书名：On Liberty Utilitarianism论自由

作者：John Stuart Mill
出版社名称：Bantam Classics
出版时间：1993

语种：英语
ISBN：9780553214147
商品尺寸：10.6 x 1.5 x 17.4 cm
包装：平装
页数：272（以实物为准）

These two essays by John Stuart Mill, England's greatest nineteenth-century philosopher, are the fruit of six hundred years of progressive thought about individual rights and the responsibilities of society. Together they provide the moral and theoretical justification for liberal democracy as we know it, and their incalculable influence on modern history testifies not only to the force of their arguments, but also to the power ideas can have over human affairs.

Together these two essays mark the philosophic cornerstone of democratic morality and represent a thought-provoking search for the true balance between the rights of the individual and the power of the state. Thoroughly schooled in the principles of the utilitarian movement founded by Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill nevertheless brings his own unique intellectual energy to issues such as individual freedom, equality, authority, happiness, justice, and virtue.

On Liberty is Mill’s famous examination of the nature of individuality and its crucial role in any social system that expects to remain creative and vital. Utilitarianism brilliantly expounds a pragmatic ethic based on one controversial proposition: actions are right only if they promote the common good and wrong if they do not. While much of Mill’s thinking was eventually adopted by socialists, it is in today’s democratic societies—with their troubling issues of crime, freedom of speech, and the boundaries of personal liberty—that his work resounds most powerfully.

John Stuart Mill was a child of radicalism, born in 1806 into a rarefied realm of philosophic discourse. His father, who with Jeremy Bentham was a founding member of the utilitarian movement, was responsible for his son’s education and saw to it that he was trained in the classics at an extraordinarily early age. In 1823 Mill gave up a career in law to become a clerk at the East India Company, where his father worked. Like his father, he rose to the position of chief examiner, which he held until he retired from the company in 1858.