Greatest happiness principle

John Stuart Mill
Mill c. 1870
Born	(1806-05-20)20 May 1806 Pentonville, London, England
Died	8 May 1873(1873-05-08) (aged 66) Avignon, France
Residence	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Nationality	British
Spouse(s)	Harriet Taylor
Era	19th-century philosophy Classical economics
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Empiricism, utilitarianism, liberalism
Main interests	Political philosophy, ethics, economics, inductive logic
Notable ideas	Public/private sphere, hierarchy of pleasures in Utilitarianism, liberalism, early liberal feminism, harm principle, Mill's Methods
Influences Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Epicurus, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Babbage,Berkeley, Bentham, Francis Place, James Mill, Harriet Taylor Mill, Smith, Senior, Ricardo, , W. von Humboldt, Goethe, Bain, Auguste Comte, Saint-Simon (Utopian Socialists),Marmontel,Wordsworth,Coleridge,Herder
Influenced William James, John Rawls, Bertrand Russell, Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, Ronald Dworkin, H. L. A. Hart, Peter Singer, Wilhelm Dilthey, Roger Crisp, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman
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John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century", Mill's conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control.

Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham, and contributed significantly to the theory of the scientific method.

A member of the Liberal Party, he was also the first Member of Parliament to call for women's suffrage.

John Stuart Mill was born on Rodney Street in the Pentonville area of London, the eldest son of the Scottish philosopher, historian and economist James Mill, and Harriet Burrow. John Stuart was educated by his father, with the advice and assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place. He was given an extremely rigorous upbringing, and was deliberately shielded from association with children his own age other than his siblings. His father, a follower of Bentham and an adherent of associationism, had as his explicit aim to create a genius intellect that would carry on the cause of utilitarianism and its implementation after he and Bentham had died.

Mill was a notably precocious child. He describes his education in his autobiography. At the age of three he was taught Greek. By the age of eight, he had read Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, and the whole of Herodotus, and was acquainted with Lucian, Diogenes Laërtius, Isocrates and six dialogues of Plato. He had also read a great deal of history in English and had been taught arithmetic, physics and astronomy.