subjection of
women, and his principles of political economy.
Plus, we have all these historical accounts of
his political career, his personal life, his
letters. It's a lot. It's a lot of ground to
cover, but it paints a very, very complete picture
of an incredibly complex figure. So let's just
jump right into it. Part one, the experiment.
And I really think we have to frame it that way.
This was an experiment. Absolutely. And to do
that, we have to introduce the architects of
this project. His father, James Mill, and his
father's best friend, the famous philosopher
Jeremy Bentham. These two are crucial context.
You can't understand John Stuart Mill without
understanding them. James Mill was a Scottish
philosopher, historian, a very serious, very
intense, almost severe man. And Bentham, of course,
was the father of utilitarianism. Right. They
were part of this group called the Philosophic
Radicals. Radicals makes them sound like they
were, you know, throwing Molotov cocktails, but
they were really incredibly intense nerds. Intellectual
radicals for sure. They had a very specific and
to them a very scientific worldview. The core
of it was utilitarianism, the idea that actions
are right if they produce the greatest happiness
for the greatest number of people. The greatest
good for the greatest number. We've all heard
that. But they were also very rigid, very analytical.
They believed the human mind was a tabula rasa,
a blank slate. So nurture over nature. To the
absolute extreme. To the absolute extreme. They
genuinely believed that if you controlled all
the input, every single piece of information
a child received, you could perfectly control
the output. You could design a person. And they
decided that young John Stuart Mill was going
to be their vessel. He was the test subject.
He was. The goal, their explicit goal, was to
create a genius intellect, a successor who could
carry on the cause of utilitarianism after they
died. So they designed a curriculum to do it.
And when I saw the details of this curriculum
in our notes, I actually laughed out loud. It
is completely absurd. It is staggering. It creates
a sense of profound inadequacy in anyone who
reads it, I think. OK, let's just list some of
this because you really need to hear it to believe
it. Yeah. He started learning ancient Greek at
age three. Three years old. I was eating dirt
at three. I was learning not to walk into walls.
Right. And this wasn't just, you know, learning
the Greek alphabet. This was intensive. By the
time he was eight years old, he had read. all
of Aesop's fables in the original Greek. Okay.
Xenophon's Anabasis, the whole of Herodotus.
Herodotus at eight. That's thousands of pages
of dense ancient history. Yeah. And he wasn't
just reading them passively, was he? No, absolutely
not. That wasn't the method. He had to recount
everything to his father. Every evening, they
would go for a long walk, and John would have
to give a full, detailed report of what he had
learned that day. His father would correct him,
quiz him. It was relentless. And it wasn't just
the humanities. He was doing arithmetic, physics,
astronomy, and history alongside all of this.
All at the same time. The notes say that by age
eight, he was starting Latin. And by age 10,
he was reading Plato and Demosthenes with ease.
In the original Greek. In the original Greek.
I mean, at an age when most kids are reading
fairy tales, he's reading Plato's dialogues.
By 12, he's moving on to scholastic logic Aristotle.
And then political economy. He's studying Adam
Smith and David Ricardo. And Ricardo is such
an interesting figure here. David Ricardo was
one of the great classical economists and a close
friend of James Mill. So sources describe these
walking seminars where Ricardo would invite the
young boy, remember a 12 or 13 year old kid,
to go for walks with him just to discuss political
economy. Can you just imagine that? You're 13.
You're having a casual stroll with one of the
most famous economists in history. And you're
debating what? The labor theory of value. The
law of diminishing returns. It's mind -boggling.
It certainly set him apart. But, and this is
the crucial part, there is a huge cost to this.
Of course. You mentioned he was shielded. His
father deliberately kept him away from other
children. He didn't have friends his own age.
He wasn't allowed to play games. He didn't have
play at all, in the way we understand it. His
only companions were his father and his younger
siblings. And he wasn't just hanging out with
his siblings. He was their teacher. That part
is just... It's brutal. That's a crucial point.
It was part of the system. As soon as John learned
something, he was immediately tasked with teaching
it to the younger children. So not only did he
have the pressure of learning it perfectly himself.
And the pressure of performing for his father
on those walks. He then had the pressure of having
to instruct his siblings. It was a high pressure
cooker environment from the second he woke up
to the second he went to sleep. He was a brain
in a jar. A very, very well educated jar. But
still, he was built to be a reasoning machine.
