The education of John Stuart Mill was one of the most unusual ever planned or experienced. Beginning with his learning Greek at the age of three and continuing without a break of any kind to the age of fourteen, it constituted an almost total control of Mill's every waking activity, with the important exception of his visit to France at fourteen, until his appointment to the East India Company in 1823. It emphasized the "tabula rasa" theory, the effect of external circumstances on the developing mind, Hartley's Associationist theory, and the judicious use of the Utilitarian theories of the "pleasure-pain" principle. Conceived and carried out by Mill's father, James Mill, and his close friend, the Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the education was planned to develop John Stuart Mill as their disciple, reasoner, and advocate who would help the advance of the Utilitarian philosophy. Dependent on John Stuart Mill's native intelligence and docility, this carefully planned education was unusually successful, but it was successful at the price of Mill's emotional development. Mill's education was so much a part of his life that the development of his thought cannot be understood without some appreciation of its nature. A biographical approach is essential to an understanding of Mill. This is particularly true of the development of his poetic theory which itself was developed in a response to his efforts to integrate his views of poetry with his former philosophy. His interest in poetry derived from the time of his mental crisis in 1826, when he discovered that his preoccupation with the improvement of mankind did not provide him with the emotional satisfaction that his personal life demanded. Wordsworth's poetry, with its emphasis on the restorative powers of external nature, its sensitivity to human feelings, and its adherence to observed truths and quiet, contemplative moods, was so suited to Mill's temperament and situation that his reading it marked one of the great turning points in his life. After reading Wordsworth, Mill recovered his spirits, and not only recaptured his enjoyment of life, but also acquired a life-long devotion to poetry. Mill's poetic views were an outgrowth of his experience with Wordsworth's poetry and his desire to integrate all new ideas into his philosophy. Responding to Wordsworth's view that the feeling expressed in a poem gives importance to the action and situation, Mill placed his greatest emphasis on feeling as the essential characteristic of poetry. He agreed with Wordsworth that poetry is spontaneous, and that the thought in a poem is subordinate to the feeling. He explained the latter in terms of Hartley's Associationism. His lifelong concern for truth found its justification in his insistence that the object of poetry was to convey truthfully the feelings to which the poem gives expression. However, his poetic views were much narrower than Wordsworth's inasmuch as he neglected the imagination, and he excluded fiction from poetry in his unusual emphasis on identifying poetry with the lyric. In his efforts to integrate his poetic theory with his philosophical views, Mill followed Wordsworth's thinking that poetry is the opposite of science, and by emphasizing that the common purpose of science and poetry was their devotion to truth, Mill saw their unity in his conception of the complementary nature of their methods of conveying truth, the one by logic and the other by intuition. Mill's poetic theory tended to be narrow in the light of its overemphasis on feeling, its insistence on confining the word, poetry, to the lyric alone, and its relative devaluation of the imagination. Nevertheless, with its Wordsworthian overtones and its sense of purpose, it was essentially a Romantic theory. Its contention that the highest truths are intuitively known by the poet or artist underlined Mill's attempt to find a union of science and art in a devotion to truth. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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This dissertation seeks to examine the religious ideas in Mill's writings. Recipient of a unique education, Mill was trained to uphold a reformist ideology, Benthamite Utilitarianism. The secular biases thus instilled were greatly reinforced by his own inductivist outlook in epistemology. But Mill's sensitive mind succumbed to other influences too, especially after his "crisis". Based on a review of these key contextual factors, the ensuing study highlights (1) the persistence of a religious interest throughout Mill's career, (2) the sceptical (yet undogmatic) character of his religious thinking, and (3) the later Mill's drift towards a more sympathetic interpretation of religion. It is also emphasized that although his views are challengeable, they retain some relevance to contemporary discussion, and again, that Mill frequently emerges as a more perceptive analyst of religion than either Hume or Marx. Offered as a contribution to the study of religious thought, this dissertation is also intended to fill a certain gap in modern scholarship on the 19th century's most influential English philosophic writer.

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Orientador: Prof. Dr. Paulo Vieira Neto / Dissertaçao (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Humanas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia. Defesa: Curitiba, 10/04/2015 / Inclui referências / Área de concentração: Filosofia / Resumo: A pergunta pela felicidade é essencial na filosofia imanente de Spinoza, a qual é apresentada como o gozo de uma alegria eterna e estável com Deus, causa de todas as coisas. São três âmbitos que constituem a questão da felicidade nesta filosofia: afetivo, cognitivo e ético. Assim, é na vivência dos afetos e no conhecimento deles que o conatus de cada modo finito será capaz de afirmar-se como autônomo e potência plena de autoperseveração na existência. O percurso que conduz à conquista da felicidade envolve necessariamente a experiência da alegria, visto que a alegria favorece nossa potência pois é aumento de perfeição para a ação e o pensamento. O homem que regozija de alegria é forte e ativo, compreende a si próprio e aos seus afetos, assim como compreende os demais modos de maneira adequada; é sábio e sua atenção e cuidado são dirigidos à vida e tudo o que possa contribuir com a sua expansão. Filosofia da ação, a felicidade é, portanto, a atividade vital de fruição desta alegria concomitante ao conhecimento intuitivo de terceiro gênero, ou seja, o sentimento de eternidade e união com Deus. Palavras-chave: afetos, alegria, conatus, conhecimento, Deus, felicidade. / Abstract: The question of happiness is essential in the immanent philosophy of Spinoza. Happiness is therein presented as a kind of joy resulting from an eternal, stable joy with God, who is the cause of everything. There are three areas, which build the basis of this thought about the question of happiness: affective, cognitive and ethical. So, in the experience of the affects and with the understanding of such, the conatus of every single, finite mode will be able to affirm his autonomy as well as to assert himself as full potentiality of self-persistence. The way leading to conquest of happiness requires in any case the experience of joy, since it promotes our own potentiality by being the enhancement of the perfection of acting and thinking. The man exulting from joy is strong and active, he understands himself and his affects, as well as in an appropriate way he understands the further modes. He is wise and carefully pays attention to life and everything else that may contribute to the enhancement of life potentiality. As a result and practice of a philosophy of acting happiness namely is the essential action of this joy, which presents itself on occasion of the intuitive knowledge of the third kind, which means, with the feeling of eternity and unification with God. Key words: affects, joy, conatus, knowledge, God, happiness

