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Thanks, it was a very interesting journey reading over some of this. Stephen faults Mill's logic in talking about a turning point for pre-civil societies. "Unt

Thanks, it was a very interesting journey reading over some of this. Stephen faults Mill's logic in talking about a turning point for pre-civil societies. "Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne if they are so fortunate as to find one." But Stephen makes it pretty clear that he disagrees with every word of Mill's Subjection of Women. Page 217 where he articulates his belief that wives should defer to husbands in all family questions, like a lieutenant to the captain of the ship... Stephen was writing 3 years after ratification of the 15th Amendment, and 47 years before ratification of the 19th Amendment. From 2017, it might not be clear what David Stove writing for Commentary in 1987 thought of as an unfashionable side of an argument, but... Stephen makes it pretty clear that his core disagreement with Mill, is about equality for women. (And what that meant in 1873.)

yesenadam 9y ago
Some context for some things Stove says in his essay: He'd just retired because he'd had enough of the craziness at Sydney Uni as Marxist/feminist/post-modernists tried to take over the arts/philosophy departments, which literally split the philosophy department into 2 departments for some years. See James Franklin's The Sydney Philosophy Disturbances[0] and Stove's funny/depressing A Farewell to Arts: Marxism, Semiotics and Feminism (1986) [1] featuring some examples of the kind of prose the new style of philosopher was producing. It starts with the memorable paragraph "THE FACULTY OF Arts at the University of Sydney is a disaster-area, and not of the merely passive kind, like a bombed building, or an area that has been flooded. It is the active kind, like a badly-leaking nuclear reactor, or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle." He also wrote a book, Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists[2], (i.e. Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend) reprinted as Anything Goes: Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationalism, about what he saw as perhaps a similar 20th C crazy free-for-all trend in philosophy of science. [0] http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/sydq.html http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/sydq.html [1] http://gerryonolan.com/public_html/stove/arts.html http://gerryonolan.com/public_html/stove/arts.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper_and_After https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper_and_After
yesenadam 9y ago
Welcome. :-) Another thing.. "3 years after ratification of the 15th Amendment" .. I guess you mean something in the US? I'm not in the USA, Mill wasnt in the US, no-one in the parents of this mentioned the US - why assume..well, not sure what you're assuming, but the talking as if this conversation, topic, site and its users exist entirely in the US seems rather ..strange. It's not just you. Someone else on this very page did the same thing with me today, but in a very snarky way. Maybe this chapter was posted because of something happening in the US, so people in the US are just thinking of their own scene; I don't know.
- dvanduzer 9y ago
  You're right, my apologies. I frequently forget that I am not always writing from middle America to San Francisco on this website. I'll try to keep my blinders in check. This chapter was almost certainly posted in the context of Sam Altman's recent blog post[0], which itself echoes an essay Paul Graham wrote a decade or so ago.[1] But there's a more immediate connection between Sam Altman's essay and the essay James Damore circulated at Google. I was very interested in reading Stephen's "contemporary conservative" reaction to Mill, and wanted to place it within the timeline of human culture that I could understand: just a few years after the abolition of slavery and recognition of voting rights for black men in the United States, but a couple of generations before voting rights for women. So, Altman is writing about unpopular opinions a few months after Damore is fired from Google for circulating a set of opinions, emphasizing that men and women are fundamentally different. A century and a half ago, J.F. Stephen's most substantial disagreement with J.S. Mill's treatise on liberty is... Mill's advocacy to fundamentally alter society to treat men and women equally in the name of justice. Despite what Professor Stove said in 1987, Mill's opinion was the unpopular one in 1873. [0] http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
  - yesenadam 9y ago
    Oh thank you!, I'm glad I complained. :-) "I am not always writing from middle America to San Francisco on this website" hehe - though maybe usually, it's understandable. Yeah, I know that PG essay well - I'm a huge fan of his essays (especially the non-startup/programming ones). Ohh of course - someone else tried to explain for the (U.S.) users why 1869 was so different from 1859 - I must remember tech people mostly live in the 21st C hehe. I seem to have more favourite writers from the 19th C than any other century, and have spent a lot of time living there and getting to know it (e.g. Hazlitt, Emerson, Ruskin, Nietzsche, Wilde, Stevenson, W James, Kierkegaard, Thoreau) I'll have to read Stephen's book again, I read it about 25 years ago. Also, Mill worshipped his wife. I mean really worshipped her. Some of the things he said about her were pretty over-the-top, even for someone madly in love. From memory, didn't they co-write On Liberty? Maybe he got all his 'advanced' ideas from her. His Autobiography is fascinating. Also, speaking of treatment of women, I can't read about 'experiments in living' without recalling the horrific chapter on Shelley in Paul Johnson's Intellectuals.

