By Sam Duncan
I made a mistake in my ethics class this semester: I canceled John Stuart Mill. To be quite honest it wasn’t entirely Mill’s history as an administrator for the East India Company or the fact that he was the author of an unsuccessful defense of the company and its (mis)deeds in the wake of the Indian rebellion that made me drop him from the syllabus. Mill’s Utilitarianism was on the bubble. Mill has an ability to turn a phrase yes, but students are often confused by the meandering presentation of Utilitarianism where he spends much more time arguing with an imagined opponent than presenting the theory itself, and it is hard to overstate how much the higher/lower pleasures stuff muddies the water while also solving no problems whatsoever. But Mill's history as a colonialist and defender of colonialism pushed Utilitarianism over the line for me. The fact that J.S. Mill spent most of his working life involved in a project of injustice and oppression and devoted some of his considerable intellectual and literary gifts to defending that project seemed to settle what would otherwise be a close call. In retrospect, I realize that Mill’s colonialism is actually a powerful reason to keep him on the syllabus. He made huge mistakes, and if someone wants to tear down statues of him I won’t argue against that. But like many mistakes made by great philosophers, and Mill is certainly that, there is much to learn from his mistakes. By dropping him from our syllabi we would deprive students of the opportunity to do just this.
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