11/18/2009 Lecture on "Ethics in Coaching" http://www.coachfederation.ro/index.php/2009/11/icf-capitol-local-organizeaza-ore-de-pregatire-continua-2/
Wed 11 November at 12:28 PM
Proceedings of the International Conference "John Stuart Mill. 1806-2006", University of Bucharest, November 3-4, 2006
co-edited with Valentin Muresan, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, 2007.
This is a sample of the volume. Unfortunately, the volume is not available on the market. I hope I will be able to have it reprinted at the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010.
The file uploaded here does not contain the final (editorial) version of the texts.
- 19 Views
-
Like
PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE “JOHN STUART MILL. 1806‐2006” University of Bucharest, November 3‐4, 2006
This volume has been published under the auspices of the Research Centre in Applied Ethics, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest. www.ccea.ro
© 2007, Valentin Mureşan & Cristian Ducu. All rigths reserved. Cover and technical editing by Cristian Ducu.
CIP Description of the Romanian National Library
PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE “JOHN STUART MILL. 1806-2006”, UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST, NOVEMBER 3-4, 2006. Proceedings of the International Conference “John Stuart Mill.1806-2006”. University of Bucharest, November 3-4, 2006 / Eds.: Valentin Mureşan, Cristian Ducu. – Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press, 2007. – I. Valentin Mureşan (ed.) II. Cristian Ducu (ed.)
ISBN (13) …
PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE “JOHN STUART MILL. 1806‐2006” University of Bucharest, November 3‐4, 2006
Edited by VALENTIN MUREŞAN CRISTIAN DUCU
University of Bucharest Press 2007
Contents
Editors’ Note J.R. Lucas / Can the Theory of Games Save Mill’s “Utilitarianism”? Christopher Kirwan / The Shape of Mill’s Proof in Chapter 4 of “Utilitarianism” Valentin Mureşan / A Sympathetic Approach to Mill’s “Proof” John Skorupski / Liberalism as Free Thought Rob Devigne / J.S. Mill and the Politics of Liberty and Wisdom George Schedler / A Conflict in “On Liberty” Adrian‐Paul Iliescu / J.S. Mill’s Views on Democracy: Are They Still Valid? Cristian Ducu / J.S. Mill’s Arguments for Non‐Intervention Eldon Eisenach / Migrations of ‘Spirit’ in Mill’s Theory of History Peter Cave / Sex Objects: Subjections, Objections and Fictions – all Grist to his Mill Dimitris Sotiropoulos / J.S. Mill in the History of Economic Thought: Should he be regarded as a neoclassical economist? Drăgan Stoianovici / On Mill’s Philosophy of the Syllogism Sorin Costreie / Proper Names: Mill, Russell and Frege About Contributors
Editors’ Note
A bicentennial international conference dedicated to J.S. Mill was organized at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bucharest on November 3‐4, 2006. The papers presented covered a great variety of topics of Mill’s work, from logic and philosophy of language to moral and political philosophy. Important European and American philosophers and Mill specialists participated to this conference – from the University of Oxford (J.R. Lucas, Christopher Kirwan), St. Andrews University (John Skorupski), Tufts University (Rob Devigne), Tulsa University (Eldon Eisenach), and the University of Bucharest (Adrian‐Paul Iliescu, Radu‐Mihail Solcan, Valentin Mureșan, Sorin Costreie, Drăgan Stoianovici, Cristian Ducu, Emanuel Socaciu, Constantin Stoenescu). Some of the main moral and political works of John Stuart Mill were recently translated into Romanian. His philosophy of language, but especially his moral and political philosophy are taught in the frame of various courses at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bucharest. A comprehensive commentary to Mill’s Utilitarism was recently published by Professor Valentin Mureșan. A special remark deserves the enthusiastic participation of students to the Conference, both with papers and as volunteers in the organization staff. This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the Conference. All references within these papers have been unified according to the standard abbreviations. V.M. & C.D.
Robert Devigne
Tufts University
J.S. Mill and the Politics of Liberty and Wisdom
John Stuart Mill’s articulation of an expressive conception of excellence and developed individuality in On Liberty, as dramatically illustrated by his invocation of “Socrates and Goethe,” is the great gamble in his political philosophy. Mill’s explicitly stated goals in On Liberty in advocating many and varied experiments in living are liberty and wisdom, or perfection of the individual and society: that is, the promotion of self‐determined modes of existence and the discovery of the best ways of life and practices “in order that it may in time appear which of these fit to be converted to customs.” Mill counsels that individuality, rightly understood, refers to the developed capacity to undertake experiments in living and form one’s character in accordance with one’s particular powers. At the same time, we must remember “that the unlikeness of one person to another is generally the first thing which draws the attention of either to the imperfection of his own type and the superiority of another, or the possibility of combining the advantages of both, of producing something better than either.” 1 This essay analyzes and evaluates Mill’s ability to reconcile the goals of expressive liberty and wisdom. Mill’s ultimate purpose in equating human excellence with eccentricity is not to champion a process that promotes the infinite malleability of the human personality; neither does he intend to glorify arbitrary or aimless defiance of conventional opinion. “Human beings,” Mill insists immediately after making his call for eccentricity, “should be for ever stimulating each other to increased exercise of their higher faculties, and increased direction of their feelings and aims towards wise instead of foolish, elevating instead of degrading, objects and contemplations.” 2 Mill consistently recognizes that a standard of
