John Stuart Mill

Biography
- Son of James Will
- Classical-liberal English philosopher in the 19th century

Jeremy Bentham – “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of

two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure”
Actions – morally judged: tendency to benefit those affected
Bentham’s theory – right mix of punishments and rewards = exemplary
education and useful contributor in society
Admitted to a lack of independence “the things which boys learn from being
turned out to shift for themselves
Age 15 – introduced to Jeremy – influence philosophical ideas
Became an apostle of utilitarianism after reading the Traite de Legislation
- Critical disciple and political disciple
- Deviated from ideas of bentham
Age 20 “Mental crisis”
- 6 months
- loss of direction
- as close as he eve came to rebelling from his father
- needed sosme independe
- read a passage in Marmontel
Age 24 – met 22 year old Harriet Taylor
Married to John Taylor; affair for 21 years
Shaped his view on feminism and liberalism, response to the tyranny of
social convention and
Harriet taylor
- Damaging influence:
o Women’s suffrage – mankind moral judgment
Set retirement and went to Avignon with this stepdaughter, Helen Taylor
The Philosophy of Swine
- Pain and pleasure are what lead humans to do things
Bentham’s Utilitarianism
- Evaluates actions based upon their consequences
- Greatest amount of happiness
Psychological Hydonism – enough piglike comforts could outweigh the
pleasures of intellectual discovery, artistic or moral heroism
Mill accepts psychological hedonism but Mull also rejects the Benthamite
view
Mill distinguishes pleasures by contrasting the higher pleasures with sensual
fulfillment
- Included the quality as well as quantity in his concept of utility
- Some people would not give up a higher pleasure
Mill – we are better and are separated from animals, we can enjoy higher
pleasures, see beauty and intelligence, quality over quantity,
individuality, autonomy

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Marx and Engels 1848
“There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of communism!”
May 5, 1818 Treves City, Prussia (Trier, Germany)

Family
- Middle calss
- 3rd child out of 9
- father: Heinrich, Jewish lawyer to the high court of trier
- mother: henrietta simple uneducated but hardworking
- eldest died at age 4
- occupied position of eldest son
- father’s favorite

The young Marx

- studied humanities
- graduated in Berlin, with a degree of philosophy

November – marx meets the most important person in his life, Friedrich
Engels
Rheinische Zeitung
Marx marries Jenny von Westphalen
Marx collaborates with Engels – café de la regence
The life-long friendship of Marx and Engels
First collaboration
January 1845 – ordered to leave France
September 1845 – Laura was born

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1845 – renounce Prussian Citizenship
1846 – The communist correspondence committee
1847 – League of the Just
February 1848 – Manifesto of the Communist Party
March 1848 – The King of Belgium ordered Marx out within 24 hours
Marx suffered a life in poverty
Engels supported Marx and his family
Marx got fired because of his bad handwriting. Has no practical skills besides
writing
Death of Marx son Heinrich Guido (1850) – convulsion due to meningitis
Daughter Franciska (1852)
The Panic of 1857 (39 yrs old) worldwide economic crisis
The death of Jenny (1883) due to cancer
The death of Marx – March 14, 1883

1. the dialectic
a. hegel and dialectic philosophy
i. thesis
ii. anti-thesis
iii. synthesis
b. centrality of contradiction in historical change
c. conflicts ad contradictions in various levels of social reality
d. contradiction at the heart of capitalism
e. contradiction, resistance, more exploitation
2. the dialectic method
a. fact and value

