Publication date:
22 March 2013Length of book:
274 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739173930
In the early draft of his Autobiography (London, 1873), John Stuart Mill described himself as “a pupil of Plato, and cast in the mould of his dialectics.” However, how Plato’s influence came about, to what extent, and with regard to which aspects of Mill’s thought, form questions that do not usually preoccupy Mill scholarship. To fill this gap in critical attention, this book draws upon a variety of primary sources to pay particular attention to Mill’s concern with reform, method, character, virtue, and happiness through his reading of the ancient Greeks—particularly Plato. At the same time, this book focuses on the intellectual relationship between father and son, studying their responses to the prevalent trends as to the worth of classical studies and of Platonic philosophy in nineteenth-century Britain. Not only does John Stuart Mill’s “intoxication” with ancient Greece manifest itself in all those aspects of his works already mentioned; but—what is most important—it also permeates his unvarying aim: the improvement of mankind through the improvement of its individual members.
. . . . Kuhar and Patternotte’s anthology provides an encouraging methodological example as to how sociological research into pressing political issues can be conducted. In their sober, account-taking style, the essays provide maximum enlightenment. At the same time, they create the baffling result that this book would serve just as well as a manual for building anti-gender campaigns, or for building one’s political career on no expertise except authoritarian anti-gender rhetorics. Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe is neither a blazing ideology critique nor a manual for resistance. But asking for that might be getting ahead of things. The first step is to take the phenomenon of anti-genderism seriously and learn about its dynamics, as this book enables us to do.