In chapter one, John Stuart mill clearly expressed his opinion about the regular notion that women and men are by nature unequal and that common view about the inferiority of women compared to the superiority of men is wrong and it is one of the major obstacles that prevent human development. I believe that this is right because the way society looks at women as a weaker individual in the society is not a fact and this was only a reflection of old mentalities and perceptions that have been believed and carried along by societies over centuries. He believed that the notion that women are born by nature weaker is a hypothesis that must be proven and that gender equality through nations is not yet allowed. However, at the same time Mill contradicted …show more content…
As he stated that women should be educated in order to succeed in their works as housewives and satisfy their husband desires who are considered as the masters who have the ultimate control over them. I totally disagree with Mill on this point because it contradicts what he wants to achieve. How he can convince society to change their perceptions about women and he at the same underestimated the true value of women and what they are capable of in improving the society and having different tasks than just being the housewife that only take care of her husband and children. Moreover, he said that the true nature and identity of women cannot be verified and that in our world women never left alone to develop their own capacities and skills without men’s interference in women lives. In this case, it can be noticed that women are never trusted in their abilities in overthrowing problems and facing the real world by their own because simply they have been always seen as the weaker gender in the …show more content…
I believe that seeing women as inferior and a weak a gender is not due because of her incapacities or inabilities to sometimes perform the men tasks but it is due to the society thinking as a whole about the women in general wich in truns influence every individual in the society. Women are only being stereotyped that that are unequal to man and not proven scientifically, but the common thoughts there were injected in people’s mind had created such a division in the society. Thus, man will think that they are superior and believe that hey have power over women and women intentionally will believe that they are inferior to men. However, in our life today many rules had changed and women in nowadays occupies more positions and even higher then men because we are moving toward more civilized societies, more educated people and more open government that believe that achieving goals is not based on the physical power of someone but it depends on individuals willingness and self motivation to make commitment and achieve goals. Thus, I think it is important to remember that even the vision of science is being transformed in relative value where the load of evidence tends to reverse in some areas: Mill recalls that the burden of proof is on the person who issues a hypothesis. In fact, if there is one thing that I found remarkable in this
John Stuart Mill was one of the most influential Western philosopher. At the time, most Western philosophers had the tendency to look down on women. They believed that women are too emotional and are incapable of being rational. However, Mill was an exception to this as he was an advocate for gender equality (Utilitarian Ethics). He is also known for his work in Utilitarianism, which focuses on the consequence of an action and whether that action benefit a greater number of people (Utilitarian Ethics).
He is was total opposite of Metternich. Mill’s “On liberty” essay was about the individual liberty. To Mill’s, the only important thing is the happiness of the individual, and such happiness may only be accomplished in an enlightened society, in which people are free to partake in their own interests. Thus, Mills stresses the important value of individuality, of personal development, both for the individual and society for future progress. For Mill, an educated person is the one who acts on what he or she understands and who does everything in his or her power to understand. Mill held this model out to all people, not just the specially gifted, and advocates individual initiative over social control. He emphasizes that things done by individuals are done better than those done by governments. Also, individual action advances the mental education of that individual, something that government action cannot ever do, and for government action always poses a threat to liberty and must be carefully
For more than two thousand years, the human race has struggled to effectively establish the basis of morality. Society has made little progress distinguishing between morally right and wrong. Even the most intellectual minds fail to distinguish the underlying principles of morality. A consensus on morality is far from being reached. The struggle to create a basis has created a vigorous warfare, bursting with disagreement and disputation. Despite the lack of understanding, John Stuart Mill confidently believes that truths can still have meaning even if society struggles to understand its principles. Mill does an outstanding job at depicting morality and for that the entire essay is a masterpiece. His claims throughout the essay could not be any closer to the truth.
Clarifying several points about Mill’s opinion on the principle of liberty will give supporting evidence that unless the harm to others can be averted, any reason for the limitation of liberty would not exist.
In the past there were many biases against women and their lack of abilities compared to men. Although the male perspective has changed over the past few centuries, there are many feminists who still fight for ...
