incarnation was a once-for-all atonement for our sins’ (p. 240). However, as heindicates, this is a theological issue not a metaphysical one. Metaphysics concernswhat is and is not possible or necessary in the world in which we find ourselves.The fact that Christian theology may need certain kinds of limitation to apply toincarnation in order to maintain its internal coherence is metaphysically irrele-vant. If incarnation is metaphysically impossible, then the fact that some peoplemay want to believe in has no bearing on the matter. And if incarnation is meta-physically possible, then there is no obvious reason why its possibility should belimited to Christianity.

In the end it feels as if the book has not quite decided what it wants to be,and that undermines its coherence. Fortunately that does not devalue the individ-ual contributions to it. However, it is fair to say that while some of these are rela-tively fresh, others rehearse positions that have previously, and sometimesextensively, been articulated elsewhere. Consequently, those with a longstandinginterest in the area covered, however it is defined, will find some of the essays sig-nificantly more stimulating than others. Those with a less developed interest willderive greater benefit.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that the index for this book is extremely thin,and there is no information on the contributors.

TREVOR CURNOWUniversity of Cumbria

John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life. EDITED BY B. EGGLESTON, D. E. MILLER and

D. WEINSTEIN. (Oxford UP, 2011. Pp. 320. Price US$74.00.)

The publication of this volume signifies a welcome renewal of interest in Mill’sconception of the ‘Art of Life’. This is the name that Mill gives to the entire the-ory of practical reasoning. Mill states in the System of Logic that ‘Teleology, or theDoctrine of Ends’ must be divided into three Departments: that of Morality (theright), Prudence (the expedient) and Aesthetics (the beautiful or noble). Utilitarianconsiderations ground practical reason as a whole; the relation of utilitarian calcu-lations to norms within each of these departments of practical reason is morecomplicated. Any understanding of Mill’s utilitarianism that neglects this will faceserious problems.

The volume is introduced with a short exposition of Mill’s discussion of theArt of Life in the System, with the body divided into four parts dealing with therelation of the Art of Life to: (i) Mill’s rule-utilitarian account of the departmentof Morality, (ii) Mill’s thought on virtue and higher pleasures, (iii) the founda-tional role of happiness as the goal of life, and (iv) the attempt to live the goodlife in practice.

Section I contains contributions from Rex Martin, David Weinstein, BenEggleston and Dale Miller. The debate as to whether Mill should be read as anact-utilitarian or a rule-utilitarian is an old one, and might sometimes seem tohave become stale. The contributions made to this section, however, are refresh-ing: there is useful clarity of thinking on what rule-utilitarianism amounts to

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and whether it is subject to the ‘incoherence objection’. As is pointed out in thevolume, the incoherence objection is rarely made explicit: it centres aroundthe apparent problem of simultaneously affirming that rules are merely means to theultimate goal of utility and that the status of rules as rules must be taken seriously. The essaysin this section do not aim to be the final word on what the Millian reply to theincoherence objection should be; they aim rather to suggest lines of promise andto invite further work on the topic. Martin attempts to establish in what sense Millis a rule-utilitarian. Weinstein offers an account of the nineteenth-century originsof the incoherence objection, in Bradley’s criticism that Mill’s utilitarianism was ‘inearnest’ with neither its end nor its rules, and Eggleston investigates the extent towhich Mill was conscious that this objection was a problem for his account ofmorality. Miller attempts to construct a rule-utilitarian position that is not subjectto the objection, from premises that Mill himself endorses.

Section II concerns the Department of Aesthetics, with essays from JonathanRiley and Wendy Donner. Evaluation in this Department involves consideringthe extent to which actions are noble or beautiful. Riley’s contribution focuses onthe evaluation of superogatory acts, while Donner treats the relation of the aes-thetic dimensions of action and virtue. Mill is cryptic as to what is involved injudging actions aesthetically: judgment of the beauty of an action, the extent towhich it is a manifestation of beauty of character, or the extent to which it pro-duces beautiful results. This ambiguity is never addressed head-on in the volume,and for that reason it is difficult to see precisely the scope of the aesthetic con-cerns addressed. It is notable, however, that a picture of Mill as an unorthodoxutilitarian emerges in these essays: in Riley’s paper as one concerned with theaesthetic and moral sentiments that are qualitatively superior to the bodily plea-sures, in Donner’s, as a thinker with almost Schillerian concern for balance offaculties and the role of beauty in moral education.

Section III contains reflection on the foundational principle of the Art of Life,and features essays from Elijah Millgram and Philip Kitcher. The guiding aim ofthe Art of Life is utility: lives are successful to the extent they contain pleasures,and the Departments of Morality, Prudence, and Aesthetics each aim, in differentways, at this end. Millgram suggests that Mill’s psychological associationismimplies that insofar as the Art of Life aims at one end, it is destined to be under-mined by a natural human tendency towards unstable hedonic profiles (and thatMill’s depressive periods are a case in point). Kitcher argues that Mill’s concep-tion of the end of life is flexible. Drawing comparison with Dewey, he suggeststhat for Mill, revision of, and reflection upon, our conception of the good is itselfthe goal of philosophy.

In Section IV, Robert H. Haraldsson, Nadia Urbinati and Colin Heydtaddress the importance to practical philosophy of how agents conceive of them-selves. An agent’s self-conception iteratively feeds back into his or her formationof character and engagement with the world, and how one frames oneself in rela-tion to ones projects, needs, and setting, was therefore a question that Mill tookto be of utmost importance. Haraldsson suggests that Mill guards against the‘deductive spirit’: a method of ethical reasoning that attempts at systematizing

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rules for the attainment of the good. Urbinati investigates the extent to whichMill’s view draws on the Ancients in response to the problems of capitalism. Hey-dt draws upon Mill’s interest in Wordsworth’s poetry, Ruskin’s aesthetics, andComte’s Religion of Humanity to show how reconceiving ourselves as partici-pants in wider narratives of humanity rather than ‘mechanistic’ beings can guardagainst the problems of industrialised modernity.

