Just reading Utilitarianism for an ethics paper. I love philosophy, but this is fucking dry. I'd rather be reading Hume, Kant or even Descartes. Mill is far too wordy.
[Philosophy] John Stuart Mill
- Thread starter PantsMcFist
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His autobiography is actually really good.
That's part of my problem with him - he writes for maximum comprehension, and makes it long and simplistic. If he wrote more technically you could fly through this instead of wading.
Never had a problem with his stuff.This was the first thing that popped into my head too.
Hume is garbage, Mill is brilliant but Utilitarnisim is an utter failure, Kant doesn't get near enough credit and Descartes is the king of "modern philosophy."
Too bad for all of them that Plato was and will always be light years ahead.
Is it backwards day today? Did I miss that memo?
*I'm with you on Kant though
Mill wrote in a style that is very hard for people to understand today because writing is taught so differently.
He wrote in extremely long paragraphs (like his father). You have to remember that John Stuart Mill was a product of his father James Mill who was a Philsopher/Historian and was raised and literally trained to be a reasoning machine. He had a masters level education by the age of 18, was reading the dialogues of Plato at age seven, and had a mental breakdown in his early twenties because he had never had what would be considered a normal life.
The more you know...
Ironically, he argued against inherent dullness in utilitarianism, and almost resorted to natural theology doing so.
Just read that part an hour or so ago. Now I'm reading Bernard Williams response to utilitarianism.
No thesis on Mills per se - I need to condense what he said, and argue for or against Williams' response.