History, utility and liberty: John Stuart Mill's critical examination of Auguste Comte

Philippe Légé

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2018, vol. 25, issue 3, 428-459

Abstract: This paper shows that Mill's assessment of Comte's work casts light on his own attitude towards the historicity of social phenomena and on the way he connects the notions of utility and liberty. It underlines the relative stability of Mill's views. While the tone of his remarks about Comte varied through time, their content remained basically unchanged. The paper untangles the complex web of the two thinkers’ intellectual relationship by gathering information scattered across many texts, assesses the effects of the Comtian influence on Mill's epistemology and shows how Mill's liberalism was partly built on his opposition to Comte's ideas.

Date: 2018
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DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2018.1449877

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