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty; in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (hereafter, CW); Ed. J. M. Robson, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1963‐1991, vol. 18, pp. 269‐271, 273. 2 On Liberty, CW, 18: 277. Gertrude Himmelfarb insists that a current of Mill’s thought anticipates a postmodern type of self that isn’t given but sought after, constructed, authored, fabricated, and formed by various contingent, revisable, and malleable practices of self‐ creation, so as to fracture prevailing social and political relationships that limit the range of people’s possibilities and choices. See Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Liberty and Liberalism; Knopf, New York, 1974, pp. 57‐91. Bruce Baum, Rereading Power and Freedom in J.S. Mill
1
perfection is preferable to differences in imperfection and that discovering the former is a vital social and political goal. But he believes that the limited conflict between competing conceptions of the good life has existed for so long in Western societies that the future practices that develop human faculties – most notably, reason and will – need to be based on evaluations of what is better and worse from an infinite variety of experiments in living. “The period of decomposition […] is not yet teminated, […] and […] the new synthesis is barely begun, nor is the preparatory analysis completely finished,” writes Mill in his evaluation of Auguste Comte’s proposal for an immediate imposition of new standards of human excellence. In “Bentham,” Mill warns that “the field of man’s nature and life cannot be too much worked, or in too many directions; until every clod is turned up the work is imperfect; no whole truth is possible but by combining the points of view of all the fractional truths, nor, therefore, until it has been fully understood what each fractional truth can do by itself.” He made the same warning against a premature synthesis in his assessment of Goethe. Goethe’s idol was symmetry, but he rarely succeeded in developing it into any of his own work,
“showing the utter impossibility for a modern, with all the good in the world, to tightlace himself into the dimensions of an ancient […] Every modern thinker has so much a wider horizon, & there is so much deeper a soil accumulated on the surface of human nature by the ploughing it has undergone & the growths it has produced. […] It is too soon by a century or two to attempt either symmetrical productions in art or symmetrical characters. We all need to be blacksmiths or ballet dancers with good stout arms and legs, useful to do what we have got to do, and useful to fight with at times‐‐we cannot be Apollos and Venuses just yet.” 3
In On Liberty, Mill makes the same point. While “mankind are imperfect,” it is useful that there should be varied views, “so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life be proved practically.” 4 Mill is recognizing the challenge that Nietzsche will identify a few decades later: that the centuries‐long taming of the will characteristic of Christianity and modern justice has subverted the endeavors to mobilize the will to create new values and practices. Mill is responding to
(University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2000), also puts forth that Mill anticipates postmodern conceptions of freedom. 3 John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, CW, 10: 287; Bentham, CW, 10: 94; Mill to Harriet Mill, February 24, 1885, CW, 14: 345‐46. As Russell Muirhead, Just Work (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2004, p. 129), puts it: “For Mill the diversity worth defending is not simply difference. He cherishes the diversity that, against the dampening force of custom, reveals the exercise of distinctly human faculties striving for perfection.” 4 On Liberty, CW, 18: 260‐61.
49
this challenge with a call for eccentricity and difference. The diverse modes of existence are at the present time an opening step to higher civil practices and beliefs that are to be attained in the future. Intellectuals as Synthesizers Mill believed that English liberalism’s commitment to the principle of diversity would eventually shift public opinion and make the reconciliation of differences and the development of new moral truths a practical outcome both for the difference makers and, more importantly, the general public. How is Mill’s conception of Bildung – a back and forth process that effects a synthesis between what individual’s uniquely contribute to the society and what the culture of the society makes him – to be realized? Is there an invisible civic hand that mediates and reconciles competing interests and ideas of the good? Or must interconnections and synthesis be consciously produced? 5 On one level, Mill thinks that by stimulating the energies and vibrancy of individuals and sectors of society, these individuals and groups will be forced to defend one set of beliefs and practices against those who hold opposite views‐‐promoting the liberal virtue of toleration and a balanced set of views. “There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides,” states Mill. “Each of these modes of thinking derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other: but it is in great measure the opposition of the other that keeps each within the limits of reason and sanity.” 6 By calling into question the way of life of all people who follow public opinion and customs, even without saying so directly, those who live differently act as Socratic gadflies and awaken the majority to the possibility that their way of life may not be the right one. The differences that set them apart are an indication of the possible qualities of character that the majority may or may not wish to embrace. Mill argues that, on the one hand, when an individual develops an “eminent” set of qualities, “he is so much nearer to the ideal perfection of human nature” that he becomes a proper object of public admiration. On the other hand, if an individual’s behavior is characterized by “lowness or depravation of taste,” while it “cannot justify doing harm to the person who manifests it,” it renders that individual “necessarily and properly a subject of distaste, or, in extreme cases, even of contempt.”7
The further discussion of Mill’s conception of Bildung see Robert Devigne, Cultivating the Individual and the Community: J. S. Mill’s Use of Ancient and Romantic Dialectics; in “History of Political Thought”, vol. XXVI, 2005, pp. 1‐30. Also see, Robert Devigne, Reforming Liberalism: J. S. Mill’s Use of Ancient, Religious, Romantic, and Liberal Moralities; Yale University Press, New Haven, 2006, pp. 92‐93, 191‐97; Antony Thorlby, Liberty and Self‐Development; in “Neo Helicon”, vol. I, 1973, pp. 91‐110. 6 On Liberty, CW, 18: 253. 7 On Liberty, CW, 18: 278.
