Book Description

Recent critics have declaimed against John Stuart Mill's liberalism, arguing that his conception of civilization is inexorably bound to a hierarchal conception of social progress justifying Europeans' moral right to “civilize” barbarian peoples. Without exonerating him of his undoubtedly problematic views regarding non-European cultures, I'd like to argue that Mill in fact has a much subtler view of historical development and of civilization than such critics attribute to him. Central to these critics' charges is an “aggregative” view of Mill's conceptualization of historical development - suggesting that Mill understood societies to move through discrete stages of social development, characterized by specifically correlated stages of economic, political, cultural and moral development - which fails to be borne out under close examination. Mill was keenly attuned to the vast differences between peoples, to the contingencies of historical development and to the great pathologies endemic in “civilized” states. He was equally aware that particular social stages did not immediately correspond to specific economic or political conditions; this challenges critics' contention that Mill reduced the world to a binary dichotomy distinguishing “civilized” from “barbarian” peoples. Given the great attention that he devoted to the very particular social, economic, cultural and political conditions under which people developed the capacities required for effective representative government - conditions that he saw as difficult to achieve in even the most “civilized” of states - I argue that the critics' characterization of Mill as an unquestioning imperialist must be re-considered.