This study is an attempt to trace a particular theme of analysis throughout John Stuart Mill's economic theory and to discover what light such a procedure sheds on our knowledge of Mill's work and on our understanding of his historical role. The main concern of the study is with Mill's system of analysis as such, and not, except incidentally, with the history of the ideas which found expression in his work. After a preliminary examination of Mill's position in the evolution of economic theory, a first step is taken towards establishing what were the properties and assumptions of the model of the economic system adopted by Mill in his major work in the field, the Principles of Political Economy (1848). The assumptions necessary for a consistent model are outlined and the argument then proceeds with a detailed discussion of Mill's four fundamental propositions on capital. These theorems are taken to be the principal foundation on which the remainder of Mill's analysis of production, distribution and capital accumulation is based. An attempt is made to show that these theorems are to be considered as an interdependent group which have relevance only for the system in which they stand.

Orientador: Prof. Dr. Pedro Costa Rego / Co-orientador: Prof. Dr. Marco Antonio Valentim / Dissertaçao (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Humanas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia. Defesa: Curitiba, 16/12/2006 / Inclui referências / Área de concentração: Filosofia / Resumo: Nessa dissertação, investigamos o desenvolvimento e a fundamentação daquilo que, em nossa compreensão, melhor caracteriza a forma como Kant compreende a moralidade, a saber, a incondicionalidade necessária do princípio moral, que precisa ser, por sua vez, fundada na possibilidade de liberdade transcendental. A questão que surge a partir desse percurso é relacionada à inclusão de um sentimento nessa concepção moral que se pretende independente da sensibilidade, não-patológica, e do estatuto que ele passa a ter. Realizamos então uma exposição acerca do modo como este sentimento específico, o respeito, é trabalhado por Kant em obras de sua filosofia prática, e como alguns comentadores compreendem seu papel. Finalmente, colocamos nosso posicionamento acerca dessa discussão, compreendendo o respeito como, primeiramente, não possuindo o papel de validar a moralidade, mas apenas o de motivo moral enquanto efeito necessário da lei na sensibilidade de seres finitamente racionais, como o homem. / Abstract: We started our work by investigating what we understand as the crucial aspect of Kant's conception of morality, that is, the unconditional character of the moral principle, which requires the possibility of transcendental freedom, at least from a practical point of view. We discussed, first, the way Kant deals with this point in different texts, and grounds, or at least expects to ground, this possibility. The question of how a feeling finds a place in a moral theory that defines itself by the exclusion of every element of sensibility imposed itself, and, to examine it, we presented the way Kant and some interpreters understand the matter. Finally, we stated our interpretation of the role of this feeling, as a necessary effect of the moral law in our sensibility.

The Subjection of Women was the last book by John Stuart Hill published during his lifetime. It presented a philosophical analysis of the position of women in society, as unrecognised individuals both in public and domestic roles. Mill exposed the moral and ethical shortcomings' of a system which denied women legal status or moral equality, and he made a number of specific suggestions for reform, particularly respecting legal and educational rights for women. During the following sixty years in Britain, almost all of his suggested reforms were achieved. Because Mill' s specific pleas were answered, the Subjection of Women has come to be regarded as an out-of-date argument for conditions which have been corrected. The moral philosophy contained in the book received little or no attention. The knowledge of a present-day reader about John Stuart Mill is based chiefly upon his Autobiography and the essay On Liberty. The works which made Mill famous, his textbooks upon logic and political economy, are now read only by students of those fields. Readers of the Autobiography are not generally aware how skillfully Mill and his wife edited that book to remove most of the domestic circumstances of Mill's family, and to construct a textbook account of his education. Since the tone of the Autobiography is austere and rational, there has been a tendency to transfer these qualities to Mill himself. In fact, Mill has misled his readers. In The Subjection of Women, Mill reveals opinions about the social world and makes comments about family life which are the natural complement to his Autobiography. Like most major figures of the Victorian period, John Stuart Mill was a man of many abilities and interests—a 'generalist’, rather than a specialist—and any specialist view of his work is apt to be only a partial view of the man and his work. Often these partial views become the whole view. Even Mill's biographers have been unable to avoid this difficulty. Students of Mill's essays sometimes detect inconsistencies in thought, others assert that Harriet Taylor, later Mrs. Mill, dominated his later work. However, beyond the assumption that she suggested the topic to Mill, there is very little examination of the Subjection of Women and its ideas by modern critics or biographers. This study of the Subjection of Women argues for a line of consistent and continuous development in John Stuart Mill, and suggests that the book is pertinent to his biography. Various evidence in the thesis explains why it is not possible to accept the currently published views of the man. Accordingly Mill's family background and early training have been rehearsed from the unfamiliar domestic viewpoint, and the development of his ideas traced from his earliest writings the production of The Subjection of Women. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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