And for a while, it worked. I mean, the experiment
was, in a way, a success. He was a prodigy. He
was publishing in academic journals in his late
teens. He was editing Bentham's massive, almost
unreadable manuscripts. But then, almost inevitably,
the machine broke. The crash. The great mental
crisis of 1826. He was 20 years old. This part
of the autobiography is so raw and so... Relatable,
actually, despite his bizarre upbringing. He's
grinding away. He's working for the cause of
utilitarianism, promoting reform. And then suddenly
he just hits a wall. He describes it as a dull
state of nerves. The joy just drains out of everything.
And he asked himself this one pivotal question.
I think this is such a haunting, powerful moment.
It is the turning point of his entire life and
his entire philosophy. He asked himself, and
you can feel the weight of it when you read it,
if all your objects in life were realized, if
all the changes in institutions and opinions
which you are looking forward to could be completely
affected at this very instant, would this be
a great joy and happiness to you? And his heart.
heart just sank. The answer was no. An emphatic
no. He says, an irrepressible self -consciousness
distinctly answered no. That is just devastating.
It's the ultimate existential crisis, isn't it?
He realized that even if he won, even if he achieved
everything he'd been trained his entire life
to achieve, if he fixed the world exactly how
his dad wanted, he wouldn't feel a thing. His
purpose just evaporated. It completely dismantled
him. He realized that his education had given
him these incredible intellectual tools. He could
analyze, he could argue, he could deconstruct
anything, but it had completely neglected the
education of his feelings. He said his habit
of analysis had become a perpetual worm at the
root of his passions. He had no emotional connection
to the work. He was, as he feared, just a machine.
And he fell into a deep, deep depression. For
months. He writes about contemplating suicide.
He felt like he had nothing left to live for.
But then, slowly, he found a cure. And it wasn't
more logic. It wasn't a better argument. No,
it was the last thing his father would have prescribed.
It was poetry, specifically the poetry of William
Wordsworth. Which is so funny because his dad
and Bentham, they basically thought poetry was
nonsense, right? They viewed it as misrepresentation.
If a statement wasn't factually, literally precise,
it was basically a form of lying. It served no
utility. But Mill is reading Wordsworth and he
has this epiphany. He reads these poems about
natural beauty, about common human feelings,
and he finds himself moved. He realizes that
beauty can generate compassion. It can stimulate
joy. It wasn't just about calculating utility.
It was about feeling something. He realized feelings
were the source of all value. So emotion wasn't
a weakness or a bug in the system. It was the
fuel. It was the whole point. Exactly. And that
was a massive revolutionary shift for him. It
moved him away from that cold, abstract, almost
mathematical benthamite calculation toward a
much more human -centric worldview. And out of
this depression, he develops an insight about
happiness that I think is just brilliant. He
calls it the paradox of hedonism. It's such a
profound observation. So what is that? He realized
that if you consciously ask yourself, am I happy,
you immediately stop being happy. The very act
of scrutinizing the feeling makes it disappear.
Because you're analyzing it instead of just feeling
it. You're back in your head. You're back in
your head. Exactly. So he concluded that happiness
is best achieved en passant, in passing. You
don't aim for happiness directly. You sort of
sneak up on it. Yeah. You sneak up on it. You
aim for some other object, the improvement of
mankind, a creative pursuit, the happiness of
others. And then, as he beautifully puts it,
you inhale happiness with the air you breathe.
That is such a modern piece of advice. I mean,
that's what every therapist will tell you today.
Stop chasing the idea of happiness and just go
do meaningful things. It completely saved his
life. And this emotional awakening, this new
understanding of the inner life, it really set
the stage for the next major chapter of his life,
which involves the person who would become arguably
the most important influence on his work. Harriet
Taylor. Harriet Taylor. So part two, the muse
and the partner. It's 1830. Mill is around 24,
25. He's coming out of this crisis. And he meets
Harriet Taylor at a dinner party. And by all
accounts, the connection was immediate and electric.
She was brilliant. She was passionate. She was
radical in her thinking. She was everything he
was starting to realize he needed. And there's
just one small problem. She's married. Right.
