4. John Stuart Mill and the Liberal Tradition

This chapter begins with a brief account of how we get from Plato’s idea of reason, through Aristotle and the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, to a slightly different and Enlightenment-inspired idea of reason. Reason, during the Enlightenment, took on again the autonomy from culture that it had for Plato. Mill is the character who expresses most vigorously the individualism prominent in Western intellectual culture, especially in American culture. Mill’s On Liberty is a definitive expression of the Enlightenment ideal of individual autonomy. Mill, unfortunately, turns out to be a thorough-going racist; his thought about India expresses that racism. Mill’s attitude toward residents of India resembles the attitude of Paula Ramsey Taylor toward Michelle Obama and Ms. Obama’s then-impending replacement by Melania Trump. (“It will be so refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady back in the White House. I’m tired of seeing a (sic) Ape in heels.”)