5
50
But while Mill poses the possibility that social dialectics – or public conflicts over varying outlooks and ways of life – will promote toleration, balance, and excellent individuals, he also warns that the public by itself is unable to generate a sufficient amount of toleration and wisdom from these collisions. Mill is not Habermas. He does not, that is, assume that whenever advocates put forward a claim as one for whose truths they believe they have good reasons, they anticipate an ideally rational conversation, because to believe they have rationales for their assertions implies an understanding that in a good conversation they will win others over to their views. 8 Rather, Mill recognizes the potentially injurious effects of the ideological conflicts that he insists on. “I acknowledge that the tendency of all opinions to become sectarian is not cured by the freest discussion, but is often heightened and exacerbated thereby; the truth which ought to have been, but was not, seen, being rejected all the more violently because proclaimed by persons regarded as opponents.” There also is the tendency for people to assume that the general prevailing views are naturally right. Most are disinclined to hear out alternative positions. People are rarely concerned about anything in regard to public behavior other than actions or feelings different from their own. This standard of evaluation, while not presenting itself as such, is held up to humanity as the core of religion and philosophy by almost all moral and philosophic teachers. “These teach that things are right because they are right: because we feel them to be so,” charges Mill. “They tell us to search in our own minds and hearts for laws of conduct binding on ourselves and on all others. What can the poor public do but apply these instructions and make their own personal feelings of good and evil, if they are tolerably unanimous in them, obligatory on the world.” 9 The problem Mill here addresses is not how to make intolerant advocates and antagonisms in society less sectarian or polarized. Mill does not believe that the most unlimited use of the freedom of discussion of all possible opinions and ways of life “would put an end to the religious or philosophical sectarianism. Every truth which men of narrow capacity are in earnest about is sure to be asserted, inculcated, and in many ways acted on, as if no other truth existed in the world.” To hesitate, to balance advantages and disadvantages, to advocate a policy or way of life with due recognition of its one‐sidedness or limitations is almost impossible psychologically to partisans and advocates of contending political outlooks and alternative modes of existence. Further, those with distinct and original characters tend to be more contentious than consensual. 10 And indeed, Mill advocates persistent strife in society:
Jurgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society; Beacon Society, Boston, 1979, pp. 1‐68. 9 On Liberty, CW, 18: 257, 284. Also, Edward Alexander, Mathew Arnold and John Stuart Mill; Columbia University Press, New York, 1965, pp. 130‐131. 10 On Liberty, CW, 18: 257, 284; Spirit of the Age, (I), CW, 22: 234‐35. Nadia Urbinati ignores this point in her claim that Mill viewed dialectical conflict in society as “a communicative
8
51
“Wherever some such quarrel has not been going on” – wherever conflict has been ended by the complete victory of one of the contending outlooks or ways of life, and no new contention has taken the place of the old – “society has either hardened into Chinese stationariness, or fallen into dissolution. A center of resistance, round which all the moral and social elements which the ruling power views with disfavour may cluster themselves, and behind whose bulwarks they may find shelter from the attempts of that power to hunt them out of existence, is as necessary where the opinion of the majority is sovereign, as where the ruling power is a hierarchy or aristocracy.” 11 As Jeremy Waldron puts it, “the good effects of ethical confrontation, in Mill’s account, will not accrue unless views are put forward passionately, forcefully, and directly, in a manner that opponents of these views cannot practicably ignore.” 12 Mill’s solution to the problems of intolerance and strife pivots on the role of the intellectuals – “the sober,” “honest,” and “impartial judges of human affairs” – so that they will encourage and defend a wide variety of outlooks and ways of life, while also reconciling and synthesizing the discordant civil practices and beliefs. 13 By encouraging individuals and groups to challenge conventions and defend their ways of life, “the opulent and lettered classes” would create more choices for the individual and pave the road to a new unified, impartial outlook among the intellectuals themselves, an outlook which “might partially rival the mere power of the masses, and might exercise the naturally salutary influence over them for their own good.” The collisions of ideas and modes of existence, while stimulating developed individuality, also allow the intellectuals to develop new understandings of what is good and bad, and “though the persuasions and convictions of average men are in a much greater degree determined by their personal position than by reason,” Mill argues, “no little power is exercised over them by persuasions and convictions of [...] the united authority of the instructed. When therefore the instructed in general can be brought to recognize one social arrangement, or
interaction among individuals who are disposed to understand each other. The interlocutors [...] do not simply acquire an opinion; they alter their way of thinking. In Mill’s view of deliberation both characteristics, the dissenting and the transformative, are needed.” Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Demos to Representative Government; University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002, pp. 137. 11 John Stuart Mill, Bentham, CW, 10: 108; Considerations on Representative Government, CW, 19: 459; On Liberty, CW, 18: 253‐54. 12 Jeremy Waldron, Mill and and the Value of Moral Distress, in Jeremy Waldron, Liberal Rights; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, p. 126. Joseph Hamburger’s recognition that Mill’s theory provides space for a coercive public opinion contributes to his depiction of an illiberal Mill in Mill on Liberty and Control (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1999, pp. 166‐202). In John Stuart Mill (Routlege, London, 1974, pp. 237‐238), Alan Ryan explains that Mill accepts the role of a coercive public opinion, but Ryan does not explain how this coercion “fits” in Mill’s vision of the good society. 13 On Liberty, CW, 18: 252, 257.
52