Not just married. She has a husband, John Taylor,
and children. But Mill and Harriet hit it off
immediately. They have this intense intellectual
and emotional connection. And thus begins one
of the most unusual and for its time scandalous
relationships in Victorian history. It lasted
for 21 years before they could marry. For two
decades, they maintained what they called an
intimate friendship. Which sounds like a euphemism,
but it probably wasn't. The general historical
consensus, based on their letters and everything
we know, is that the relationship was chaste
until her husband died. But they were constantly
together. They were writing together, talking,
traveling together whenever they could. It was
a partnership in every way but the physical.
So how did the husband handle this? I mean, in
Victorian England, that sounds like a recipe
for a duel. John Taylor seems to have been an
incredibly tolerant, if long -suffering man.
He was a successful pharmacist, a decent person,
but he just wasn't Harriet's intellectual equal,
and he seemed to know it. He accepted that Mill
provided a kind of mental and emotional companionship
that he couldn't. It seems so. It was certainly
an awkward triangle. They would have dinner together,
the three of them. It was very strange, but they
made it work in their own way for two decades.
But we really need to clarify something here,
because history, especially older biographies,
often writes Harriet off as just the love interest
or the muse. But the source material... especially
Mill's own writing, suggests she was way, way
more than that. Oh, absolutely. We have to debunk
the great man myth here. Mill himself credited
her constantly and lavishly. He called her mind
a perfect instrument and considered her the most
eminently qualified of all the people he knew,
including all the famous male thinkers of his
day. He actually said that in many cases he was
just the amanuensis, which is basically a fancy
word for a secretary writing down her ideas.
He did. He saw their work as a complete collaboration,
especially when it came to their most radical
ideas on women's rights, on socialism. So specific
works like The Subjection of Women and his most
famous book on liberty, which was published shortly
after her death. He said those were joint productions.
The socialist chapters of his Principles of Political
Economy, he says those were her influence. She
pushed him. She took his logical framework and
filled it with this human urgency. She consistently
made him more radical. They finally married in
1851, two years after her first husband, John
Taylor, died of cancer. And this is where we
see Mel putting his money where his mouth is
when it comes to women's rights. He writes a
marriage contract. Which was an extraordinary
thing to do. You have to remember, under Victorian
law, when a woman married, she suffered what
was called civil death. Civil death. That's a
chilling term. It is. She essentially became
the legal property of her husband. Her entire
legal identity was subsumed by his. She couldn't
own property in her own name. She couldn't sign
contracts. She had no rights over her own children.
So Mill writes this formal private document before
they marry, basically saying, I refuse to be
a tyrant. Exactly. He wrote a formal protest
against the... odious marriage laws. He repudiated
all the legal rights the law automatically gave
him over her person and her property. He promised
her absolute freedom of action, complete equality
in the partnership. He refused to be a master
in the eyes of the law, even if the law insisted
on it. That is incredible allyship for 1851.
But the story is just so tragic. They finally
get to be together after waiting for 20 years.
And she dies only seven years later. It's heartbreaking.
In 1858, they're traveling through France. She
contracts a respiratory illness, likely tuberculosis,
and dies suddenly in Avignon. It completely devastated
him. He wrote that the spring of his life was
broken. He was absolutely broken. He bought a
house in Avignon right across the road from the
cemetery where she was buried, just so he could
be close to her grave. He did. He furnished it
with the furniture from the hotel room where
she died. He spent a huge portion of his remaining
life there, just writing and looking out the
window at her grave. But in a way, her death
spurred him to publish the works they had developed
together. On Liberty, which came out in 1859,
just a year later, is really a testament to their
shared vision. He dedicated it to her. The dedication
is beautiful and heartbreaking. He calls her
the inspirer and in part the author of all that
is best in my writings. Which brings us perfectly
to part three. The Philosophy of Freedom on Liberty
is probably his most famous, most enduring work.
It's a short book, but it packs an incredible
punch. And it tackles this core, eternal struggle
in politics. The struggle between liberty and
authority. And here's the nuance that people
often miss. Mill wasn't just worried about the
government clamping down on you. He wasn't just
worried about a tyrannical king or a corrupt
parliament. He was worried about something he
thought was much more insidious. He was worried
about... Social tyranny. The tyranny of the majority.
Exactly. Which feels incredibly relevant in the
age of social media, cancel culture, all of that.
