John Stuart Mill and the Meaning of Life
Elijah Millgram
Abstract
The popular view that the meaning of a life should be a project is assessed by examining a life that did have that shape. John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian life project is described, and is argued to be a best representative of the class. Turning points and unusual features of Mill’s life are shown to be side effects or preconditions of having a very large project center stage in it. Life projects are motivated as satisfying a coherence requirement imposed on the valuable elements of a life. But Mill’s biography demonstrates that living out one’s life as a project undermines its coherence. The ov ... More
Keywords: meaning of life, John Stuart Mill, projects, Harriet Taylor, utilitarianism, David Wiggins
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2019 | Print ISBN-13: 9780190873240 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2019 | DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190873240.001.0001 |
