Book Description

This is another important book by John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, political economist, feminist, and civil servant, who became one of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism; and contributed widely to social theory, political theory and political economy. He has been called "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century." Mill's conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. In "Three Essays on Religion" the author offers his most sustained analysis of religious belief. Though not prepared to abandon the idea of an overall design in nature, Mill nonetheless argues that its violence and capriciousness mitigate against moral ends in nature's workings. Moreover, any designer of such a world as we experience cannot be all powerful and all good, for nature is "too clumsily made and capriciously governed."