Reissued in its revised 1866 second edition, this work by John Stuart Mill discusses the positivist views of the French philosopher and social scientist Auguste Comte. Comte is regarded as the founder of positivism, the doctrine that all knowledge must derive from sensory experience. The two-part text was originally printed as two articles in the Westminster Review in 1865. Part 1 offers an analysis of Comte's earlier works on positivism in the natural and social sciences, while Part 2 considers its (...) application in areas such as religion and ethics. Mill states that Comte is the first philosopher who has attempted to extend positivism 'to all objects of human knowledge'. Despite being critical of a number of Comte's views, such as the exclusion of psychology from positivist science, Mill acknowledges his fellow philosopher's influence in the face of common negative perceptions of the positivist movement. (shrink)

This was scanned from the 1909 edition and mechanically checked against a commercial copy of the text from CDROM. Differences were corrected against the paper edition. The text itself is thus a highly accurate rendition. The footnotes were entered manually.

FOE, some time much has been said, in England and on the Continent, concerning " Positivism " and " the Positive Philosophy." Those phrases, which during ...

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.

Mill predicted that "[t]he Liberty is likely to survive longer than anything else that I have written...because the conjunction of [Harriet Taylor’s] mind with mine has rendered it a kind of philosophic text-book of a single truth, which the changes progressively taking place in modern society tend to bring out in ever greater relief." Indeed, On Liberty is one of the most influential books ever written, and remains a foundational document for the understanding of vital political, philosophical and social issues. (...) In addition to its many useful appendices, this new edition includes a chronology, bibliography, and a substantial introduction which outlines Mill’s life and works, and sets this central work of 1859 in the context of both his own intellectual development and of the play of ideas and political forces in Victorian society. (shrink)

James Fitzjames Stephens argues against the philosophical and social views advanced by John Stuart Mill: for the author, Mill's ideas of equality, utilitarianism and freedom were anathema. The attitudes expressed by Stephens were unpopular at the time of publication: his arguments against the notions of democracy and freedom are rooted in traditionalism, in a time of great - and arguably irreversible - upheaval. Many of the criticisms against liberty, in particular its deleterious potential upon morals, accurately predict the liberalization of (...) Western societies during the 20th century. Stephens other opinions, such as his opposition to women's rights, have been firmly consigned to history. While Stephens, and other thinkers like him, would fall out of favor, this work provides a stunning summation of contrarian arguments. Stephens was a conservatively-minded member of the British judiciary whose views closely correspond with elements of old-fashioned Toryism. (shrink)

This volume presents a selection of the philosophical papers which Richard Rorty has written over the past decade, and complements three previous volumes of his papers: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Essays on Heidegger and Others, and Truth and Progress. Topics discussed include the changing role of philosophy in Western culture over the course of recent centuries, the role of the imagination in intellectual and moral progress, the notion of ‘moral identity’, the Wittgensteinian claim that the problems of philosophy are linguistic (...) in nature, the irrelevance of cognitive science to philosophy, and the mistaken idea that philosophers should find the ‘place’ of such things as consciousness and moral value in a world of physical particles. The papers form a rich and distinctive collection which will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in philosophy and its relation to culture. (shrink)