Episode Details

John Stuart Mill began studying Greek at three, Latin at eight, and had read most of the classical canon before he turned twelve. His father designed a radical education meant to produce a perfect rational mind. It nearly destroyed him.

This episode traces Mill's journey from a childhood of relentless intellectual drilling through a devastating mental crisis to his emergence as one of the most important philosophers of liberty and utilitarianism.

• The extraordinary education his father James Mill imposed on him
• The mental breakdown at age 20 and how poetry helped him recover
• On Liberty and why it remains a foundational text of liberal democracy
• His partnership with Harriet Taylor and her influence on his thought