Mill’s On Liberty

Mill asserts:

‘One very simple principle’: the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others’ (p.13)

- harm to self is ok.

- reason and even remonstrate with person, but do not compel or subject to other painful consequences

- also known as The liberty principle or harm principle

Liberty of (p.15)

1. thought, conscience, inner mental life, and expression

2. action, following own tastes and pursuits, framing own plan of life

3. association, or uniting

Put positively (p.16)

- The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering [tolerating] each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.”

How absolutely does he mean all this? “No society …” (p.16)

Caveats or Qualifications regarding the scope of Mill’s Arguments in On Liberty:

1. nature and limits of the power of society (not politics or government) over the individual. (p.5)

2. historically specific or contextual analysis – in different stages of human progress – regarding the struggle/balance between liberty and authority. (p.5)

- in his contemporary context – a democratic republic that

a. recognized political liberties and rights

b. observes constitutional and consensual checks on Gov action

c. and ensures that rulers and elected and temporary.

The big problem is ‘social tyranny’ or ‘tyranny of the majority’ or ‘tyranny of prevailing feeling and opinion’ (p.8).

3. to be more specific, the social tyranny figuring in his day was that of Victorian England – engines of moral repression (p.16), false or shallow moralizing (p.43), role of moral police (p.85), neo-Puritanism (pp.86-7).

4. arguments do not apply to those still awaiting reasonable political stability (p.13) immature human beings, e.g. children, nor to “backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage” (p.13), “barbarians” – in effect in a different time or for a different society he might have written On Authority.

5. no appeal to abstract natural or negative right(s) but rather to general utility in the long term (p.14).

rights are a much too final means of addressing the balancing act that Mill intends over time.

6. compulsion may be appropriate with due caution to make others do “positive acts for the benefit of others” (p.14) i.e., there are positive duties.

Utilitarianism

- Variant of consequentialism

- greatest good of greatest number

- maximize collective utility – reduce pain, increase pleasure

Problem with Utilitarianism