So what did he mean by that exactly? How is society
a tyrant? He argued that society can practice
a tyranny more formidable than many kinds of
political oppression because it doesn't just
punish your body. It enslaves the soul itself.
Wow. It isn't about formal laws. It's about the
crushing pressure to conform. It's about public
opinion. It's about ostracization. shaming the
collective weight of what everyone thinks, which
can crush an individual's ability to be different.
So even if the law says you're free to do something,
if you know that doing it will make you a social
outcast, will get you fired from your job, will
make your neighbors hate you. You're not really
free. They're not. Your soul is enslaved, as
he puts it. And Mill believed that individuality,
even eccentricity, was absolutely essential for
human progress. If everyone thinks the same,
if everyone lives the same, society stagnates.
We need the outliers, the nonconformists, the
people who are willing to experiment with different
ways of living. So to protect this space for
individuality, he establishes the central pillar
of the entire book, the harm principle. This
is his one simple rule for when society can interfere.
It is a very simple but incredibly powerful rule.
The harm principle states that, and I'm paraphrasing
slightly, the only purpose for which power can
be rightfully exercised over any member of a
civilized community against his will is to prevent
harm to others. To prevent harm to others. Let's
break that down because everything hinges on
that phrase. It does. So can I stop you from
doing something because it's bad for you? Like
if I see you smoking or making a really bad financial
decision. Absolutely not. That is the crucial
anti -paternalism stance. He says your own good,
whether it's physical or moral, is not a sufficient
warrant for interference. You cannot force someone
to do something or not do something just because
you think it will make them happier or wiser
or a better person. He has that great line over
himself, over his own body and mind. The individual
is sovereign. Precisely. As long as you are not
hurting anyone else, society needs to back off.
Your life, your choices, your mistakes are your
own business. But what counts as harm? That's
the million -dollar question, isn't it? If my
neighbor's lifestyle offends my religious beliefs,
is that harm? If you say something that hurts
my feelings, is that harm? Mill would say no
to both of those. Offense is not harm. Disgust
is not harm. Harm, for Mill, generally involves
a direct violation of a distinct and assignable
obligation or right. So things like violence,
theft, fraud. He sets a very high bar for interference
because he believes the cost of suppressing liberty
is almost always higher than the cost of allowing
someone to make a mistake. Now, he does carve
out a couple of exceptions which are important.
He says this principle doesn't apply to children.
Right. Jitter need protection. They haven't reached
maturity. So paternalism is appropriate there.
And this is the controversial one we'll have
to come back to. Yeah. He says it doesn't apply
to backward states of society. The colonial caveat.
Yeah, we will definitely unpack that later. It's
a huge asterisk on the whole thing. It is. But
sticking with the principle for a second, this
naturally leads to his defense of free speech.
And Mill is an absolute radical here. He doesn't
just say, oh, we should tolerate opinions we
don't like. He says we need to protect and even
encourage the opinions we find abhorrent, even
false opinions. This is one of his most brilliant
and enduring arguments. He gives three main reasons
why we must never, ever silence an opinion, no
matter how wrong we think it is. OK, what's the
first one? First, the silenced opinion might
actually be true. Right. And to deny that possibility.
is to assume our own infallibility. If we ban
an idea, we are effectively saying, I am God.
I am absolutely certain that I am right and this
idea is wrong and there's zero chance I'm mistaken.
And history is just one long story of humanity
being wrong about things it was certain about.
We persecuted Galileo for saying the earth moved.
We killed Socrates for corrupting the youth.
We're very, very often wrong. Okay, that makes
sense. What's the second argument? The second
is that even if the silenced opinion is false,
it might contain a portion of the truth. He says
that popular or received opinions are rarely
the whole truth. They're usually just part of
it. And we need the opposing erroneous view to
supply the rest of the truth. So the truth is
often found somewhere in the collision of two
opposing ideas. Exactly. The full picture emerges
from the debate. All right. And the third argument.
This is the one that I find the most mind bending.
it's the most powerful he says that even if the
received opinion is the whole truth and the dissenting
opinion is completely false we still need that
false opinion we must allow it to be debated
vigorously but why why do we need lies if we
already have the truth because truth needs to
be challenged to stay alive If a truth is never
debated, never has to defend itself against error,
it becomes what Mill calls a dead dogma. A dead
dogma. We just repeat the words like a parrot
without any real understanding of why it's true.