political or other institution as good, and another as bad, one as desirable, another as condemnable, very much has been done toward giving to the one, or withdrawing from the other, that preponderance of social force which enables it to subsist.” 14 To envision the values of the future, Mill summarizes in SOW, has always been the “privilege of the intellectual elite, or of those who have learnt from them; to have the feeling of that futurity has been the distinction, and usually the martyrdom, of a still rarer elite. Institutions, books, education, society,” all go on educating individuals in the image of the past, “long after the new has come; much more when it is only coming.” 15 Mill argues that part of the task of the intellectual in the present period is to encourage the free play of alternative practices and diverse ideas. By promoting variety, free discussion, and criticism (a reformed Platonic dialectic), the intellectual contributes to an arena of effort, of struggle, and of self‐development and helps limit one set of ideas while giving birth to others. The intellectual adopts a conciliatory approach to fundamental political and moral differences and encourages a wide range of activities “as the only unfailing and permanent source of improvement [...] since by it there are as many possible independent centers of improvement as there are individuals.” 16 For instance, Mill welcomes the village cooperatives initiated by Fourier in France. They are an experiment in socialism that is worth promoting, protecting, and setting against the prevailing property relations in liberal societies. Here the intellectual has a particularly important task, that of cultivating and protecting alternative views: “For example, if it were necessary to choose, there would be much more need to discourage offensive attacks on infidelity than on religion.” Mill’s On Liberty shows little concern that the intellectuals themselves will use their skills to exacerbate and sharpen the conflicts they encourage. “No sober judge of human affairs will feel bound to be indignant because those who force on our notice truths which we should otherwise have overlooked, overlook some of those which we see,” states Mill. “Rather, he will think that so long as popular truth is one‐sided, it is more desirable than otherwise that unpopular truth should have one‐sided assertors too, such being usually the most energetic and the most likely to compel reluctant attention to the fragment of wisdom which they proclaim as if it were the whole.” 17
John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, CW, 19: 382; On Liberty, CW, 18: 252, 257; De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [I], CW, 18: 83‐90; De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [II], CW, 18: 196‐200. 15 John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, CW, 21: 294. 16 On Liberty, CW, 18: 272, 260‐61. 17 John Stuart Mill, Chapters on Socialism, CW, 5: 737‐38; On Liberty, CW, 18: 253, 258‐59. The social critic, Caroline Fox, who had considered herself a friend and colleague of Mill in the past, was shocked by Mill’s presumption of the neutral intellectual in On Liberty. “I am
14
53
The power to select and combine also was essential to thinkers who undertook to perform the tasks necessary for the development of new synthetic truths in democratic society. Wisdom regarding the central issues of social existence is so much a product of reconciliation and combination that, in addition to the “few minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment with an approach to correctness,” it also requires “the rough process of a struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners.” “The moment, and the mood of mind, in which men break free from error,” Mill remarked, “is not, except in natures very happily constituted, the most favourable to those mental processes which are necessary for the investigation of the truth. [...] They usually resolve that the new light which has broken in upon them shall be the sole light; and they willfully and passionately blow out the ancient lamp.” Mill argues that the people who are to learn the most from experience are not so much the participants in conflict as the intellectual. As he puts it, “It is not on the impassioned partisan, it is on the calmer and more disinterested bystander, that the collision of opinions works its salutary effects.” This intellectual can enjoy the collision of other people’s beliefs and practices, as he himself does not take sides. 18 The antagonisms between employers and trade unions, for example, often require “impartial arbitration.” If these efforts of conciliation fail, Mill proposes new modes of ownership in which the workers join the employers in having a direct interest in the profits of the enterprise. The success of these compromises could open the door to new forms of property relations – “Industrial Partnerships” or more socialized forms of private ownership – that overcome the one‐sided demands that employers and trade unions make on one another. Conflicts, in short, are the raw material for the synthetic truths that the intellectuals will put forth in the future. Consequently, “the intelligent part of the public can be made to feel its value – to see that it is good there should be
reading that terrible book of John Mill’s on Liberty, so clear, and calm, and cold: he lays it on one as a tremendous duty to get one’s self well contradicted, and admit always a devil’s advocate into the presence of your dearest, most sacred truths, as they are apt to grow windy and worthless without such tests, if indeed they can stand the shock of argument at all. He looks through you like a basilisk, relentless, as Fate. We knew him well at one time, and owe him very much: I fear his remorseless logic has led him far since then.” As quoted in Alexander, Mathew Arnold and John Stuart Mill, p. 129. 18 On Liberty, CW, 18: 254, 257; Spirit of the Age, (I), CW, 22: 234‐5. Also see, Muirhead, Just Work, p. 130. Mill believed “most individuals see only a single side, or live by one part of this untidy conflicted truth about the most important practical questions. Yet the courage to live by a part that not many see can make the visible whole to others. Many brave individuals are needed, each living some part, if anyone is to grasp the whole. [...] Grasping the whole must be beyond the reach of most, for while we (as common bearers of human nature) share in the possession of great and various potentials the realization of which is our perfection as a species, as individuals we possess some potentials more fully than others.”
54
differences, even though not for the better, even though, as it may appear to them, some should be for the worse.” 19 Mill’s distinction between the need for diverse opinions in society and unity among the intellectual elite is captured nicely by his views on the main problems confronting the highest intellectuals, and his response to an invitation to join a writer’s society centered on the expression of diverse views. In the Diary, Mill complains that too many divergent opinions surround the highest thinkers, further contributing to the diffidence and lack of fortitude that plagues the English intellectual: “It requires in these times much more intellect to marshal so much greater a stock of ideas and observations. This has not yet been done, or has been done only by very few: and hence the multitude of thoughts only breeds increase of uncertainty. Those who should be the guides of the rest, see too many sides to every question. They hear so much said, or find that so much can be said about everything, that they feel no assurance of the truth of anything.” 20 Accordingly, when Mill is invited to join the Neophyte Society, whose purpose was, as Mill understood it, to bring together intellectuals of sundry opinions to exchange views and become better writers, he says no. Receiving the invitation at the same time as he is writing the first draft of On Liberty, which posits the value of contending opinions and ways of life in society, Mill dismisses the value of a group that is organized around expressivism. “With respect to the mere faculty of expression independent of what is to be expressed, it does not appear to me to require encouragement. There is already an abundance, not to say superabundance, of writers who are able to express in any effective manner the mischievous commonplaces which they have got to say,” complains Mill. “I would gladly give any aid in my power towards improving their opinions; but I have no fear that any opinions they have will not be sufficiently well expressed; nor in any way should I be disposed to give any assistance in sharpening weapons when I do not know in what cause they will be used. For these reasons I cannot consent that my name should be added to the list of writers you send me.” 21 Mill values social diversity and social dialectics, not differences and antagonisms among the intellectual elite.
