According to an intuitive view, lives are meaningful when they manifest a directedness or instantiate a project such that the disparate events and endeavors “add up to” a life. John Stuart Mill’s life certainly was devoted to a project in that sense. Yet Mill’s life was in many respects unsatisfying – riven with anxiety and trauma. What does Mill’s life teach us about meaningful lives?
In John Stuart Mill and the Meaning of Life (Oxford University Press 2019), Elijah Millgram weaves intellectual biography together with philosophical analysis in the service of a distinctive style of moral philosophizing.
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New Books in Philosophy