The meaning is lost. The conflict with an error
is what forces us to understand the grounds of
our own beliefs. It keeps the truth vital and
meaningful. So the crazy person yelling on the
street corner is actually performing a public
service by forcing me to articulate why I disagree
with him. In Mill's view, yes. A vital public
service. However, and this is crucial, there
is a limit. Speech is not absolutely protected.
And this is where he gives the famous corn dealer
example. I love this example. It's so wonderfully
specific and British. It is. So Mill says you
are perfectly free to write an editorial in a
newspaper arguing that corn dealers are starvers
of the poor. That's an opinion on economics or
social policy. It's protected speech. OK, that's
fine. But if you go to the house of a specific
corn dealer where an angry, hungry mob has gathered
with pitchforks and you wave a placard with those
same words on it, that is no longer protected
speech. Because the context has changed everything.
It's no longer a contribution to a debate. It's
an instigation to a mischievous act. It's incitement
to violence. The connection between the speech
and the harm, the riot, is direct and immediate.
It's not an argument. It's a weapon. And that
prefigures the clear and present danger legal
standard that we use in law today. It's the direct
ancestor of it. It's not about the content of
the words themselves, but the context, the manner,
and the immediate predictable consequence. That's
a crucial distinction. Okay, so that's liberty.
But what is the goal of all this liberty? For
Mill... It's still happiness. But he had to update
the family business, so to speak. He had to rescue
utilitarianism from his mentors. He did. So,
part four, redefining happiness. The basic foundation
of utilitarianism remained the same for him.
Actions are right in proportion as they tend
to promote happiness, and wrong as they produce
the reverse. And happiness is defined as pleasure
in the absence of pain. Right. But you have to
recall that Jeremy Bentham had a very... crude
quantitative view of this. This is the infamous
pushpin is as good as poetry line. Exactly. Pushpin
was a simple child's game like tiddlywinks. Bentham's
point was that if an activity produces the same
quantity of simple pleasure, then it is just
as good as any other activity. Playing a dumb
game is just as valuable as reading Shakespeare
or listening to Mozart if the pleasure units
are equal. And Mill, having had that breakdown
and discovered the profound value of Wordsworth's
poetry, just couldn't accept that. He couldn't.
it struck him as a doctrine worthy only of swine
so he introduces a revolutionary new concept
into utilitarianism the idea of quality of pleasure
some pleasures are just It's better than others.
Inherently better. He argues that there are higher
and lower pleasures. The pleasures of the intellect,
of the feelings and imagination and of the moral
sentiments are intrinsically superior to the
pleasures of mere physical sensation. And this
leads to my absolute favorite quote of his. It's
so wonderfully elitist, but also so true. It
is better to be a human being dissatisfied than
a pig satisfied. Better to be Socrates dissatisfied
than a fool satisfied. It is a devastating put
down, but it's also a profound philosophical
stance. He's saying there's a hierarchy of being.
It's better to have a complex, developed mind
that can appreciate art and truth and justice,
even if that mind comes with anxiety and existential
dread, than to be a simple, happy animal wallowing
in the mud. But how do you prove that? That's
the philosophical challenge, isn't it? How do
you prove that poetry is objectively better than
pushpin? Mill proposes what he calls the competent
judge test. It's very clever, he says. Ask the
people who have experienced both types of pleasure.
Okay, so you find someone who has read... Shakespeare
and played pushpin. Exactly. And he argues that
any person who is competently acquainted with
both will invariably give a marked preference
to the higher pleasure. They will prefer the
manner of existence which employs their higher
faculties. Even if that higher pleasure comes
with more struggle or dissatisfaction? Even then.
He says no intelligent human being would consent
to be a fool. No instructed person would be an
ignoramus, even if they were persuaded that the
fool or the ignoramus is better satisfied with
his lot than they are with theirs. That's about
dignity, really. It is. It saves utilitarianism
from being a simple philosophy for hedonists.
It transforms it into a philosophy about human
flourishing, about aspiring to our higher modes
of existence. Speaking of flourishing, we cannot
talk about Mill without diving deep into part
five. Women's rights. We've mentioned Harriet
Taylor's immense influence here, but the work
they produced together, the subjection of women,
was just explosive for its time in 1869. Absolutely
explosive. You have to remember the context.