John Stuart Mill, Thornton on Labour and Its Claims, CW, 5: 666; On Liberty, CW, 18: 275. The view that diverse social practices and beliefs should be transformed for higher civic purposes is proposed by Stephen Macedo in Diversity and Distrust; although Macedo emphasizes the pivotal role of intellectuals in public education, not the representative assembly. For brief discussions of Mill’s view of the unique role of the intellectuals in a sea of divergent opinions, see Waldron, Mill on Culture and Society, pp. 240‐242; Hamburger, John Stuart Mill on Liberty and Control, pp. 154‐156; Thompson, John Stuart Mill and Representative Government, pp. 79‐85. 20 John Stuart Mill, Diary, January 13, 1854, CW, 27: 642. 21 Mill to the Secretary of the Neophyte Writers’ Society, April 23, 1854, CW, 14: 205. Also see, Civilization, CW 1: 111‐12. “This is a reading age; and precisely because it is so reading an age, any book which is the result of profound meditation is perhaps less likely to be duly
19
55
Not that Mill succeeded in forging unity among the intellectual elite. While editor of the Westminster Review from 1834‐1840, Mill battled to create an alliance among the philosophical radicals, romantics such as Carlyle and Sterling, and select critics of liberalism – Sarah and John Austin, Tocqueville, among others. But this project failed because, as Mill put it, conditions for unity remained premature and, quoting John Austin, “The country did not have the men.” 22 Recognizing the failure of his coalition project, Mill reconciled to the task of laying the philosophic foundation for unity among the intellectuals of the future:
“I do not find my enjoyment of speculation at all abated though I see less and less prospect of drawing together any body of persons to associate in the name & behalf of any set of fixed principles. Still, no good seed is lost: it takes root & springs up somewhere, & will help in time towards the general reconstruction of the opinions of the civilized world, for which ours is only a period of preparation, but towards which almost all the things & men of our time are working; though the men, for the most part, almost as unconsciously as the things. Therefore, ‘cast ye your bread on the waters, & ye shall find it after many days.’” 23
and profitably read than at a former period. The whole world reads too much and too quickly to read well. […] It is difficult to know what to read, except by reading every thing; and so much of the world’s business is now transacted through the press, that it is necessary to know what is printed, if we desire to know what is going on. Opinion weighs with so vast a weight in the balance of events, that ideas of no value in themselves are of importance from the mere circumstance that they are ideas.” In A Note on the Life and Thought of John Stuart Mill (in David Bromwich & George Kateb (eds.), On Liberty – John Stuart Mill; Yale University Press, New Haven, 2002, pp. 13‐14), David Bromwich discusses Mill’s disdain for the high culture of English society. 22 Autobiography, CW, 1: 203‐05, 221‐223. Also see Mill to Tocqueville, June 11, 1835, CW, 12: 256‐66, where Mill proposes that Tocqueville become a regular contributor to his journal and that they start to forge unity among select intellectuals in England and France. Also see, Nicholas Capaldi, John Stuart Mill: A Autobiography; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, pp. 125‐130; Alexaned Bain, John Stuart Mill; Longmans, London, 1982, pp. 55‐57. In the last years of his life, 1867‐71, Mill worked behind the scenes in support of John Morley’s efforts to steer the Fortnightly Review as an organ of unity among an emerging group of public intellectuals, including Walter Bagehot, Henry Sidgwick, T. H. Huxley, Herbert Spencer and Anthony Trollope. See E.M. Everett, The Party of Humanity – The Fortnightly Review, 1865‐1874; University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1939; Collini, Their Master’s Voice: John Stuart Mill as Public Moralist, in Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1850‐1930; Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993, p. 127. 23 John Stuart Mill, Mill to Gustave d’Eichthal, September 14, 1839, CW, 13: 403‐404. For an analysis of the sociological conditions that undercut unity among the English intellectual elite from 1840 to 1870 and generated unity among this sector from 1870 to 1900, see T. W. Heyck, The Transformation of Intellectual Life in England; St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1982.
56
Mill discerned that, in the context of the contemporary age of transition between old and new truths, he could not identify the specific values and practices of the subsequent period; this limited his ability to construct an alliance around a positive political program. “In England,” Mill notes, “there is still too much to be undone for the question, ‘What Is to Be Done,’ to assume its true importance.” He believed he suffered the “misfortune of having been born and doomed to live in almost the infancy of human improvement.” Nonetheless, “it is as preparation” for the morality of the future “that my speculations [...] may be valuable.” Not unlike Nietzsche, Mill hopes for a “posthumous existence,” a period in the future when his views will be looked upon as the harbinger of new values and higher forms of existence. “The remedies for all our diseases will be discovered long after we are dead,” Mill writes in the final passage of his Diary. “It is to be hoped that those who live in those days will look back in sympathy to their known and unknown benefactors.” 24 The Politics of Liberty and Wisdom This identification of the crucial role of the intellectuals for the formation of Bildung leads Mill to develop two notable political proposals in On Representative Government. Not surprisingly, they assign a disproportionate role for the highly educated. 25 In one proposal, Mill advocates an electoral system of proportional representation whereby voters list preferences for candidates, including contestants who are not members of citizens’ local constituencies, so that the intensity of electoral support and minorities’ views contributes to the seats in the national assembly. Mill argues that proportional representation will generate both liberty and wisdom. On the one hand, this system of voting will deepen the character of political liberty by the attachment it forges between voters and their representatives. The citizen now is able to identify with a national representative’s specific views or character. Every elector who voted for a representative, states Mill, did so because he is the individual, in the whole list of candidates for the national assembly, “who best expresses the voter’s own opinions, or because he is one of those whose abilities and
John Stuart Mill, Duveyrier’s Political Views, CW, 20: 299; Mill to Pasquale Villari, February 28, 1872, CW, 17: 1873; Diary, April 15, 1854, CW, 27: 668. For an assessment of how Mill’s views “lived” posthumously from 1870 to 1945, Stefan Collini, From Sectarian Radical to National Possession: John Stuart Mill in English Culture, 1873‐1945; in Michael Laine (ed.), A Cultivated Mind: Essays on J. S. Mill Presented to John M. Robson; University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1991, pp. 242‐272. Also, Frederich Nietzsche, The Gay Science; Trans. Walter Kaufmann, Vintage, New York, 1974, sct. 365: 321. 25 The connection between On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government is discussed by Peter Berkowitz, Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1997, pp. 134‐169), and Dennis Thompson, John Stuart Mill and Representative Government (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1976, pp. 77‐90).
