Mill was one of the most important British philosophers of the nineteenth century; his Utilitarianism is a pivotal work in ethical thought. This book, written specifically for students coming to Mill - and perhaps philosophy - for the first time, will be an ideal guide. Mill on Utilitarianism introduces and assesses: * Mill's life and the background of Utilitarianism * the ideas and text of Utilitarianism * the continuing importance of Mill's work to philosophy This is the first book dedicated (...) to Utilitarianism itself. Concisely written and engaging, it is perfect reading for those studying Mill or moral philosophy. (shrink)

In a capitalist economy, taxes are the most important instrument by which the political system puts into practice a conception of economic and distributive justice. Taxes arouse strong passions, fueled not only by conflicts of economic self-interest, but by conflicting ideas of fairness. Taking as a guiding principle the conventional nature of private property, Murphy and Nagel show how taxes can only be evaluated as part of the overall system of property rights that they help to create. Justice or injustice (...) in taxation, they argue, can only mean justice or injustice in the system of property rights and entitlements that result from a particular regime. Taking up ethical issues about individual liberty, interpersonal obligation, and both collective and personal responsibility, Murphy and Nagel force us to reconsider how our tax policy shapes our system of property rights. (shrink)

This book contains a collection of important recent writing on left-liberalism, a political philosophy that recognizes both strong liberty rights and strong ...

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

This book originated as lectures for a course on political philosophy that Rawls taught regularly at Harvard in the 1980s.

This new book reopens the debate on theories of justice between utilitarian theorists and scholars from other camps. John Rawls' 1971 publication of A Theory of Justice put forward a devastating challenge to the long-established dominance of utilitarianism within political and moral philosophy, and until now no satisfactory and comprehensive utilitarian reply has yet been put forward. By expounding John Stuart Mill's system of knowledge and by reconstructing his utilitarianism, Huei-chun Su offers a fresh and comprehensive analysis of Mill's moral (...) philosophy and sheds new light on the reconciliation of Mill's idea of justice with both his utilitarianism and his theory of liberty. More than a study of Mill, this book uses a systematic framework to draw a comparison between Mill's theory of justice and those of John Rawls, Amartya Sen, and Friedrich von Hayek. It hence establishes common ground between different schools of thought in the fields of economics and philosophy, and enables more effective dialogue. This book will be indispensable both to those interested in Mill's moral philosophy and to those seeking a solid theoretical basis for analyzing the idea of justice, as well as to anyone with an interest with the history of economics, economic philosophy and the history of economic thought more generally. (shrink)

This article suggests that Rawls's break with early utilitarians is not so much over the greatest happiness principle as it is over the relation of the institution of private property to justice. In this respect Rawls is very close to John Stuart Mill, arguing for a cleansed or tamed version of the institution. That said, Rawls's defense of private property remains very thin and highly idealized, again following Mill. If Hume and Bentham fail to demonstrate their claims, Rawls and Mill (...) do little better. Rawls, like Mill, has constructed a challenging standard, admits to severe limitations on our empirical knowledge, and remains deeply ambivalent over the role of private property. (shrink)

In this volume his object is to fully examine his friend's writings and characters and draws upon his own personal recollections to do so.