We mentioned he was only the second member of
parliament ever to formally call for women's
suffrage. But this book went so much further
than just the right to vote. He attacks the entire
legal and social structure of gender relations.
The very first sentence of the book. is a declaration
of war he says the principle which regulates
the existing social relations between the sexes
is wrong in itself and now one of the chief hindrances
to human improvement he doesn't pull any punches
he compares the position of married women to
that of slaves he does and he's careful to say
he's using the term rhetorically in some ways
but also in a very real legal sense the lack
of autonomy the inability to own property the
lack of rights over one's own body and children
he saw it as the last women of the ancient law
of the strongest. And I know the standard argument
against this back then and sometimes even today
was, but it's natural. Women are naturally more
nurturing or subservient or naturally better
at domestic tasks. absolutely destroys that argument.
He says we have no idea what female nature is
because we have never seen it in a free state.
He argues that what society calls nature is actually
a completely artificial construct, the result
of centuries of forced repression and a total
lack of education and opportunity. He uses that
great analogy, right, about the tree. He does.
He says you can't take a tree, grow it in a hothouse,
bend it out of shape, and then claim that its
stunted form is its natural state. You have to
see what it becomes when it's... allowed to grow
freely in the open air. So until women have the
exact same opportunities, the same education,
the same freedoms as men, any talk of their nature
is just speculation used to justify oppression.
Precisely. And he also brings in the classic
utilitarian economic argument. He says, keeping
half the human race in a state of subordination
is a massive economic inefficiency. We are literally
wasting half of the world's available talent.
It's a drag on all human progress. It's just
logic and justice hand in hand. Now, speaking
of economics, this brings us to a really surprising
part of his thought. Part six, economics, socialism
and the environment. His economic views are fascinating
because they evolve so much over his life. He
starts out as a very conventional, classical
free market economist, right? He's the intellectual
heir to Adam Smith and his friend David Ricardo.
Laissez -faire capitalism. Pretty much. But as
he gets older, and again, this is almost certainly
Harriet Taylor's influence pushing him, he drifts
much further to the left toward what we would
today call market socialism. Market socialism.
Unpack that term for us. Well, he didn't want
the state to run everything. He was a champion
of liberty, so he hated... the idea of a top
-down command economy. He thought it would kill
innovation and freedom. So not Soviet -style
communism. Definitely not that. No. But he also
came to despise the wage system of capitalism.
He didn't like the master -servant dynamic, where
one person or group owns the capital and everyone
else just rents their labor to them for a wage.
He saw it as a transitional phase. So what was
the solution? What was the next phase? Cooperatives.
He envisioned a future where the wage system
would be gradually abolished and replaced by
worker owned associations. Oh, democracy in the
workplace. Exactly. The workers in a factory
or a farm would collectively own the capital
and they would elect their own managers from
among themselves. They would share in the profits.
So you still have competition between these different
cooperative firms in the marketplace. Yes. You
preserve the efficiency and innovation of the
market. But you end the fundamental class division
between capitalists and laborers. Everyone becomes
a partner. That is incredibly progressive, even
for today, let alone the mid -19th century. Yeah.
But the thing that really, truly blew my mind
in the research notes was his take on economic
growth. Because almost every economist, then
and now, is obsessed with growth, growth, growth.
GDP has to go up. Forever. And Mill in 1848 says
stop. This is his concept of the stationary state.
Explain this because it feels so modern. In his
Principles of Political Economy, he argues that
unlimited economic growth is not only impossible
in the long run, but it's not even desirable.
He says he is not charmed with the ideal of life
held out by those who think that the normal state
of human beings is that of struggling to get
on. He has this beautiful visual description.
He says a world with solitude, with natural beauty,
with room to breathe, is better than a world
where we've destroyed all of that just to support
a larger population and more industry. He doesn't
want to live in a crowded, wealthy industrial
hive. He's essentially one of the very first
environmental economists. He argues that once
a society has achieved a efficient level of wealth
where everyone's basic needs are met and people
are comfortable, we should stop trying to get
collectively richer and start trying to live
better. Focus on the art of living, not just
the accumulation of stuff. Precisely. He looked
forward to a stationary state where population
and capital stop growing, allowing for moral,
cultural, and spiritual progress to take center
stage. That's so hard today. I feel like he would
look at our 24 -7 consumer culture and just shake
his head in despair. He likely would. He saw
that endless growth was a recipe for destroying
the planet and ultimately our own quality of
life. Okay, but this. Before we completely canonize
him as a progressive saint, we have to look at
the messy parts. The really difficult parts.
