ABSTRACT
John Stuart Mill wrote On Liberty in the England of the 1850s—a nation coming to terms with its rapid industrialization. Mill’s ideas were shaped by growing up among some of the most influential thinkers of his day, including his father and teacher James Mill. The young Mill familiarized himself with the economic arguments of Smith and Ricardo, and undertook an extensive study of the major works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. James Mill was part of a circle known as the “philosophical radicals” with thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham—the founder of utilitarianism, the idea that right actions bring happiness and wrong ones bring unhappiness. Mill was trained by his father and by Bentham, but as he entered his twenties he suffered a serious bout of depression and questioned how he had been taught to think. The rationality of utilitarianism had its limits and Mill began to engage with more emotional approaches to understanding life.
