Privacy, Intersubjectivity: On J. S. Mill's The Subjection of Women

The study argues that Mill's essay The Subjection of Women is a significant contribution to his ethical and socio-political thought. For his practical philosophy, the text is indispensable since it presents a more complex understanding of human being than given in his work On Liberty. The study argues that his later essay on the subjection of women implies a view of human being as an intersubjectivity. The human being is a vulnerable subject dependent on the relations with other people and society which forms its personality and character. Furtherly, the article argues that Mill's essay implies a more complex understanding of privacy than one can find in On Liberty. The borderline between the private and the social or public sphere is not and cannot be impervious, as the separate reading of the book On Liberty might suggest. Last but not least, the study shows that a question of emancipation and gender equality is nothing of secondary importance to Mill since the realization of the utilitarian ethics requires the transformation of human beings and alternation of characters, which is not achievable in the condition of radical inequality.