| Looking Back on his career,John Stuart Mill identified in his Autobiography three main periods in his life.The first period of his "mental progress" was that of his Benthamite education and his narrow proselytizing for the Philosophic Radical cause,lasting from the time of his earliest memories(about 1809)to his "mental crisis" in 1826-27.The second period is the"revolution" which occurred during the subsequent years,and Mill once estranged from narrow utilitarians and was attracted by conservative ideas in his mind.The final or third period was from 1840 until helast worked on the Autobiographyy early in 1870,while his mind had matured along the settled direction.My thesis intends to investigate the "revolution" period of John Stuart Mill's thought evolution and my method is to put the historic Mill into the context of Philosophic Radicals'political practice in the 1830s.Traditional intellectual history studies have focused on the impact of Romanticism and French thought on Mill in this decade,while they do not give enough attention to English political thought(e.g.Whiggism).Thought an investigation on the interaction between Mill and other Philosophic Radicals,I find that political situation,party politics in Parliament in particular,is the core of Mill's thought.After the Great Reform Act of 1832,a group of Philosophic Radicals were successfully elected as members of Parliament by the assistance of reform currents.They promoted the pass of the Poor Law Amendment of 1834 and the Municipal Corporation Act of 1835,and formed as a pressure group within Parliament.At the peak of their political influence,they received the support of more than 200 M.P.s and in several times they become Key Minority which could decide whether the Whig party can assume the reins of government.Although Mill was not a M.P.at that time,He can use private connections and the London and Westminster Review to participate parliamentary Philosophic Radicals' practice.He played an important role in propagandizing and interpreting the political ideas of Philosophic Radicalism;after 1838.he once became the core planner and organizer who strongly call for a depart from Whigs and form an independent Radical party.From the 1832 to 1839,he gradually shapes an ambition that the political aims of Philosophic Radicals will realize by the establishment of a powerful Radical party.However,because of a series of failures in and after 1839,his experienced disillusionment and woke up slowly.The final failure directly converted him to conservatism,and he blamed the lack of leadership as the main cause.Then he began to think about the question of cultural elites.Due to this kind of conservative turn in Mill's thought,the Whig political thought and Coleridge's philosophy could influence his inner world.This thesis is going to analyze the cause,process and the positive significance of this conservative turn on Mill's later thought evolution.The first chapter is about Mill's early political thought.In the period of 1815-1832,political reform currents revived and steadily occupied the core debating circle of parliamentary politics.Compared with other contemporary radical currents,e.g.natural rights theories and popular constitutionalism,the Benthamite utilitarianism,with its powerful scientific methodology,quickly ranked itself among one of the most energetic radical political discourses.Armed with this thought.Philosophic Radicals stood firmly in an anti-aristocratic position.and proposed a systematic idea which emphasized the importance of institutional reforms and the party politic s.From the aspect of governmental thought,they claimed that democratic representation should take place of aristocratic virtual representation;from the aspect of people thought,they constructed a concept of 'anti-class Middle Rank' in order to prove the verifiability of the People's interest,and this provided a scientific basis for democratic reforms and the establishment of radical party;from the aspect of party thought,they suggested that the cultural elites from middle rank,namely the Philosophic Radicals,take the leadership of political campaigns,thereby speeding the establishment of so called the whole People's party.In the second chapter,from the perspective of political narrative,I am about to discuss the'failure' which happened after Philosophic Radicals applied their political thought to practice.The high reform currents in 1832 and its sequent years encouraged the Whig ministry to work with middle ranks optimistically.John Mill interpreted this cooperation in an unrealistic way,and judged the movement of middle ranks union was about to come immediately.Convinced in such a judgement,he had a vision that Philosophic Radicals had already had the power to depart from Whigs and called for the support of the majority of House of Commons independently.The cooperation period from November 1834 to April 1835 resulted in the first open disagreement of the choice of political routine among Philosophic Radicals.This disagreement affected their cooperation with Whigs in sequent years.The affair of Municipal Corporation Reform in 1835 stimulated them to envision the substantiality of sinister interest,and the amalgamation of the two aristocratic parties.This judgement forced them to take an aggressive strategy and they organized a 'Reform Association' in 1836 which aimed at proselytizing the left-wing of Whigs.In 1837,this strategyupgraded and they coerced the Whig ministry to give attitudes in radical bills,and they expected that this strategy would speed the depart of middle ranks from Whigs.Unfortunately,all their strategies not only failed,but also shape a coalition between Whig leaders and moderate radicals.At the end of 1838,Mill launched the last campaign of Philosophic Radicals for establishing an independent party.He wanted to persuade the Lord Durham to accept the position as the party leader of all radicals.On the other field,from the aspect of extra-parliamentary politics,the rise of chartist movements and the criticism of working class politicians to Philosophic Radicalism,also represented their failure in popular propaganda.These failures finally made Mill admit the fantasy of his early political thought.The first section of the third chapter echoes my first chapter,and it is about the content of Mill's thought after its conservative turn.The political practice of 1832-1841 forced Mill to reconsider and revise Philosophic Radicalism's government thought,people thought and party thought.From the aspect of government thought,he realized the dilemma of democracy between power's distribution and centralization,and began to judge the Whiggery limited reform thought in a positive tone.From the aspect of people thought,he gave more attention to the orderly competition view of liberalism-conservatism instead of the conflict view of people-aristocracy.From the aspect of party thought,he advanced the leadership of cultural elites and converted a warm supporter of the Whig ministry.The second section is about the positive significance of the conservative turn on Mill's thought evolution.Mill developed political eclecticism in the course of that turn,thereby almost completely changed his view of the relationship between institutions and ideas.He no longer convinced that directly institutional reforms shall be the best routine of the realization of his ideals.Instead,he began to claim that politics in the real world should be followed by the reforms in the opinion world,which could be achieved through philosophical writings.This conservative transformation at least provided two positive points for Mill,the first is the turn towards philosophy,and he formed a judgement that opinion reforms should predate the institutional reform;the second is his identification with the liberty of thought.My conclusion is that their political practice in 1830s deeply affected Mill's political thought evolution after 1841.The social science ideas in the System of Logic,the discourse of thought liberty in On Liberty,and the social morality ideas in Utilitarianism all embody the Mill's revision to Philosophic Radicalism.Also,this ten-year experience posts an important question to Mill:why democratic campaigns which are from bottom to top always failed,and the aristocratic governments can occupy a leading position against the tide of democratic currents?The question of leadership,since then,also occupies a core position in the mind of Mill. |
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