John Stuart Mill’s Idea of History: A Rhetoric of Progress

López, Rosario

Publication:
John Stuart Mill’s Idea of History: A Rhetoric of Progress

dc.contributor.author	López, Rosario
dc.date.accessioned	2023-11-13T11:03:03Z
dc.date.available	2023-11-13T11:03:03Z
dc.date.issued	2012
dc.description.abstract	This paper examines the crucial role the idea of history plays in John Stuart Mill’s social and political thought. Insofar as Mill argues that histori-cal change and progress are synonyms, the latter deserves a careful attention. However, academic literature has mostly regarded Mill’s philosophy of histo-ry a topic of minor importance. Some of his philosophical views on history, it will be argued, clearly affect his political views, but they also inform his sci-entific study of society. Accordingly, historical research aims both at under-standing the past to guide society’s future. By analysing the different sources from which Mill draws inspiration, the paper considers his views against the background of his personal and intellectual context. Mill’s temporary depres-sion, along with Macaulay’s criticism of the utilitarian ahistorical conception of politics, triggers an enquiry into the appropriate method to study society, which eventually places history at its core. His reading of Coleridge and a number of French thinkers reflects a renewed interest in the discipline. The article discusses, first, Mill’s interpretation of Coleridge as Bentham’s op-posite pole. Later in the article, I highlight Mill’s debts to Comte and Saint-Simon, especially as regards what he calls the “Inverse Deductive Method”. Some remarks on French historiographers, like Mignet, Dulaure, Sismondi, Michelet and Guizot, also support my argument.	es
dc.format	application/pdf	es
dc.format.extent	12	es
dc.identifier.citation	Res Publica: Revista de Filosofía Política, 27 (2012)	es
dc.identifier.issn	1576-4184
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10201/135636
dc.language	eng	es
dc.publisher	Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid	es
dc.relation	Sin financiación externa a la Universidad	es
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess	es
dc.rights	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional	*
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/	*
dc.subject	John Stuart Mill	es
dc.subject	History	es
dc.subject	Progress	es
dc.subject	Rhetoric	es
dc.subject.other	CDU::3 - Ciencias sociales::32 - Política	es
dc.title	John Stuart Mill’s Idea of History: A Rhetoric of Progress	es
dc.type	info:eu-repo/semantics/article	es
dspace.entity.type	Publication	es