An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy

Collected Works of John Stuart Mill #9

by John Stuart Mill

One of the foremost figures of Western intellectual thought in the late 19th century, John Stuart Mill offered up examinations of human rights, personal and societal rights and responsibilities, and the striving for individual happiness that continue to impact our philosophies, both private and political, to this day.

In this comprehensive rebuttal to the thinking of a preeminent philosopher of his time-one now, ironically, best remembered for Mill's critique-Mill explains why Hamilton's views on the limitations of human knowledge were, to Mil's thinking, wrong, and in the process, lays out his own ideas on the freedom of human will. In this provocative volume is where we find Mill's doctrine of the "permanent possibility of sensation," which encompasses the mind's interaction with the external world.

First published in 1865, this is a replica of the 1889 third edition, and will be of interest to students of Mill's philosophy, and to the development of philosophical thought in the 19th century.


English philosopher and politician JOHN STUART MILL (1806-1873) served as an administrator in the East Indian Company from 1823 to 1858, and as a member of parliament from 1865 to 1868. Among his essays on a wide range of political and social thought are Principles of Political Economy (1848), Considerations on Representative Government (1861), and The Subjection of Women (1869).

Genres: Philosophy

668 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1865

About the author

John Stuart Mill, English philosopher, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century. He was an exponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's.

Reviews

[Gerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each of the volumes of John Stuart Mill's Collected Works are in my library. I began reading them initially intending them to inform a dissertation on Mill and Hayek. I bit off more than I could chew and the dissertation suffered but I persevered with the study of Mill and learned much from it.

[Allan Olley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is John Stuart Mill's response to Sir William Hamilton, a philosopher of more note in the 19th century than subsequently. The book is an exploration of Hamilton's various philosophical opinions focusing on Hamilton's epistemological and metaphysical opinions about intuitive knowledge that goes beyond the report of experience. As a result it contains some of Mill's elaborate reflections on more abstract metaphysical doctrines that he does not write about elsewhere in particular his conception of Berkley's phenomenalism and his characterization of this in terms of conceiving of known existences as permanent possibilities of sensation. He also elaborates on ideas such as free will and responds to related ideas of Immanuel Kant (Hamilton's positions were often different but related to Kant's). Mill's treatment while ostensively on these themes Mill casts a rather wide net stopping to discuss deficiencies and disagreements he finds with Hamilton's use of logical terminology, his response to Zeno's paradoxes of motion and Hamilton's opinion on the low pedagogic of mathematics.

The book has lots of interesting ideas but is a bit plodding at times as a result of just how much Mill covers. This explains the length of the text. Occasionally despite Mill's attempt to be exhaustive I still find matters somewhat unclear. Also although Mill insists that Hamilton was chosen because of both his fame and his accomplishment of philosophy in Mill's estimation, but at times Mill convicts Hamilton of such basic errors one has to question the esteem Mill claims to have for Hamilton. Some ideas in this text such as Mill's treatment of the free will versus Necessitarian argument are more extensive here than elsewhere. However Mill did in fact treat of that question in some detail in his Logic expounding his own Necessitarianism (which is of a flavour we would now call compatibilist determinism).

What most struck me reading this is how Mill and Hamilton while both laying in their way fundamental epistemological and metaphysical claims on the our understanding of experience and consciousness describe it in a way very different from contemporary philosophy of mind and neuroscience.

I read a scan of the 1865 edition of this book., This Nook edition seemed to be the closest thing in the Goodreads database to that (although perhaps I just missed a better entry).