How did John Stuart Mill criticize Sir William Hamilton’s philosophy?

John Stuart Mill criticized the philosophy of Sir William Hamilton primarily because he viewed Hamilton’s work as the "great fortress of intuitional philosophy" in Great Britain. Mill, a prominent representative of the empirical tradition, sought to counter these intuitional claims through his 1865 work, Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy.12

Mill’s critique was rooted in his commitment to empiricism and his determined opposition to any form of intuitionism or vague metaphysics. By challenging Hamilton, Mill aimed to defend a theory of knowledge that denied the existence of a priori elements, instead grounding knowledge in experience—a position he developed by combining the doctrines of George Berkeley and David Hume. While Mill’s motives in this examination were largely political, the work served as a significant intellectual effort to dismantle the influence of intuitional thought in favor of the empirical and scientific methods he championed in his broader philosophical writings.21