Throughout history, it is clear that men are usually seen to be advantaged by the logic of domination while females tend to be disadvantaged. Whether it be in the workplace, household, or even the bible men have always been inferior to women. Through history, cultural norms and stereotypes gender roles were created and have been present throughout society. Although it is believed that males are more advantaged than females the texts Eve and Adam: Genesis 2-3 Reread by Phyllis Trible and The Creation and Fall of Man and Woman explain how men and woman are in fact equal and maybe even disadvantaged by these cultural arrangements. Therefore, throughout history it is clear that gender discourses would allow one to believe that men are advantaged
In Mill’s essay, he places the blame for the suffrage of woman on custom. He says, “custom...affords i...
Wright Mill’s, regarding the fact that freedom, wealth, and equality are things that are not properly exercised in the “new society of America”. “We confront there a new kind of social structure, which embodies elements and tendencies of all modern society, but in which they have assumed a more naked and flamboyant prominence”. Essentially Mills is stating that the methods in which we as a society used to interpret politics, economics, etc. cannot be applied anymore due to the fact that modern society has evolved so much. Due to the fact that in modern day, the upper class elites have the largest influence on how essentially all aspects of society are run, it disregards the lower class’s abilities to exercise their rights to freedom and
Women are restricted or thought lower than men because of gender roles. They could be adored and treasured as much as they want, but that does not change the fact that they are still limited to only so many options. Women are just as brilliant and capable as men are, however they are not given the opportunity to flaunt these feats. It is because women are also a part of this world, they should be recognized what who they truly are not what they are just expected to be. Humankind must be aware that females can do just about anything a man can do, and they can do more than just spend hours in the kitchen.
One of the more severe charges against Mill's conception of liberty involves socio-cultural background of the author's politics. Mill advocates paternalism on moral grounds in several instances that suggest an intellectual bias and a level of intellectual superiority, embedded in the nineteenth century culture and the Western world. Under Mill's paradigm, freedom is limited to those who are capable of rationality, allowing despotism as a sufficient alternative to 'educating' in all other instances (Goldberg, 2000). Thus, one's incompetence allows for a coercive force and social control (Conly, 2013).
Utilitarianism defined, is the contention that a man should judge everything based on the ability to promote the greatest individual happiness. In other words Utilitarianism states that good is what brings the most happiness to the most people. John Stuart Mill based his utilitarian principle on the decisions that we make. He says the decisions should always benefit the most people as much as possible no matter what the consequences might be. Mill says that we should weigh the outcomes and make our decisions based on the outcome that benefits the majority of the people. This leads to him stating that pleasure is the only desirable consequence of our decision or actions. Mill believes that human beings are endowed with the ability for conscious thought, and they are not satisfied with physical pleasures, but they strive to achieve pleasure of the mind as well.
John Stuart Mill believes in the utilitarian principle that no action in of itself is good or bad, but the consequences of the action. People who believe in the utilitarian principle agrees that the way to judge an action’s morality is by seeing if it promotes the greatness amount of happiness, or pleasure, to the greatest amount of people. Based on that belief, Mill thinks that the only possible standard to judge ethics is happiness. Every action that we take, whether it be for short-term pleasure (lower-order pleasures) or if it’s for long term pleasure (higher-order pleasures), the tail end result for doing anything in this lifetime is to be truly happy. He also believes that happiness is the only thing that can be universally, in terms
However, women are still believed to be weak, exploited and dominated by men. Although, this is not true always, but we must agree that it is still happening today. As a woman, I hope that as time passes by, this practice will be eliminated.
In order to understand John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism we must first understand his history and motives in writing the series of essays. Mill had many influencers most notably his father James Mill and the father of Utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham. James grew up poor but was influenced by his mother, who had high hopes for the formerly named Milne family, and educated himself becoming a preacher and then executive in the East India Company. James was a proponent of empiricism and believed in John Locke’s idea of man being born as a blank slate. James did not send his son John to school, teaching him rigorously from the early age of three. Despite his father’s emphasis on the blank slate, Mill was criticized for being a manufactured man because
The only way Mill said that women living in the mid-nineteenth century in Europe could get their opinions known was through written works. The main argument women were trying to make was to be as educated and given the same opportunities that men received. Women wanted to obtain jobs in high positions; jobs that required men to listen to women and follow the orders that women gave to men. According to Mill, men wanted women to tend to their needs without forcing them. A wife who seemed to be forced to serve their husband was an undesirable one.