John Stuart Mill: A Biography

Contemporary Review, Sept, 2004

John Stuart Mill: A Biography. Nicholas Capaldi. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]27.50 (US$40.00). xx 436 pages. ISBN 0-521-62024-4. Mill's continuing importance for historians is reflected in this new biography. The author claims not only that Mill was 'the most influential British philosopher of the nineteenth century' but 'the last major British philosopher to present an integrated view of the whole of philosophy'.

He was, if not the 'quintessential Victorian intellectual', at least one type of intellectual: Cardinal Newman was equally representative of a different type. Mill was designed to be the perfectly formed rationalist yet, as Prof. Capaldi argues, he rejected much of this for a more human approach to life. The author also argues that his wife, Harriet Taylor, played a very important part in his life and thought, especially as regards the developing Victorian concern over the 'rights of women'. This is an 'intellectual biography'; indeed, if one leaves Mill's intelligence aside there is not much of real interest. It excels in two ways. It shows how Mill's writings on economics, politics, epistemology and so on must be seen as interrelated. Secondly it shows how important people as well as ideas were to Mill, people such as his wife, Carlyle and Coleridge. Mill 'constructed a life that strove to be a Romantic work of art'. This is a new interpretation of Mill, based on deep research and wide reading and one that will shape future generations' understanding of the man and his works. (T.B.)