I have some regrets about omissions from the volume. It would be unfair tolevel these as criticisms, for the volume is a collection of essays, rather than amonograph. Each essay is freestanding, and no attempt is made at offering acomprehensive understanding of the theory of the Art of Life. But the volumedoes demonstrate that such an understanding would be useful; it is therefore per-haps unfortunate that certain key areas were not taken up by any of the contrib-uting authors.

One such area is the wider nineteenth-century context of the ‘Art of Life’.Given that the phrase appears only once in Mill’s work, our understanding of theArt of Life must be guided by an appreciation of the context in which it occurs.There is little attempt to uncover what Mill may have been trying to articulateby using this term, which is likely to sound obscure to modern ears – knowinghow his contemporaries would have read the phrase would surely be useful. Afuller account of what Mill intended to express by using the phrase might shedlight upon what a Millian theory of practical reason would amount to.

Mill likely took the phrase ‘Art of Life’ directly from Alexander Bain, whohelped revise the edition of the System in which the phrase first appears: Mill’s1848 review of On the Application of Science to Human Health and Well-Being quotesfrom Bain’s discussion of ‘the Art of Living’. An understanding of this usageseems a prerequisite for an understanding of Mill’s adoption of the term. Lessdirect connections also exist, however: the phrase was in currency during the per-iod, and surely had connotations worth exploring. Given Mill’s interests in themovement, we should not neglect the romantic overtones of the expression: Cole-ridge’s usage in his 1821 translation of Goethe’s Faust is particularly noteworthy,given their influence on Mill. Before Mephistopheles takes Faust to visit the Leip-zig Wine Vaults, he says: ‘So soon as you feel confidence, so soon/The art of lifeis learned.’ The phrase might also convey aspects of the ‘Mutual ImprovementSociety’ atmosphere that led to Smiles’ Self-Help. There is much left to be done inexploring these connections.

Another area that is left unexplored is the metaethical backdrop of Mill’s the-ory of practical reason. It has been recognised for some time that, if any recon-struction of a Millian metaethics is possible, it must start from Mill’s distinctionbetween art and science in his discussion of the Art of Life. On the basis of thisdistinction, Alan Ryan’s 1970 work The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill attributes toMill a form of non-cognitivism. This has become a standard reading, but a re-examination of this interpretation would surely be timely. The debate as to whatthe costs and benefits of non-cognitivism are, and even what the position amountsto, has evolved considerably since the 1970s, and a re-evaluation of Mill’s placewithin the metaethical landscape would be welcome. Indeed, if, as Daniel Jacob-

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son has recently argued, attribution of positions such as consequentialism to Millis anachronistic, the same charge may surely be levelled against the standardnon-cognitivist reading.

As noted, however, these are not faults with the collection, so much as a pleafor its subject matter – the Art of Life – to be the focus of continued examination.The volume shows that there is good reason for Mill scholars to return to thissubject, for it relates closely to a wide range of Mill’s interests. A fuller under-standing of the place of the Art of Life within Mill’s philosophy, and his periodmore generally, will certainly be encouraged by this volume.

CHRISTOPHER MACLEODUniversity of Edinburgh

The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise. Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion. BY PAUL RUSSELL.

(Oxford UP, 2008. Pp. xvi + 424. Price US$99.00 HB, US$34.95 PB.)

Faced with a figure of David Hume’s calibre and standing in the history of Wes-tern thought, we inevitably ask ourselves what his core philosophical projectmight be. What are Hume’s true intentions? And can we understand his work,under any single unitary interpretation, as embodying a harmonic and coherentsystem? Paul Russell’s purpose in The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise is to provide the keyfor such a unitary reading. Russell’s in-depth and comprehensive study of Hume’swork, and his scrupulous discussion of the philosophical scene in the 17th and18th centuries, are designed to show that the best way to make sense of A Treatiseof Human Nature is to observe it through the lens of Hume’s fundamentally irreli-gious intentions. (‘Irreligious’ is Russell’s preferred word.) On Russell’s reading aprofound irreligious conviction informs the fundamental shape of Hume’s entirephilosophy; it may be regarded overall as a large scale attack on Christianity.More particularly, Russell argues that the irreligious aims so evident in the Dia-logues concerning Natural Religion and in The Natural History of Religion were alreadypresent in the Treatise, in a complete and fully conscious form. Contemporaryscholarship generally disregards the importance of the Treatise vis-a-vis questions ofreligion. To the contrary, Russell claims that throughout his work, Hume wasdeveloping an organic and structured critique of the metaphysical pretenceswhich thinkers of religious bent put forward in order to furnish their doctrineswith philosophical grounds. Such criticism, Russell remarks, goes widely unno-ticed with Hume experts today, whereas it was outstandingly clear to his contem-poraries. Furthermore, besides providing the prime animus for Hume in theTreatise, this fundamental irreligious aim is also the theoretical device which lendsunity to the Treatise as a whole, according to Russell, tying together the threebooks of which it is composed.

Russell observes that present-day interpreters divide between those who readHume’s Treatise in the light of his scepticism, and those who regard it as a formof naturalism. Thus, one group of critics, following the interpretation originallygiven by Thomas Reid and James Beattie, sees Hume as the champion of a form

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