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 i. social values are not separate from social facts
ii. the dialectic thinker believes that it is not only impossible
to keep values of the study of the social world and also
undesirable
iii. emotional involvement does not lead to inaccuracy
b. reciprocal relations
i. not simple, one way cause and effect in its form of analysis
ii. effects are also neither consistent nor simultaneous
iii. more important to look into
1. reciprocal relations among social factors
2. dialectic totality of social life in which social factors
are embedded
c. past, present future
i. relationship of contemporary reality to the past and other
future social phenomena
ii. dialectical sociology is inherently political – encourage
practical activities that the nature of this future world
1. importance of historical research
d. no inevitabilities
i. there is a dialectic relationship between present and
future but the future need not be dictated by the present
1. social phenomena are constantly acting and reacting
2. no deterministic model
ii. real relationships rather than grand abstractions
1. rejection of Hegel today

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 3. human potential
a. human potential
i. relation to labor and its potential for alienation for
capitalism
ii. “ensemble of social relations”
iii. shaped by the dialectic contradictions
b. human nature
i. modified in each historical epoch
ii. species being: creative beings
iii. not a question of human nature but what kind of nature is
unchanging of open to historical process
4. labor
a. species being and human potential are intimately linked to labor
i. humans and nature co-participate in each other
ii. nature controls humans’ material reactions, while
iii. humans act upon the external world (nature)
iv. end result of labor is a material product of imagination
b. central points on the concept:
i. objectification: creation from imagination
ii. labor transforms human beings
c. labor is thus at the same time:
i. objectification of our purpose,
ii. the establishment of a relationship between human need
and material objects of our need, and
iii. transformation of our human nature
d. labor is not restricted to economic activities

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 e. we labor in response to our own needs
f. transformation in labor propels human history
i. labor truly empowers human potential
ii. we transform material reality thru labor
iii. labor transforms society
g. we are not just social animals but also creative animals
5. alienation
a. class system
i. capitalists
1. owns tools and raw materials
2. owns final product
ii. bourgeoisie
1. in-between status groups
2. owns entrepreneurship (knowledge development)
iii. proletariat
1. only owns labor
b. basic components of alienations
i. from productive activity
ii. from the product
iii. from their fellow workers
iv. from their own human potential
6. structures of capitalist society
a. workers own little produce commodities for the profit of small
numbers of capitalists who own all of the following
b. political powers have been transformed to economic relations
c. workers are dispensable, easily fired and replaced

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 d. capitalism is doomed for failure
7. communism

Emile Durkheim
- april 15, 1858
- epinal, france
- family of rabbis, youngest in the family
- wealthy and highly respected family
- austere household environment
- his interest in religion was intellectual, not theological
- “moral guidance in society”
- taught philosophy in provincial schools in the area of paris
- influence by Wilhelm wundt
- university of Bordeaux: offered the first course in social science in
france
- comte
- moral education
- died: nov 15, 1917 due to heart attack (stroke)

two main themes

a. priority of the social over the individual
b. the idea that society can be studied scientifically
father of sociology
a. established the discipline in uni
b. able to give sociology an identifiable niche

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sociology as science
a. empirical research
b. sociology must be engaged in hard, rigorous and basic work of actually
studying the changing nature of societies

basic Durkheim concepts

- social facts
o material
o non-material
- morality
- collective conscience
- collective representations
- social currents

social facts are the social structures and cultural norms and values that
are external to and coercive of actors
“THINGS”

essential qualities of social facts

- external to the individual
- coercive of the individual
- explained by other social facts

non material social fact

- common morality
- consciousness and conscience

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 - occurring through a given society
- independent
- capable of determining other social facts
collective representations
- relates to material social facts
- connection with collective conscience
- “idea” transformed into a social “force”
- gives motivation
- also cannot be reduced to individuals
- come in the form of symbols
o flags, pictures
social currents
- not yet in crystallized form
- movements
- less concrete
- non material but can affect institutions
- introduction of new cultural standards
- coercive
- social

theoretical concepts
- division of labor in society
first classic
relationship of individual and society in modernity
sociology to examine modern crisis of morality
from simple to complex

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 - highly differentiated
- variations of moralities
enormous implications for the structure of society
How is it changed and held together?
how members of society see themselves as part of the whole?
1. mechanical solidarity
2. organic solidarity
- suicide

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