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Create a 5 pages page paper that discusses the spirit of the age by mill

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Create a 5 pages page paper that discusses the spirit of the age by mill. Specifically, John Stuart Mill was interested in the ‘submissiveness’ of certain people to the political and moral convictions of others (Mill, 1859). In other words, Mill was interested in relying on or having faith in authority, or, more specifically, trusting the ideas of other people although the follower does not understand the specific justifications for such ideas, and certain traits of the individual followed, like his religious beliefs or social status, on account of which his ideas are accepted by the follower as trustworthy.

Critiquing The Spirit of the Age

When an individual believes in an opinion on authority, he is viewed by Mill to be abandoning his own opinion as to the credibility of that opinion due to respect to the opinion of another person. Mill was hence interested in the concept of authority in the area of belief. and since the writing of The Spirit of the Age, Mill performed a methodical process of presenting an explanation of authority quite embedded into his own arguments in the field of political philosophy. The Spirit of the Age held the original declaration of Mill’s principle of authority. It was also, as discerned from his essay, his original version of the utilitarian political philosophy and morality. It held the original explanation of his ‘new opinions’, which are those created by Mill after the well-publicized mental problem that had made him discontented with the instructions and arguments of his ‘first instructors’ (Mill, 1859). The Spirit of the Age can therefore be seen as being situated at, or close to, the start of the topic—his continued attempt to modify utilitarianism. Analysis of his theory of authority is hence necessarily part of such a bigger attempt. and the main purpose of such an analysis should be to look for the reasons why he at first engaged in this revisionary activity in the discipline of political philosophy by creating a theory of authority.

The Spirit of the Age indirectly represents an ultimate deviation from the utilitarian theory of Jeremy Bentham, which views ‘utility’ as a decision or action which supports or upholds the highest level of happiness (Bentham, 1843).