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Selected Writings of James Fitzjames Stephen: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

Selected Writings of James Fitzjames Stephen: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

Author: Julia Stapleton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199212675
Published In: November 2017
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Contents

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James Fitzjames Stephen was a distinguished jurist, a codifier of the law in England and India, and the judge in the ill-fated Maybrick case; a serious and prolific journalist, a pillar of the Saturday Review and the Pall Mall Gazette.

This is the first critical edition of his major work Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, a systematic attack on J. S. Mill's later social and political philosophy. The text originated in a series of twenty letters to the Pall Mall Gazette following Stephen's return from India as the Legal Member of the Viceroy's council in 1872.

It was published as a book in 1873 and revised the following year in response to its critics, particularly Frederic Harrison and John Morley. It is the second edition of 1874 that forms the basis of this new edition. Stephen's abrasive style matched his disdain for what he regarded as Mill's enthusiasm for 'abstract' ideals such as liberty and equality-particularly sexual equality.

Against Mill's emphasis on freedom of discussion as the most effective means of addressing differences of thought and belief, Stephen argued that conflict could only be resolved by the exercise of force-physical and legal. Rejecting Mill's faith in human improvement through the exercise of reason, he emphasised the importance of revealed religion to morality and to the maintenance of political order.

Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity raises significant questions concerning the limits of tolerance, the relationship between liberty to individuality and between temporal and spiritual power in modern society. It was memorably described by Sir Ernest Barker as 'the finest flowering of conservative thought in the latter half of the nineteenth century'. However, the book sought not so much to abandon liberalism as to situate it firmly within the realm of 'experience'.

Editor's Introduction

LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY

Title-page of the Second Edition

Dedicatory Letter

Preface to the Second Edition

I: The Doctrine of Liberty in General

II: The Liberty of Thought and Discussion

III: The Distinction between the Temporal and Spiritual Power

IV: The Doctrine of Liberty in Its Application to Morals

V: Equality

VI: Fraternity

VII: Conclusion