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A review by aarongertler
The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill, John Stuart Mill
5.0
Read this as soon as you can. You can finish in an hour or two, and every sentence is a jewel. It's nearly impossible to imagine this being written better in the year 1861 by any other person alive at the time. (Mill's wife was also a major contributor, and it's deeply sad that she didn't survive to see it published.)
The language isn't so archaic as to detract from readability, and the arguments are constructed with a care and precision I once associated only with the best philosophers of our era; "Subjection" is leagues beyond Mill's "Utilitarianism" in that regard.
I find something worth quoting on every other page, and much of it still rings true today (indeed, you can see faint echoes of Mill in the best analyses of the James Damore memo). Every time Mill begins to make some statement that might ring false to modern sensibilities, he catches himself and apologizes for his own lack of data, then steps back from the precipice. This feature, combined with his deep appreciation for the contexts within which people and groups live out their lives, makes him the ultimate rationalist social justice warrior. On my best days, I hope to see the issues of our society as clearly as Mill saw the issues of his own.
The language isn't so archaic as to detract from readability, and the arguments are constructed with a care and precision I once associated only with the best philosophers of our era; "Subjection" is leagues beyond Mill's "Utilitarianism" in that regard.
I find something worth quoting on every other page, and much of it still rings true today (indeed, you can see faint echoes of Mill in the best analyses of the James Damore memo). Every time Mill begins to make some statement that might ring false to modern sensibilities, he catches himself and apologizes for his own lack of data, then steps back from the precipice. This feature, combined with his deep appreciation for the contexts within which people and groups live out their lives, makes him the ultimate rationalist social justice warrior. On my best days, I hope to see the issues of our society as clearly as Mill saw the issues of his own.