Family Values? Mill on Liberty Reconsidered
Speaker Gregory Claeys
Thursday 20th June
Venue Bishopsgate Institute
Greg Claeys is Professor of the History of Political Thought at Royal Holloway. He is an expert in late 18th and 19th century English radical thought, particularly Tom Paine and Robert Owen. He is the author of several studies including Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism (1987), Citizens and Saints: Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism (1989), Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought (1991), The French Revolution Debate in Britain (2007), Imperial Sceptics: British Anti-Imperialism 1850-1920 (2010), and Searching for Utopia: the History of an Idea (2011). He has also edited some fifty volumes of primary sources, chiefly in the history of utopianism and radicalism. His continuing research interests lie in the fields of social and political reform movements from the 1790s to the early 20th century, with a special focus upon utopianism and how radicalism developed into early socialism.
His talk will focus on some issues addressed in his latest book, Mill and Paternalism, in particular how Mill’s thinking on socialism was influenced by his contacts with feminists like Harriet Taylor especially in connection with Mill’s views concerning marriage, the family and ‘overpopulation’.
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