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Mill, John Stuart

Mill, John Stuart, 1806-73, British philosopher and economist. He received a rigorous education under his father, James Mill (1773-1836), and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), who were close friends and together had founded utilitarianism. John Stuart Mill's own philosophy, influenced by his wife, Harriet Taylor, developed into a more humanitarian doctrine than that of utilitarianism's founders: he was sympathetic to socialism, and was a strong advocate of women's rights and such political and social reforms as proportional representation, labor unions, and farm cooperatives. In logic he formulated rules for the process of induction, and he stressed the method of empiricism as the source of all knowledge. On Liberty (1859) is probably his most famous work. Among his other books are Principles of Political Economy (1848), Utilitarianism (1863), and his celebrated Autobiography (1873). One of the most important liberal thinkers of the 19th cent., Mill strongly influenced modern economics, politics, and philosophy.