We do. Part 7. The complexities and contradictions.
Because while he's writing these incredible books
about liberty and feminism and environmentalism,
he also has a day job. Yes. For 35 years, from
the age of 17 until he was in his 50s, John Stuart
Mill worked for the East India Company. And he
wasn't just a low -level clerk. He rose through
the ranks to become the examiner of Indian correspondence.
He was a high -ranking colonial administrator.
A key figure in the governance of British India.
So the man who wrote On Liberty. was helping
to run the British Empire. How on earth did he
justify that in his own mind? This is where we
come back to that glaring exception in the harm
principle. The caveat that it doesn't apply to
barbarous or backward states of society. Oof,
such an ugly phrase. So he just carved out an
exception for entire civilizations he didn't
think were ready for liberty. That's exactly
what he did. He genuinely believed that representative
government and individual liberty only work for
people who were sufficiently improved or educated.
For civilizations he viewed as stagnant or in
their nonage, like India at the time, he argued
that despotism is a legitimate mode of government
in dealing with barbarians. Provided the end
is their improvement. That was the justification.
It was a benevolent despotism. The idea was,
we are ruling you for your own good. to modernize
you, to educate you, and eventually you will
be ready to rule yourselves. It's the classic
paternalistic colonialist argument. And a massive
blind spot in his philosophy, isn't it? It stands
in total contradiction to his principles of individual
sovereignty. It's a profound tension. He genuinely
seemed to believe that British rule administered
by enlightened men like himself was better for
India's progress than the alternative. But it's
impossible to square with the core ideas of On
Liberty. It's just a reminder that even the most
brilliant geniuses are products of their time,
with massive cultural blind spots. But then,
to complicate the picture even more, you look
at his stance on the American Civil War. And
he's absolutely on the right side of history
there. Very much so. When the Civil War broke
out, a lot of the British elite, the upper classes,
were sympathetic to the South. They liked the
aristocratic vibe of the plantation owners, and
more importantly, they wanted the cheap cotton
for their textile mills. They tried to frame
the war as being about tariffs or states' rights.
And Mill's old friend, the writer Thomas Carlyle,
wrote that absolutely awful racist piece, The
Negro Question, defending slavery. And Mill was
furious. He wrote a scathing public rebuttal.
He argued passionately and correctly that the
war was explicitly and solely about slavery.
He cut through all the obfuscation and said,
this is a war to preserve and extend slavery,
and we must support the North. He saw the Union
victory as a necessary shock to the conscience
of the world, something needed to finally wipe
out the stain of slavery from the civilized world.
Exactly. So you end up with this deeply complex
figure. an anti -slavery imperialist, a feminist
who believes in benevolent despotism. It's not
simple. Humans rarely are. Indeed. Okay, let's
move to part eight, the public life and the saint
of rationalism. He eventually leaves the East
India Company when the crown takes it over, and
he becomes a member of parliament. And his campaign
strategy was, well, it was bold. If by bold,
you mean completely non -existent. It's an amazing
story. He was asked to run for the seat of Westminster.
He agreed. but only on his own very strict terms.
He refused to campaign in the traditional sense.
He refused to canvas for votes. He refused to
spend a single penny of his own money on the
election. He even refused to answer questions
from voters about his religious beliefs, which
were highly unorthodox. He basically just said,
look, here are my books. I've written down everything
I believe. Read them. If you agree with my ideas,
vote for me. If you don't, then don't. And he
won. It's wild. You could never do that today.
Never. And once in parliament, he wasn't a quiet
backbencher. He immediately started advocating
for all the unpopular causes we've mentioned.
Women's suffrage, stronger rights for labor unions,
radical land reform for the Irish. He was a genuine
radical. But there's one surprise in his political
record, too, isn't there? His stance on capital
punishment. Yes. The great liberal philosopher
who wants to execute criminals, it seems very
counterintuitive. It does. In 1868, there was
a debate in Parliament about abolishing the death
penalty. And Mills stood up and argued passionately
for keeping it. So what on earth was his logic?
