Biography Of John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill was born in London in 1806. In 1873 Mill wrote an autobiography gave great examples about his life and the education he had received. Mill was given this education by his father with the assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place (Mautner, 2014). Mill had learned to speak Greek by the age of three and then Latin a little later on. Mill was a competent logician by the age of twelve. At age sixteen he had already became a well-trained economist. Mill then suffered a nervous breakdown at the age of twenty and used this nervous breakdown to come to the realization he needed more in life than just devotion to the public good and an analytically sharp intellect (Mautner, 2014). As he had grown up a utilitarian, Mill now listened to Wordsworth, Goethe, and Coleridge to help cultivate his aesthetic sensibilities (Mautner, 2014). Mill wanted the British public to understand that there was a need for a scientific approach to understand the political, economic, and social change that was happening. In Mill’s autobiography he claims he introduced the word “utilitarian” to the English language when he was only sixteen. Mill had come into contact with the idea of utilitarian thought early on in life. In Mills writing of Utilitarianism (1861) he tries to justify the utilitarian principle as the foundation for morals (Schefczyk, 2014). The utilitarian principle states that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote overall human happiness (Schefczyk, 2014). This means that Mill will be focusing on the consequences of actions and not on the rights or ethical sentiments (Schefczyk, 2014). Mill’s theory states that for him utilitarians for him were consequentialists who believed that pleasure is the only intrinsic value. The definition of “utilitarianism” that Mill gives is that it is the creed that will consider a particular theory of life as the foundation of morals. The view he had on the theory of life was that of monistic: There is one thing, and one thing only, that is intrinsically desirable, namely pleasure (Schefczyk, 2014). Mill was then convinced that certain types of pleasure are more valuable than other types because of qualities. This means that his position is sometimes called “qualitative hedonism. This asserts that pleasure is the only thing of value (Schefczyk, 2014). Mill thought that morality would build on social rules. Mill said in a thesis that speakers who are confident will say the phrase “morally right” or “morally wrong”. He also stated that we as people will put a name on a type of action morally wrong if the people think that is should be set so by either formal punishment, public disapproval, or through a bad conscience (Schefczyk, 2014). So if a person knows that something is morally wrong then it shouldn’t be done, if they know it to be morally alright then go ahead and reap the benefits of that action. While doing some research I came across an article about colleges that would let credit card companies set up booths and tables at their registration events or student fairs. This means that credit card companies were giving credit cards to eighteen year olds that did not have jobs and were only attending college. Colleges allowed this because the credit card companies were giving the colleges a cut of the proceeds. They were doing this and the college

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