Mill on liberty

the long version

Mill on Liberty: A Defence was first published in 1983 and has become a classic of Mill commentary. The second edition reproduces the text of the first in full, and in paperback for the first time. To this, John Gray adds an extensive postscript that defends the interpretation of Mill set out in the first edition, but develops radical criticisms of the substance of Millian and other liberalisms. The new edition is intended as a contribution to the current debate about the foundations of liberalism. It looks closely at the recent seminal contributions to liberal thought by Raz, Feinberg, Rawls and Berlin. Central to its argument is Gray's contention that, like other liberalisms which ground themselves in an ideal of autonomy or individuality, Millian liberalism has a europocentric bias that cannot be given rational justification. Gray addresses the question of whether any form of liberal theory can, in fact, avoid this bias, and concludes that it cannot.