Resumen
Resumen de Autobiografía
Para quién es
For readers who love philosophy and political history, accounts of how education shapes a person, and honest stories of doubt and recovery.
De qué trata este libro
John Stuart Mill was one of the leading thinkers of nineteenth century Britain. He wrote on logic, economics, liberty and the rights of women. In his Autobiography, published after his death in 1873, he tells how his mind was formed and how his ideas grew. He wrote most of it in the 1850s and kept revising it for years.
This is not a book of gossip or confession. Mill says he wants to record an unusual education, to thank the people who shaped him, and to show what he learned from his mistakes. He gives few dates and little family detail. What he gives instead is the story of a mind, with its training, its breakdown, its repair and its work in the world.
You will meet a child taught Greek at three, a young man who nearly gives up on life at twenty, and a clerk who runs part of British India by letter. You will also meet the woman he credits with some of his best ideas. Along the way you see why a man so devoted to reason came to value feeling, poetry and variety. Let us begin with the strange school of his childhood.
En este resumen
- 1A childhood schooled at breakneck speedFree
- 2Learn by questioning, not by memorising
- 3A working life inside the East India Company
- 4Even a good cause cannot carry a hollow mind
- 5Take truth from thinkers you disagree with
- 6Harriet Taylor and the partnership of minds
- 7The books written to change minds
- 8A philosopher goes into Parliament
- 9How the book has been read and challenged
Idea clave 1 de 9
A childhood schooled at breakneck speed
Mill was born in London in 1806, the eldest son of James Mill, a Scottish philosopher and historian. His father decided to teach him himself and to make him as capable a thinker as possible. The boy began Greek at the age of three. He read Aesop's fables and then Xenophon and Herodotus, and by seven he had met several dialogues of Plato.
Latin came at eight, and soon after came geometry, algebra and the calculus. He also learned history and read widely in English. Much of this he learned in his father's study, working at a table while the father wrote his own books. Whenever a word puzzled him, he asked, and he was often interrupted. Mill says this taught him to work in the middle of noise and to put up with being disturbed.
The father was a hard teacher. He was quick to anger when the boy stumbled, and Mill admits that he felt more fear than love. Praise was rare, and the child was told that his gifts were the result of effort and that others could do the same. Mill thought this was true. He felt that he started far ahead of other boys not because he was clever but because he had been taught early.
The cost was real, and Mill says so. He had few friends of his own age and almost no games. He had no ordinary boyhood, and he later wondered whether his feelings had been starved while his intellect was fed. Yet he never turns against his father. He admires his honesty and his hatred of cant, and he thinks the plan worked as far as intellect goes.
For a reader today this opening raises a lasting question. How much can early teaching do, and what does it leave out? Mill does not pretend the answer is simple. He presents his own case as an experiment with results both good and bad, and that fairness runs through the whole book.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Autobiografía
What is John Stuart Mill's Autobiography about?
It is Mill's account of his intellectual life. It covers his strict childhood education, his work for reform, a deep personal crisis at twenty, his marriage to Harriet Taylor, his writings, and his time in Parliament.
Why did John Stuart Mill have a mental crisis?
Mill had been trained to analyse everything and to work for reform. At twenty he asked whether he would be happy if all his goals were met, and he felt he would not. His feelings had been left undeveloped.
Who was Harriet Taylor and what was her role?
Harriet Taylor was a thinker and Mill's close friend for many years, then his wife from 1851. Mill credits her with a large share in his later writing, though scholars debate how large it was.
When was Mill's Autobiography published?
It came out in 1873, shortly after Mill died. He wrote most of it in the 1850s and revised it later. His stepdaughter Helen Taylor helped to prepare it for print.
Is Mill's Autobiography hard to read?
It is clear and calm. The childhood and crisis chapters are easy to follow.