Finally, after a year's delay, my article on John Stuart Mill has just been published in the American Journal, Humanitas.
The editor of the journal, Joseph Baldacchino, paid a satisfying compliment when he said that in his opinion this article was "breaking new ground in Mill scholarship."
The reason is that Mill, whose influence on the political and moral direction of the Western world has been very great indeed, is generally considered to have produced this influence by means of tough reasoning and philosophical argumentation. (His booklet On Liberty, still something close to mandatory reading for undergraduates in most universities, is considered a kind of freedom manifesto.)
But this article shows that the truth is quite otherwise. Mill's political "reasoning" - especially as laid out in On Liberty - was in fact highly emotional and mystical, and was derived directly from the spiritual and emotional revelations he experienced in reading the work of Romantic poets, especially Wordsworth.
This is the first article that shows in detail the direct links between the radical concept of the Self found in Romantic poetry, and Mill's just as radical "philosophy" of liberty.
This is no small matter, because that philosophy has by now permeated much of the thinking about liberty in the Western world, and has reached even into very high places such as Canada's Supreme Court, as you will see in this article.
The conclusion of the article is that the source of the "libertarian socialism" under which all now live, is directly traceable to Mill's incorporation of the mystique of Romantic poetry into his most influential political writings.
The article can be downloaded at http://www.nhinet.org/gairdner21-1.pdf
Enjoy!