In a word, humanitarianism. Wait, how is executing
someone humanitarian? It was a utilitarian calculation.
He argued that for the most aggravated cases
of murder, a quick, painless death was actually
more humane than the most likely alternative,
which was locking a man in a cage for the rest
of his natural life and forcing him to do hard
labor. He called life imprisonment immuring him
in a living tomb. So he thought the abolitionists,
in their attempt to be merciful, were actually
proposing a crueler punishment. Yes. He called
the abolitionist sentiment an effeminacy in feeling.
He thought the death penalty was actually less
suffering in the aggregate and a better deterrent.
It's a very cold, logical, utilitarian calculation,
even if it feels very jarring to our modern liberal
sensibilities. That is certainly a take. Wow.
Okay. Before we wrap up his life, we have to
mention his hobby. Because this guy wasn't just
about books and laws and logic. He was an avid
botanist. He absolutely loved plants. It was
his lifelong passion and escape. He collected
over a thousand unique specimens. You can actually
see his collections in museums today. He saw
the logic of botanical classification as a model
for how to order legal and social systems. But
it was also his escape. Right. His connection
to the words were the inside of his brain. It
was walking in nature, looking for flowers that
connects all the way back to his recovery from
that mental crisis. It was his way of touching
the real beautiful world. And we have to tell
the manuscript story, the famous burning manuscript.
This is just a legendary, painful anecdote. It's
one of the most horrifying stories in literary
history. So his friend, Thomas Carlyle. had just
finished writing the only draft of his massive,
multi -volume history, The French Revolution.
He gave the manuscript to Mill to read and offer
comments. The only copy. No backing. The only
copy. And Mill's maid, while cleaning, mistook
the huge pile of papers for waste paper, and
she used it to light the fire. Oh, my God. The
entire book. Just... Gone. Burnt to ash. Years
of work. Mill was absolutely mortified. He rushed
over to Carlisle's house to tell him what had
happened. He was in such a state of distress
that Carlisle apparently ended up comforting
him. Mill offered him money as compensation,
didn't he? He offered 200 pounds, which was a
huge sum of money back then. Carlisle, being
a good friend, only accepted 100 pounds just
to cover his living expenses while he rewrote
it. And he did rewrite it. That's the amazing
part. He did. He sat down and rewrote the entire
thing from memory, though he always said the
second version wasn't as spontaneous or as good
as the first one that went up in smoke. We'll
never know. What a nightmare. Okay, let's head
to the outro. We have covered a life that is
just breathtaking in its scope, from learning
the Greek alphabet at age three to reshaping
the debates in the British Parliament. It's a
sweeping intellectual and personal journey. There
is that famous quote that's often attributed
to Mill. Bad men need nothing more to compass
their ends than that good men should look on
and do nothing. A classic quote. And for the
record, he did say it in an inaugural address
at the University of St. Andrews in 1867. The
sentiment wasn't wholly unique to him, but it
perfectly encapsulates his view on the importance
of active citizenship. You can't just passively
have liberty. You have to use it. You have to
participate and speak up. And that's really the
legacy, isn't it? Mill is this incredible bridge.
He connects the 18th century enlightenment, the
rigid, cold, almost mechanical logic of his father
and Bentham with the modern world. He brings
humanity into the equation. He brings in individual
rights, emotion, the inner life. He takes their
formula for happiness and says, wait, it's not
just a math equation. It's about flourishing.
It's about becoming the best version of yourself.
He challenges us even today to do hard things,
to tolerate the opinions we hate because they
might teach us something, to define our happiness
by quality, not just by quantity. And to constantly
question whether the things we assume are natural,
like gender roles or the inevitability of our
economic systems, are actually just artificial
constructs manufactured by our institutions.
He was a skeptic, probably an agnostic, but he
was chosen to be the godfather to the great 20th
century philosopher Bertrand Russell. He was
this contradictory, fascinating, deeply brilliant
human being. And his central question, one that
runs through all his work, remains as urgent
as ever. Are we organizing our society to maximize
human freedom and individual development? And
if not, why not? What can we do to change it?
That is thought we will leave you with. Go out
and heal some happiness with the air you breathe
and maybe tolerate a corn dealer or two. Thanks
for listening to The Deep Dive.