24
57
character the voter most respects, and whom he most willingly trusts to think for him. The member would represent persons, not the mere bricks and mortars of the town‐‐the voters themselves, not a few vestrymen or parish notabilities merely.” 26 On the other hand, Mill argues that proportional representation introduces wisdom into the representative assembly and the nation as a whole. That is, the primary minority group that Mill aims to empower through this electoral system is “the minority of instructed minds.” These distinguished individuals, who are unlikely to have taken the time to build majority support in a local constituency, would have a better chance to attain a sufficient number of votes from a national minority. “The minority of instructed minds scattered through the local constituencies,” Mill writes, “would unite to return a number, proportioned to their own numbers, of the very ablest men the country contains. They would be under the strongest inducement to choose such men, since in no other mode could they make their small numerical strength tell for anything considerable.” Mill aims to avoid the problem of the American electoral system identified by Tocqueville, in which “the highly cultivated members of the community, except such as them as are willing to sacrifice their own opinions and modes of judgment, and become the servile mouthpieces of their inferiors in knowledge, do not even offer themselves for Congress or the State Legislatures, so certain is it that they would have no chance of being returned.” 27 Plural voting is Mill’s second proposal for establishing a disproportionate role for the highly educated in politics. Once again, Mill’s two goals are liberty and wisdom. The right to vote should be based on the modern principle of fundamental human equality, including the equality of women: “But (though every one ought to have a voice) that every one should have an equal voice is a totally different proposition.” Mill also embraces the ancient conception that there should be a fit between one’s capacities and aptitude and one’s rights and responsibilities. The quality and extent of one’s right to vote should be based
Considerations on Representative Government, CW, 19: 455. Considerations on Representative Government, CW, 19: 457; Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America; Ed. & trans. Harvey Mansfield & Delba Winthrop, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2000, vol. 1, pt. 2, ch. 5, pp. 187‐190. Also see John Stuart Mill, Pledges [2], in “Examiner”, July 15, 1832, CW, 23: 502. “We know that the will of the people, even of the numerical majority, must in the end be supreme, for […] it would be monstrous that any power should exist capable of permanently defying it: but in spite of that, the test of what is right in politics is not the will of the people, but the good of the people, and our object is, not to compel but to persuade the people to impose for the sake of their own good, some restraints on the immediate and unlimited exercise of their own will. One of our reasons for desiring a popular government was, that men whom the people themselves had selected for their wisdom and good affections, would have authority enough to withstand the will of people when it is wrong.”
26 27
58
on one’s intellectual character. Mill’s position is to give more votes to those who are more mentally cultivated. 28 Mill starts from the belief that passing a literacy test is the fundamental requirement for the right to vote since suffrage presupposes the ability to deliberate and choose among public issues. To judge well, Mill continues, requires knowledge and a sense of the moral good. “If with equal virtue, one is superior to the other in knowledge and intelligence – or if with equal intelligence, one excels the other in virtue – the opinion, the judgment of the higher moral or intellectual being is worth more than the inferior; and if the institutions of the country virtually assert that they are of the same value, they assert the thing which is not.” From this perspective, Mill proposes that the public has a general interest in allowing the more knowledgeable and public‐ spirited to cast extra votes. Discarding the traditional view that property ownership signifies political abilities, Mill argues that more votes should be given to those who have achieved higher levels of mental development. Mill recognizes that intellectual qualities are very difficult to identify, although he does recommend a system of general examination. He also “proposes a hierarchy of occupations for determining how many votes each person should receive:” an order of ascension that “moves from unskilled to skilled labor, rising to the liberal professions and from there to successful and well‐ established professionals.” The more learned, and the higher the rung, the more votes one would have. 29 Mill believes that plural voting, along with proportional representation, will increase the chances that an instructed minority will be elected to the national assembly. He also believes that plural voting will establish an ennobling spirit in society. While no mode of existence that does not harm others should be outlawed, it is important that the cultivated intellect be accorded the highest place among the different ways of life. The citizen should recognize that it is for his own well‐being that everyone has the right to influence government, but also that “the better and wiser” have more influence than others. “It is important that this conviction should be professed by the state, and embodied in the national institutions,” Mill asserts. “Such things
Considerations on Representative Government, CW, 19: 473. Contemporary commentators’ insistence that Mill be interpreted as a liberal who is solely concerned with free human conduct leads to their bewilderment regarding Mill’s proposal for plural voting. In addition to disagreeing with Mill’s proposals, they insist that Mill’s views on the disproportionate influence of intellectuals reflect his own confusion. See J. H. Burns, “J. S. Mill and Democracy, 1829‐61,” Political Studies 5 (1957): 158‐75, 281‐94; Thompson, John Stuart Mill on Representative Government, 99‐101; Amy Gutman, Liberal Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 51‐56, 187‐91; Charles Beitz, Political Equality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 32‐46. John Skorupski criticizes this type of reading of Mill in John Stuart Mill (London: Routledge, 1989), 35‐38. 29 Considerations on Representative Government, CW, 19: 473‐75. Also see, Berkowitz, Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalsim, 166‐67.
