Reforming Liberalism: J. S. Mill's Use of Ancient, Religious, Liberal, and Romantic Moralities

Extract

Reforming Liberalism: J. S. Mill's Use of Ancient, Religious, Liberal, and Romantic Moralities. By Robert Devigne. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. 320p. $45.00.

In this scholarly book, Robert Devigne links John Stuart Mill to the aporia of the Platonic dialogues, the romantic expressivism of Kant and Coleridge, and the great tradition of British empiricism that it was Mill's purpose to reform. In so doing, Devigne introduces us to the great thinker who remains today the most direct entry point (along with Russell perhaps) into the Western tradition of philosophy for those whose native language is English. Devigne's Mill then is the “Great Mill,” the synoptic, conceptive, comprehensive Mill, the Socrates of Gower Street and Charing Cross Road, the towering genius who bestrode Victorian intellectual life like a colossus. It is thus with Nietzsche rather than with Bentham that Devigne's Mill should be classed.