Millgram starts by positing that ‘The intelligent layperson thinks of the meaning of life as one of philosophy’s central and perennial problems’ and a reason we should take philosophy seriously (p.1). Indeed, Millgram goes so far as to argue that Mill’s life was ‘perverse’: rather than a life spent maximising pleasure (in accordance with the tenets of Utilitarianism), Mill deliberately avoided pleasure, even pursuing self-punishing behaviours: rather than a self-directed, active, autonomous life (in accordance with the tenets of On Liberty), Mill slavishly followed (and exaggerated the aptitude of) authority figures whose word he passively took as gospel, spending his intellectual energy on proving them correct. Millgram attempts to disprove the idea that one’s life, to have meaning, should have (or be) a project, by showing how disastrously wrong this went for Mill, whom Millgram takes to be the archetype of ‘life as project’. Instead, it is about what Millgram thinks is wrong with analytical philosophical accounts of ‘the meaning of life’, using Mill as a reductio ad absurdum. One might imagine that this book is about what John Stuart Mill can tell us about ‘the meaning of life’.
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