28
59
constitute the spirit of the institutions of a country; that portion of their influence which is least regarded by common, and especially by English thinkers, though the institutions of every country […] produce more effect by their spirit than by any of their direct provisions, since by it they shape their national character.” 30 The mechanisms of proportional representation and plural voting help to incorporate the requisite portion of wisdom into the political system, believes Mill. He charges the elected instructed minority with mitigating and countering the weaknesses endemic to representative government, which are rooted in its popular or democratic character. As Mill argues, “It has been seen that the dangers incident to a representative democracy are of two kinds: danger of a low grade of intelligence in the representative body, and in the popular opinion which controls it; and dangers of class legislation on the part of the numerical majority, these all being composed of the same class.” 31 Perceiving and pursuing the general interest in the representative assembly is the task of the elected intellectuals, as they stand above partial and conflicting interests in society. Higher goals than a party or sectoral outlook govern them, as their loyalty to truth and the general good is higher than their obligation to any particularistic outlook. While democratic society might not develop a classless outlook, the instructed minority must do so. Their general sense of wisdom and justice equips them to respect the general good, but it is their ability to reconcile and synthesize the competing claims of society that provide their greatest political contributions. As Mill states in describing his role to his constituents, “Believing as I do that society and political institutions are, or ought to be, in a state of progressive advance; that it is the very nature of progress to lead us to recognize as truths what we do not as yet see to be truths.” 32 The highly educated representatives would improve the intellectual quality of the assembly’s deliberations, and though they would rarely have their complete proposals pass, they would elevate the moral tone in the nation by identifying the higher and lower civil practices and beliefs society is generating. Mill’s goal is to “keep popular opinion within reason and justice, and to guard it from the various deteriorating influences which assail the weak side of democracy. […] A democratic people in this way will be provided with what in any other way it would almost certainly miss‐‐leaders of a higher grade of intellect and character itself. Modern democracy would have its occasional Pericles, and a habitual group of superior and guiding minds.” 33
Considerations on Representative Government, CW, 19: 478. Considerations on Representative Government, CW, 19: 448. 32 John Stuart Mill, “Speech to the Electors of Westminster,” CW, 28: 23. 33 Considerations on Representative Government, CW, 19: 460. Mill’s preoccupation with the vices of representative government that derive from its democratic character and his insistence on the privileged role of intellectuals who contribute wisdom to the
30 31
60
Freedom as an End Mill’s concern for self‐assertion, innovative practice, and free discussion, however, is not exclusively driven by tactical considerations for an age of transition from one set of moral beliefs to another. Although Mill advocated a distinct role for an intellectual elite in the representative assembly and society, he also stated quite clearly that no elite could be trusted if it was not subjected to the controlling power of the entire people. 34 While the intellectuals reconcile and synthesize new standards of better and worse from the many, varied ways of life and beliefs, Mill insists that these substantive values of the future must be integrated with conceptions of equal rights and self‐development. To attain both freedom and progress, liberal society needs to accompany the moral concern for better and worse ways of life with procedural neutrality. “I have said that it is important to give the freest scope possible to uncustomary things, in order that it may in time appear which of these are fit to be converted into customs,” states Mill. But freedom of thought and action is not solely concerned with discovering “better modes of action.” It also is a necessary for individuals to fully develop and flourish as human beings.
“Human beings are not like sheep; and even sheep are not indistinguishably alike. […] If it were only that people have diversities of taste, that is reason enough for not attempting to shape them all after one model. […] Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on them of different physical and moral agencies that, unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral, and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable.” 35
representative assembly undermines Nadia Urbinati’s thesis in Mill on Democracy, 132, is that Mill’s thought, properly understood, focuses exclusively on extending among the public forms of dialogue on a wider array of political and moral matters. In Urbinati’s account, Mill’s proposals for plural voting should be discounted because they reflect his inability to fully understand his own thinking. “Plural voting,” she argues, “contradicted […] the basic criterion of a free and open competition that characterized Mill’s ‘good’ democracy. [...] It is incoherent to defend democracy as a system that supports open political competition, and then recommend a procedure that has the effect of protecting a minority from losing an open race.” As I discuss below, there are weaknesses in Mill’s vision of the political role of the democratic intellectual. Nonetheless, there is a consistency to Mill’s position that many of his admirers and critics fail to see: he always maintained an appreciation for reconciling the ancient goal of discovering the proper “fit” between an individual’s capacities and social position and the modern conception of the natural equality of all human beings; he consistently focuses on the problem of reconciling wisdom and liberty. 34 Considerations on Representative Government, CW, 19: 433; On Liberty, CW, 18: 267‐68. 35 On Liberty, CW, 18: 270.
61
Mill did not envision a future in which an identified good is propounded legally. Human beings are secure from harm at the hands of others only in proportion as they have the power of being, and are, self‐protecting. Free human conduct also is necessary for us to discover and realize our distinct feelings and thoughts. Therefore, while the intellectuals and public will generate beliefs and practices that cultivate reason, will, and deeper social unity, it is crucial that general rules and a moral atmosphere be established in order that people remain confident individual decision‐making is being freely exercised. There is a distinction between advising a person what to do and making him do it. “Considerations to aid his judgment, exhortations to strengthen his will may be offered to him, even obtruded on him, by others,” Mill argues; “but he himself is the final judge. All errors which he is likely to commit against advice and warning are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good.” 36 Moreover, as the public embraces practices and modes of existence that cultivates their higher faculties, their demand for freedom will increase, rather than decrease: “Whatever invigorates the faculties, in however small a measure, creates an increased desire for their more unimpeded exercise; and a popular education is a failure if it educates a people for any state but that which it will certainly induce them to desire, and most probably to demand.” 37 In On Liberty, Mill justifies individual choice as an end in itself because it cultivates our higher natural capacities, because human progress should not be prevented, because it has become an integral part of human happiness, and because the post‐Protestant Reformation world requires it. 38 The substantive principles of the future that are generated by the reconciliation and synthesis of contrasting outlooks and practices must not preclude freedom of action, which, in turn, will also allow new outlooks and ways of life to generate. Whatever ideas of the good life we adopt respecting the foundations of civil society, and under whatever political institutions we develop, “there is a circle around every individual being, which no government […] ought to be permitted to overstep: there is a part of the life of every person who has come to years of discretion, within which the individuality of that person ought to reign uncontrolled either by any other individual or by the public collectively.” 39 Mill warns the “highest minds” that, as they hold positions they maintain to be very important and believe opposition to them to be extremely harmful, they often feel legitimate frustration and anger. Nonetheless, these individuals must respect the modern idea of justice: “If he [one of the highest minds] neither himself does them any ill office, nor connives at its being done by others, he is not intolerant: and the forbearance, which flows from a conscientious sense of
On Liberty, CW, 18: 277. Consideration on Representative Government, CW, 19: 403; Subjection of Women, CW, 21: 336. 38 On Liberty, CW, 18: 246‐47, 262‐63, 267‐68, 269‐70. 39 John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, CW, 3: 938.
