⭐⭐⭐ On Liberty / Utilitarianism by Mill

Full Title	On Liberty / Utilitarianism
Authors	John Stuart Mill
Year Published	2008
Date Read	September 04, 2020
Rating	3/5 stars

Listened to the first two hours. There were a few insights from the book where I found myself nodding along with Mill, and these cases were the strong point of Utilitarianism for me. He has an ability to boil things down to their essence at times – one insight that stuck out to me was this passage from Chapter 4:

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. … [The] sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. … No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness.

But Mill also spends a decent chunk of time talking about why this or that portion of his philosophy has been unfairly interpreted or assailed; in these cases, I was reminded of some of the tone that [a:Nassim Nicholas Taleb|21559|Nassim Nicholas Taleb|] uses, which is a style of writing I don’t personally enjoy.

Broadly, I found the book pretty hard to follow. This is probably due to a combination of the subject matter, the older language, and my decision to listen to it as an audiobook. Perhaps I’d be better served by a more accessible treatment of these ideas.

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