Frank Knight And John Stuart Mill On The Purpose Of Life And Liberty

Frank Knight was an economics professor at The University of Chicago in the first half of the 20th century. John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher and economist in the 19th century.

Here is an interesting quote from Knight followed by a similar one from John Stuart Mill.

"Life is at bottom an exploration in the field of values, an attempt to discover values, rather than on the basis of knowledge of them to produce and enjoy them to the greatest possible extent. We strive to 'know ourselves,' to find our real wants, more than to get what we want"

Source: Knight, Frank H. 1935. "The Limitations of Scientific Method in Economics," in The Ethics of Competition and other Essays. Harper and Row: New York.

See also Frank Knight’s “Risk, Uncertainty and Profit” 100 Years Later: Without Frank Knight, there would not have been a Chicago School of Economics by John Phelan. 

John Stuart Mill said: “The purpose of liberty is not to give us what we want but to help us grow so that we can best understand our wants.”

See The Forgotten Philosopher by Alan Wolfe in The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

Related posts:

James Buchanan, Frank Knight and John Stuart Mill on choice and utility functions (2022)

When Self-Interest Isn’t Everything (2008)