Concepts and Historical Contexts in Liberalism’s Intellectual Debates: A Study of John Stuart Mill’s Moral and Political Thought Rosario López Sánchez Doctoral Dissertation Supervised by Prof. Dr. José María Rosales Jaime University of Málaga Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Department of Philosophy 2013 AUTOR: Rosario López Sánchez EDITA: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Málaga Esta obra está sujeta a una licencia Creative Commons: Reconocimiento - No comercial - SinObraDerivada (cc-by-nc-nd): Http://creativecommons.org/licences/by-nc-nd/3.0/es Cualquier parte de esta obra se puede reproducir sin autorización pero con el reconocimiento y atribución de los autores. No se puede hacer uso comercial de la obra y no se puede alterar, transformar o hacer obras derivadas. Esta Tesis Doctoral está depositada en el Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Málaga (RIUMA): riuma.uma.es Table of Contents Acknowledgments 7 Introduction: Approaching John Stuart Mill’s Political Thought 11 1. Purpose of the Study 11 2. The Argument of the Thesis 14 3. The Thesis’s Findings 20 4. Debates on Method: The Study of the History of Political Thought 25 Chapter 1 ‘The Collision of Adverse Opinions’: Views on Social and Political Antagonism 31 1.1 Antagonistic Forces in the History of Modern Civilisation: Guizot and Coleridge 33 1.2 The Place of Dissenters in On Liberty 36 1.3 Developing a Method: The Science of Society, Political Economy and Political Science 39 1.4 Hearing Both Sides of the Subject: Mill’s Personal Experience of Antagonism and his Intellectual Development 40 1.5 Parliament and the Value of Debate 44 1.6 Concluding Remarks 49 Chapter 2 The Idea of History: A Rhetoric of Progress 51 2.1 History as the ‘Great Things’ Achieved by Mankind 51 2.1 Mill and the Coleridgeans on History 53 2.3 France and French Historians 56 2.4 Concluding Remarks 60 Chapter 3 The Principles of Order and Progress in Mill’s Social and Political Thought 63 3.1 Coleridge (1840) 65 3.2 A System of Logic (1843) and The Principles of Political Economy (1848) 68 3.3 Guizot’s Essays and Lectures on History (1845) 74 3.4 On Liberty (1859) and Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859) 76 3.5 Considerations on Representative Government (1861) 77 3.6 Auguste Comte and Positivism (1865) and Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews (1867) 79 3.7 Concluding Remarks 80 Chapter 4 The Argumentative Usages of Order and Progress: Social and Political Debates in Newspapers, Pamphlets and the Writings of Victorian Intellectuals 83 4.1 Intellectuals’ Arguments 85 4.1.1 Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Stuart Mill 85 4.1.2 Herbert Spencer 87 4.1.3 Auguste Comte’s Positivism, Frederic Harrison and Samuel Alexander 88 4.1.4 Walter Bagehot 92 4.1.5 Political Ideologies Encapsulated 93 4.2 Exploring Everyday Language: Newspaper Articles 96 4.2.1 Explaining Social and Political Unrest 98 4.2.2 Summarising Ideological Positions 103 4.3 Exploring Everyday Language: Pamphlets 108 4.4 Concluding Remarks 110 Chapter 5 A System of Logic as a Palimpsest: The Relationship between J. S. Mill and A. Comte in the Light of Textual Revisions 113 5.1 What is it to be Interpreted? On Multiple Versions of Political Texts 113 5.2 The Peculiarities of Mill’s A System of Logic 117 5.3 The Relevance of Textual Instability for Understanding Authorial Revisions 120 5.4 Mill’s Revision Process: Recasting Comte’s Role in A System of Logic 123 5.5 Concluding Remarks 130 Chapter 6 Natural Imagery and Metaphors in Mill’s Science of Society 135 6.1. Metaphors and Natural Images in A System of Logic 136 6.1.1 Social Organism, Social Body and Body Politic 138 6.1.2 Consensus 141 6.1.3 Statics and Dynamics 144 6.1.4 Astronomy and the Progress of History 147 6.1.5 Cohesion and Mathematics 149 6.2 Contemporary Debates on the Relevance of Metaphors: Interpretive Insights into the Logic 152 6.2.1 The Task of Understanding Mill’s Use of Figurative Language 152 6.2.2 The Controversies on the Cognitive Value of Metaphors 155 6.3 Concluding Remarks 159 Chapter 7 Mill’s Concept of Nationality: Enriching Contemporary Interpretations through Contextual History 161 7.1 Present-day Interpretations of Mill’s Concept of Nationality and Considerations on Representative Government 163 7.2 Reshaping Mill’s Concept of Nationality: A System of Logic 169 7.2.1 The ‘Vulgar Sense’ of Nationality: Recasting its Meaning as a Principle of Cohesion 170 7.2.2 Textual Revision and Quentin Skinner’s Insights 173 7.2.3 The Meaning of ‘Cohesion’ and the Argumentative Context 175 7.3 Concluding Remarks 179 Conclusions 183 References 193 1. Primary Sources 193 1.1 John Stuart Mill’s Writings 193 1.2 Other Primary Sources 194 1.3 Newspaper Articles 197 1.4 Online Databases and Resources 198 2. Secondary Literature 198 Appendix: Conceptos y contextos históricos en los debates intelectuales del liberalismo: Un estudio sobre la filosofía práctica