On John Stuart Mill - 9780231204149

Columbia University Press

On John Stuart MillAuthor(s): Philip Kitcher\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Columbia University Press, United States\nImprint: Columbia University Press\nISBN-13: 9780231204149, 978-0231204149\nSynopsis\nJohn Stuart Mill expressed many of the central tenets of liberalism with unsurpassed clarity and enduring influence. Yet Mills apparent victory in the marketplace of ideas has numbed us to the power of his arguments. To many readers today, his views can seem utterly familiar, even banal.\n\nSharing insights from teaching Mill for many years, the eminent philosopher Philip Kitcher makes a cogent case for why we should read this nineteenth-century thinker now. He portrays Mill as a conflicted humanist who wrestled with problems that are equally urgent in our own time. Kitcher reflects on Mills ideas in the context of contemporary ethical, social, and political issues such as COVID mandates, gun control, income inequality, gay rights, and climate change. More broadly, he shows, Mills wri.