yesenadam 9y ago

Some context for some things Stove says in his essay: He'd just retired because he'd had enough of the craziness at Sydney Uni as Marxist/feminist/post-modernists tried to take over the arts/philosophy departments, which literally split the philosophy department into 2 departments for some years. See James Franklin's The Sydney Philosophy Disturbances[0] and Stove's funny/depressing A Farewell to Arts: Marxism, Semiotics and Feminism (1986) [1] featuring some examples of the kind of prose the new style of philosopher was producing. It starts with the memorable paragraph "THE FACULTY OF Arts at the University of Sydney is a disaster-area, and not of the merely passive kind, like a bombed building, or an area that has been flooded. It is the active kind, like a badly-leaking nuclear reactor, or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle." He also wrote a book, Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists[2], (i.e. Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend) reprinted as Anything Goes: Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationalism, about what he saw as perhaps a similar 20th C crazy free-for-all trend in philosophy of science. [0] http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/sydq.html http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/sydq.html [1] http://gerryonolan.com/public_html/stove/arts.html http://gerryonolan.com/public_html/stove/arts.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper_and_After https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper_and_After

yesenadam 9y ago

Welcome. :-) Another thing.. "3 years after ratification of the 15th Amendment" .. I guess you mean something in the US? I'm not in the USA, Mill wasnt in the US, no-one in the parents of this mentioned the US - why assume..well, not sure what you're assuming, but the talking as if this conversation, topic, site and its users exist entirely in the US seems rather ..strange. It's not just you. Someone else on this very page did the same thing with me today, but in a very snarky way. Maybe this chapter was posted because of something happening in the US, so people in the US are just thinking of their own scene; I don't know.

dvanduzer 9y ago
You're right, my apologies. I frequently forget that I am not always writing from middle America to San Francisco on this website. I'll try to keep my blinders in check. This chapter was almost certainly posted in the context of Sam Altman's recent blog post[0], which itself echoes an essay Paul Graham wrote a decade or so ago.[1] But there's a more immediate connection between Sam Altman's essay and the essay James Damore circulated at Google. I was very interested in reading Stephen's "contemporary conservative" reaction to Mill, and wanted to place it within the timeline of human culture that I could understand: just a few years after the abolition of slavery and recognition of voting rights for black men in the United States, but a couple of generations before voting rights for women. So, Altman is writing about unpopular opinions a few months after Damore is fired from Google for circulating a set of opinions, emphasizing that men and women are fundamentally different. A century and a half ago, J.F. Stephen's most substantial disagreement with J.S. Mill's treatise on liberty is... Mill's advocacy to fundamentally alter society to treat men and women equally in the name of justice. Despite what Professor Stove said in 1987, Mill's opinion was the unpopular one in 1873. [0] http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
- yesenadam 9y ago
  Oh thank you!, I'm glad I complained. :-) "I am not always writing from middle America to San Francisco on this website" hehe - though maybe usually, it's understandable. Yeah, I know that PG essay well - I'm a huge fan of his essays (especially the non-startup/programming ones). Ohh of course - someone else tried to explain for the (U.S.) users why 1869 was so different from 1859 - I must remember tech people mostly live in the 21st C hehe. I seem to have more favourite writers from the 19th C than any other century, and have spent a lot of time living there and getting to know it (e.g. Hazlitt, Emerson, Ruskin, Nietzsche, Wilde, Stevenson, W James, Kierkegaard, Thoreau) I'll have to read Stephen's book again, I read it about 25 years ago. Also, Mill worshipped his wife. I mean really worshipped her. Some of the things he said about her were pretty over-the-top, even for someone madly in love. From memory, didn't they co-write On Liberty? Maybe he got all his 'advanced' ideas from her. His Autobiography is fascinating. Also, speaking of treatment of women, I can't read about 'experiments in living' without recalling the horrific chapter on Shelley in Paul Johnson's Intellectuals.