Mill's Progressive Principles - Tapa blanda

Brink's book raises all the important issues in Mill's moral and political theory, but, as always, the complexities of Millâs thought defy a final settlement. The book is an outstanding contribution not only to Mill scholarship, but also to moral and political philosophy more generally. (C.L. Ten, Mind)

This book deserves study by all Mill scholars, whether traditionalist or revisionist, and anyone interested in the tension between liberalism and utilitarianism among the nineteenth-century Philosophical Radicals culminating in Millâs thought. (Daniel Jacobson, Ethics)

This is a very substantial study of Mill's moral and political philosophy: the most important comprehensive study since Fred Berger's landmark book of 1984 . . . [Brink] proposes a deeply thought-out, unifying new reading of Mill's thought, which will attract lasting attention ― and, I expect, prove lastingly controversial. It should be read not just by anyone with an interest in Mill but more generally by anyone with an interest in the historical development of Anglophone ethical and political theory, or in the possibilities and varieties of perfectionism. . . . [Brink's] interpretation of Mill's fundamental outlook . . . is striking and new. (John Skorupski, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews)

David O. Brink's study of John Stuart Mill's moral and political philosophy, Mill's Progressive Principles, is challenging and thought-provoking on multiple levels. . . this is a work in the history of philosophy that is a significant and rewarding contribution to the continuing debate about the viability of utilitarianism. (Diane Jeske, Utilitas)

In Mill's Progressive Principles David Brink provides a systematic reconstruction and assessment of John Stuart Mill's contributions to the utilitarian and liberal traditions, examining his first principles and their application to issues of representative democracy and sexual equality. Brink defends novel interpretations of key elements in Mill's moral and political philosophy, including his concepts of motivation, happiness, duty, proof, harm and the harm principle, freedom of expression, anti-paternalism, representative democracy and weighted voting, and sexual equality. However, the most distinctive aspect of this account of Mill's commitments is the case it makes for a perfectionist reading of his conception of happiness and the significance this has for other aspects of his moral and political philosophy. On this perfectionist conception, the chief ingredients of happiness involve the exercise of a person's capacities for practical deliberation and decision that mark us as progressive beings. Once this perfectionist theme is made explicit, it can be shown to be central to Mill's views about utilitarianism, liberalism, rights, democratic government, and sexual equality.