FOUNDATIONS: Reason & Permissible Despotism in Mill, Part 1

In Season 2 - our FOUNDATIONS series - we’ll examine European philosophers from the 17th through the 19th centuries, to see how their views have shaped and defined our own… whether we realize it or not.

As we continue our look at Mill’s ON LIBERTY, we see him establish a dangerous formula by which to justify Imperialism. Mill’s contention that some societies should be viewed as “immature” – and thus not capable of the rationality required for liberty - opens the door to a definition of freedom that recognizes permissible despotism.

We’ll use this deeply troubling conclusion as a lens through which to better understand the relationship between European modes of reason, bigotry, and freedom – or the lack of freedom. We’ll look more closely at the institution of Imperialism as the ultimate expression of what we’ll call “rational chauvinism”.

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***SEASON TWO READINGS AND SOURCES***

On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill

John Locke's 2nd Treatise on Civil Government, by John Locke

Meditations on First Philosophy, by René Descartes

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, by Tyson Yunkaporta

A Treatise of Human Nature [Books 1-3], by David Hume

Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes

The Social Contract, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Encyclopedia Logic (Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences Series #1), by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Philosophy of Mind: Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences Series #3), by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Hegel's Philosophy of Right, by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Thom Brooks, Editor)

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