Mill, John Stuart

Although J. S. Mill (1806–73) was the most important British philosopher of the mid-nineteenth century, he was not a professional philosopher. His successor as the leading utilitarian ethicist of Victorian England was Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900), who was Knightbridge Professor in the University of Cambridge (see Sidgwick, Henry). Mill never attended university; he worked for the East India Company until its dissolution in 1858, and was prominent as an economist, a political commentator, a Member of Parliament, and a polemical writer on progress, democracy, socialism, the decline of religion, and the emancipation of women. Keywords: conscience; consequentialism; duty and obligation; ethics; freedom; intuitionism; Mill, John Stuart; naturalistic fallacy; normative ethics; rights