March 19, 2004

Business ethicist Nicholas Capaldi writes new book

Nicholas Capaldi, the Legendre-Soule Chair in Business Ethics, wrote and has had published John Stuart Mill: A Biography. The book received a positive review in the Washington Post on February 1 from Gertrude Himmelfarb, a neo-conservative icon and history professor emeritus at Brooklyn College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York.

In addition to being well reviewed, Capaldi has been invited to appear on "Book TV" on the C-SPAN2 network. The network provides information about nonfiction books and their authors. Capaldi will appear with Brian Lamb on Sunday, April 4.
Capaldi has been at Loyola since fall 2002, when he was named the business ethics chair. Prior to this, he was the University of Tulsa McFarlin Endowed Professor of Philosophy and Research Professor of Law. He also was founder and former director of Tulsa's legal studies program.

In John Stuart Mill: A Biography, Capaldi presents an account of the personal, social, and environmental influences on J.S. Mill. Mill, who is called in the book "the quintessential Victorian liberal," had been groomed by his father, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham, the two most prominent philosophical conservative radicals of the early 19^th century, to follow their lead. Mill revolted and developed friendships with Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who introduced him to Romanticism. Capaldi also examined Mill's relationship with wife, Harriet Taylor, who had a deep and profound influence on his thinking about the emancipation of women.

Capaldi has written six books, more than 50 articles, and has edited six anthologies. His principal research and teaching interest is in public policy and its intersection with political science, philosophy, law, religion, and economics. He is a recent recipient of the Templeton Foundation Freedom Project Award.

—Helen Ellis, Assistant Director of Public Affairs