de Mill 219 1. Objetivos de la investigación 219 2. El desarrollo argumental 223 3. Conclusiones y originalidad de la tesis 230 Acknowledgements This doctoral dissertation is one of the outcomes of what has been a most meaningful learning experience. Throughout the writing process I have incurred many debts of gratitude that I wish to acknowledge. First of all, I am deeply grateful to my supervisor, José María Rosales, for his unfailing support and helpful academic advice. He encouraged me to pursue doctoral studies and since then his guiding has been decisive in completing this thesis. His generosity with time and tireless enthusiasm along with his detailed and insightful comments to my drafts have made a difference. Writing it in English has been a challenge I had not dared to face were it not for his careful help in preparing the many partial versions of the thesis. For any mistakes and misunderstandings I am of course solely responsible. Since July 2009 I have held a PhD scholarship funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, Beca de Formación de Profesorado Universitario (FPU), which has provided the main funding for this research. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Department of Philosophy at the University of Málaga, where I have began my teaching experience. The two research projects of the Spanish R+D National Plan, The Rhetorics of Democracy (FFI2008-00039) and The Civic Constellation (FFI2011-23388), have proved a most stimulating research network and offered additional financial assistance. I have been very fortunate in spending two research stays at the Centre of Excellence in Political Thought and Conceptual Change, at the University of Jyväskylä, and the Centre for Political Ideologies, Department of Politics and International Relations, at the University of Oxford, which have been extraordinarily fruitful experiences. I have benefited from the congenial and stimulating working environment offered by both institutions. I would like to thank Prof. Kari Palonen for his kind support during my stay at the University of Jyväskylä and for his valuable comments on my work. Anitta Kananen greatly assisted me with the practical arrangements. During my time at the Centre for Political Ideologies Prof. Michael Freeden agreed to supervise my work and gave me constructive and stimulating feedback, for which I am grateful. Likewise, the periodicals and pamphlets collections at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, have been essential to documenting some chapters of this study. I would like to express my thanks to the organisers of the Helsinki Summer School and Concepta’s ‘Introduction to Conceptual History’ Course, held at the University of Helsinki, and the London-Sussex Summer School in Intellectual History, at the University College London, which allowed me to take part in them and discuss some preliminary results of the thesis. I have presented parts of this dissertation at quite a few workshops and seminars. I am indebted to the many scholars who have commented on my papers and kindly discussed their arguments. The workshops organised by The Rhetorics of Democracy and The Civic Constellation research projects, together with the Seminar in ethics and political philosophy at the University of Málaga, deserve special mention in this regard. The enlightening comments and suggestions from several colleagues have been of great value. I would like to thank particularly Manuel Toscano, Rieke Schäffer, Jan Harald Alnes, Jussi Kurunmäki and Marta Postigo. My earnest gratitude goes to my family. I am indebted to my parents, for their constant encouragement to pursue my goals, to my nephews and nieces, for the many joyful moments, and to Alberto for his never-ending patience, optimism and reassurance. Introduction: Approaching John Stuart Mill’s Political Thought 1. Purpose of the Study This doctoral dissertation argues an interpretation of John Stuart Mill’s social and political writings. It does so by drawing on the research programmes and theoretical assumptions of the ‘New History of Political Thought’, as developed by the works of John Pocock or Quentin Skinner, among others, and conceptual history, whose best- known advocate is Reinhart Koselleck. The combination and the contrast between both approaches to the history of political thought, as studied by Melvin Richter or Kari Palonen, offers a novel reading of some aspects of Mill’s political thought that both casts light on frequently disregarded topics and revises prevailing interpretations in contemporary academic literature. Accordingly, the study examines the ways in which Mill’s political ideas belong and contribute to the debates that equally concern his contemporaries. The study of the uses of concepts and argumentative strategies in Mill’s writings contributes to a richer understanding of the history of political thought, more precisely of political liberalism as a context-dependent, historical narrative.