James Mill, the Scottish Enlightenment and the Problem of Civil Religion
Yüklə 438,97 Kb. Pdf görüntüsü
|
| 1
much of his claim to fame rests on the extraordinary educational regime he inflicted on his son John Stuart Mill, as well as on his role as Jeremy Bentham’s collaborator and propagandist. But Mill’s personal and intellectual connections to celebrated writers have proven a double-edged sword. They have afforded him relative posthumous fame, but the comparisons have rarely worked in his favor – arguably for good reason. When historians have examined his intellectual contributions in their own right, they have described him as someone who took his Enlightenment-inherited faith in the powers of human reason to the point of dogmatic illiberality. Indeed, the received wisdom about Mill is that he betrayed the spirit of tolerant moderation of the Scottish Enlightenment writers who shaped his early education, by rewriting their stadial histories into a linear account of human development that held up European rationality as the standard for his teleological view of societal progress. 1 Neither is his intellectual contribution to utilitarianism considered particularly noteworthy: the importance of his role primarily lay in his ability to publicize Bentham’s philosophy, attract followers and transform utilitarianism into an organized and influential movement. Perhaps he remains best known for the strictly utilitarian educational regime he inflicted upon his son, but this also serves to highlight that John Stuart Mill eventually reacted against Benthamite utilitarianism by searching for richer, more meaningful ways to theorize human life and society. The younger Mill’s account of his upbringing has largely contributed to establishing the reputation of his father as someone who embodied a caricaturized version of Enlightenment thought: the cold, sterile and intolerant rationalism that nineteenth-century writers were pushing back against when they celebrated emotion and individual liberty. 2
There are, however, hints that this may be an incomplete (if not entirely unfair) assessment of Mill’s intellectual contributions. By highlighting his affinities with
* Early versions of this paper were presented at the Maison Française d’Oxford and at the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy of Science. I would like to thank all the participants for their comments and suggestions, as well as three anonymous reviewers. 1 This is what Haakonssen has called Mill’s “emasculation of the Smith-Millar tradition.” Knud Haakonssen, “James Mill and Scottish Moral Philosophy,” Political Studies 33/4 (1985), 628. 2 Leslie Stephen’s history of utilitarianism also played a large role in establishing Mill’s image as Bentham’s “lieutenant”. Leslie Stephen, The English Utilitarians, 3 vols. (London, 1900), 2: 7-25. 2
evangelical Dissent, or the central importance of the freedom of the press in his political philosophy, researchers have started to trace a richer, more textured intellectual portrait of Mill.
3 This article also argues for a reassessment of James Mill’s intellectual trajectory, by recasting our understanding of his anticlerical, and possibly atheistic, brand of secularism. Throughout his career, Mill displayed consistently strident anticlericalism, specifically expressed through his criticism of the Church of England. His anticlerical stance, while unusually forceful, can reasonably be assumed to have found its roots in three distinct yet mutually reinforcing intellectual traditions: his personal experience as a Noncomformist hailing from Presbyterian Scotland, the secular approach to society and politics developed in the Scottish Enlightenment, and Bentham’s utilitarian denunciation of the “sinister interests” that ruled the Church of England. Mill’s critique of religious establishment spanned his entire career, and it was at the heart of his arguments for free speech, the liberty of the press, and educational reform. Commentators have therefore found it puzzling that at the very end of his life James Mill published a curious essay entitled “The Church, and its Reform”, which advocated the establishment of a state religion that looked very much like a civil religion. 4 This was a utopian vision of a reformed Christian religion that would work in conjunction with the political sphere; an alliance of Church and State that would serve to improve the morals of the population. As such it would appear to directly contradict his long-held and well- publicized anticlericalism. This article contends, however, that this text is not an oddity, but rather the logical end point of Mill’s entire career. It does so by reassessing the roots and purpose of Mill’s discourse on religion. Accounts of Mill’s anticlericalism have usually focused on Mill’s links with Bentham and the campaign for educational reform, with the History of British India (1817) providing additional evidence for his intolerant views on extra-European cultures and religions. 5 Here I propose an alternative reading of Mill based on a wider selection of texts, including early writings produced before his meeting with Bentham as
3 Kris Grint, “The Freedom of the Press in James Mill’s Political Thought,” The Historical Journal 60/2 (2017), 363-383; Anna Plassart, “James Mill’s Treatment of Religion and the History of British India,” Journal of the History of European Ideas 4/34 (2008), 526–34. 4 James Mill, “The Church, and Its Reform,” The London Review 1/2 (1835), 257–95. See Alexander Bain, James Mill: A Biography (New York, 1967), 388; Terence Ball, “The Survivor and the Savant: Two Schemes for Civil Religion Compared,” in Reappraising Political Theory: Revisionist Studies in the History of Political Thought (Oxford, 1995), 131-57, at 142. 5 For Mill on India see in particular William Thomas, “Editor’s Introduction,” in William Thomas, ed., The History of British India (Chicago, 1975), xi–xli; Duncan Forbes, “James Mill and India,” Cambridge Journal 5 (1951), 19–33. Yüklə 438,97 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
|