On a half a pint of schandy was particularly ill

August 12, 2003 1:22 PM

"On Liberty"(1859), John Stuart Mill's classic, is all over the Web, says this article in Salon. "It stands to reason that the Net would embrace Mill, and not only because his text is now in the public domain: The Internet is the vastest marketplace of ideas that mankind has yet managed to create. It's an unbounded and still growing embodiment of Mill's ideals."
posted by homunculus (4 comments total)

Dangerous stuff, that. The government should outlaw it. Might give people ideas.
posted by kablam at 2:58 PM on August 12, 2003

Utilitarianism was probably the single best book on politics I've ever read. It remains at the very core of my own worldview.
posted by will at 9:49 PM on August 12, 2003

Mill is one of the giants on whose shoulders we should be standing. Unfortunately, public schools rarely educate in this country. More actual books and less textbooks would help.

will- if you like Mill, you should definitely put Epictitus, Bacon, Kant (Critique of Pure Reason) and Booker T. Washington on your list if they aren't already. And, as I've said before, ignore Jonathan Swift at your own peril.
posted by ewkpates at 4:38 AM on August 13, 2003

ewkpates, I couldn't agree more. I currently find myself debating the wisdom of home schooling vs public school just because we have more books than the local school. (Real books...and we have Mark Twain...which has been banned in our area schools.) I can't even imagine growing up without reading Mark Twain.

To the topic, JSM probably influenced me more than any other political philosopher. On Liberty is one of those books I pull out ever year or two and reread.
posted by dejah420 at 9:55 AM on August 13, 2003