Mill, Bentham, and the Art and Science of Government

Comparisons of Bentham and J.S. Mill tend to privilege Mill. If we compare these two not as normative philosophers but as theorists of the art and science of government, however, a different perspective emerges. This essay compares the definitions of art and science provided in Mill's and Bentham's treatments of logic, and considers the consequences for the art of government of Mill's embrace of the project of a social science. One important consequence is the emergence of a technopolitical understanding of government that sees this art as a practice that either tries to shape or conform to a natural characterological substrate, and that ideally mediates between these polar alternatives. Through this new framework Mill and many post-Millians misread Bentham as a clumsily deductive artificer. The essay concludes its exploration of this misreading with a preliminary examination of the problems--ontological, epistemological, ethical, and political--that a focus on character produces.