040135 UK J.S. Mill for Beginners (BA) (2022W)

The aim of this course is to introduce students to some of the major works of John Stuart Mill. Mill is well known for the wide range of problems he discusses in his works. These problems belong to logic, epistemology, methodology, politics, economics, liberalism, human freedom, and feminism. This course provides an elementary introduction to two major works authored by Mill. It aims at introducing students to Mill’s economic theories, published in 1848 as ‘The Principles of Political Economy’ as well as to his epistemological and methodological work, published in 1843, as ‘A System of Logic; Ratiocinative and Inductive’. Mill’s economic theories are of enormous importance in the actual historical development of economic theory and can be regarded as paradigmatically defending classical economic theory in its latest stage of development. Like his ‘The Principles of Political Economy’, his epistemological and methodological positions as developed in his ‘A System of Logic’ proved to be of enormous importance for the actual historical development of the 19th and 20th centuries’ methodological debate in the theoretical social sciences. Apart from introducing students to these two major works of economic and methodological theory, a special degression contrasting the positions of Mill and Marx will be introduced. In particular Marx’ idea of a de-psychologized societal economic theory will be contrasted with Mill’s psychologistic and at times individualistic approach to the theoretical social sciences. Diligent students will learn to make sense and evaluate the theoretical and historical background, as well as the achievements and main criticism of Mill’s work.

Methods
Teaching consists of one unbroken 90-minute seminar where different talks on different problems are presented by participants of the course. The discussions following those presentations will be based on the presented talks as well as on questions distributed in advance of the meeting.