John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill was born in London in 1806, the eldest son of the philosopher and historian James Mill. His education was one of the most remarkable ever inflicted on a child: he began learning Greek at three, Latin at eight, and by twelve had read most of the Greek and Latin classics in the original. By the time he was an adult, he had the equivalent of a university education in logic, philosophy, economics, history, and mathematics — without ever having attended school.

At twenty he suffered a severe mental breakdown, which he described in his Autobiography as the collapse of the utilitarian framework that had organised his life. His recovery, he said, came through poetry — particularly Wordsworth — and through the discovery that feeling, not just analysis, was essential to human flourishing. The crisis, and the recovery from it, shaped everything he wrote afterwards.

Mill worked for the East India Company for thirty-five years, eventually rising to a senior position, while writing philosophy in his spare time. His major works include A System of Logic (1843), Principles of Political Economy (1848), On Liberty (1859), Utilitarianism (1863), and The Subjection of Women (1869). He was also a Member of Parliament for Westminster from 1865 to 1868, where he advocated for women’s suffrage.

His relationship with Harriet Taylor, whom he met in 1830 and married after her first husband’s death in 1851, was the central relationship of his life. He credited her with improving almost everything he wrote in the latter half of his career. She died in 1858, a year before On Liberty was published — the book was dedicated to her memory.