36 37
62
the importance to mankind of the equal freedom of all opinions, is the only tolerance which is commendable, or, to the highest moral minds, possible.” 40 Mill cautions the “teachers of mankind” that in the future the range of beliefs and values that are no longer fought over will increase. This development will bring out both the highest and lowest features of humanity. On the one hand, Mill anticipates that this consolidation will reflect humanity’s general improvement toward a consensus around which practices and beliefs are right and wrong. On the other hand, this decline of contradiction will intensify the public’s general tendency to impose its specific ideas of the good upon all members of society, to reject all dissent, and to oppose all modes of existence that do not conform to the norm. “The disposition of mankind,” Mill writes, “whether as rulers or as fellow‐citizens, to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct of others, is so energetically supported by some of the best and some of the worst feelings incident to human nature, that it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power; and as the power is not declining, but growing, unless a strong barrier of conviction can be raised against the mischief, we must expect, in the present circumstances of the world, to see it increase.” 41 It is these two concerns – the expectation of increasing unity around improved, synthetic principles of right and wrong and the recognition that intolerance toward alternative views is woven into the character of the human being – that lead Mill to insist that free discussion and self‐regarding activities must not be restricted in the morality of the future. In his discussion of On Liberty in the Autobiography, Mill anticipates that free discussion will be easier to stimulate in the contemporary period. Unfettered liberty of discussion, Mill insists, “is a feature belonging to periods of transition, when old notions and feelings have been unsettled, and no new doctrines have succeeded to their ascendancy. […] But this state of things is necessarily transitory.” The greater challenge regarding free discussion will come in the future when Mill’s Bildung has taken shape and society has consolidated around new principles of right and wrong. “It is then that the teachings of the Liberty will have their greatest value.” 42
John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, CW, 1: 53. R. J. Halliday, John Stuart Mill; Harper and Row, New York, 1976, p. 88. “For Mill, there was no question of an elite or clerisy organized as a separate ruling group or party controlling opinion and demanding deference from the non‐ elite. The elite was simply one means of raising the intelligence of the non‐elite, and the influence it possessed necessarily excluded compulsion, social disapprobation and legal imposition.” 41 On Liberty, CW, 18: 227. For an alternative argument that social unity will be accompanied by an increase in individual ideas of the good, see Charles Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 70‐71. 42 Autobiography, CW, 1: 158.
40
63
In short, Mill developed two different justifications for the writing of On Liberty. He articulated what Allan Megill calls a “Tocquevillian justification:” to preserve, under the circumstances of mass homogeneity, individuality and plural paths of human development. Mill also put forth what Megill calls a “Saint‐Simonian justification:” to preserve liberty after a new era of deeper consensus and spiritual unity is forged. The latter concern leads Mill in On Liberty to remind the “teachers of mankind” that “where this advantage [antagonism over different ideas of the good] can no longer be had, I confess I should like to see [them] endeavoring to provide a substitute for it‐‐some contrivance for making the difficulties of the question as present to the learner’s consciousness as if they were pressed upon him by a dissentient champion, eager for his conversion. […] The Socratic dialectics, so magnificently exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of this description.” 43 The Parsing of Mill’s Thought From the perspective of Mill’s overall vision of the future, many commentators (particularly, although not exclusively, those on the American side of the Atlantic) interpret Mill narrowly: Mill’s road to a comprehensive morality is treated as the single end or goal of his liberalism. What Mill considered an integral part of a morality of the future – the many circumstances in which free choice is to be permitted and the fewer instances in which it might be limited – has become Mill’s whole political philosophy. Many analysts understand Mill as the advocate of negative liberty, which is generally understood as extending to all actions except those that may cause direct harm to others. 44 Indeed, this view that Mill’s single teaching is the need to expand free activity almost without limit has become an important part of American
43 On Liberty, CW, 18: 250‐5. Alan Megill, J.S. Mill’s Religion of Humanity and the Second Justification for the Writing of On Liberty; in Eldon Eisenach (ed.), Mill and the Moral Character of Liberalism; Penn State University Press, University Park, 1997, pp. 301‐316. Also, Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship; Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001, pp. 73‐99. Michael Oakeshott overlooks Mill’s argument for liberty in both the present and future when he claims Mill advocated liberty exclusively as a means to a morality of the future. Michael Oakeshott, Morality and Politics in Modern Europe: The Harvard Lectures; Ed. Shirley Letwin Yale University Press, New Haven, 1993, pp. 78‐83. “Mill’s plea for diversity is methodological, not substantial: diversity must be allowed only because we cannot yet be certain about what is true and what is false. But he looks forward to a time when the uniformity of perfection will establish itself unmistakably. […] In short, ‘individuality,’ ‘diversity’ of opinion and ‘eccentricity’ of behaviour are all understood by Mill as the means by which a final condition of ‘truth’ and ‘well‐being’ would be established.” 44 See Owen Fiss, A Freedom both Personal and Political; Richard Posner, “On Liberty”: A Reevaluation; Jean Bethke Elshtain, Liberty and the Problem of Authority; in David Bromwich & George Kateb (eds.), On Liberty – John Stuart Mill; Yale University Press, New Haven, 2003, pp. 179‐96, 197‐207, 208‐23, respectively.
64
culture. In many respects, the general understanding of liberty and individuality held by the American citizen at the turn of the twenty first century is consistent with his harm principle. Law, civil institutions, and public opinion are understood as lacking any legitimate authority to foster virtue and repress vice, to shape personal ends or notions of happiness, to define the ultimate worth or dignity of the human being. 45 This parsing of Mill’s thought is not a surprise. Mill embraced and extended negative liberty, not only against the magistrate but “against the prevailing opinion and feeling.” As Mill expressed it, “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. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient.” 46 Mill also is partly to blame that only a part of his thought is embraced or adhered to and that his overall political philosophy is not recognized. Certainly Mill’s idea of encouraging expressivism has the potential to end, or at least discourage us, for fear of diminishing our choices and weakening our will to choose, to pursue avenues of inquiry that lead to the second leg of Mill’s political philosophy; namely, the discovery of better and worse modes of life and wisdom. In Mill’s call for many different modes of life, we have the view that the good life for you is not the same as the good life for me; each of us can go our own path, and we should not collide over them. On this account, people become human in the fullest sense through the activity of freely creating their own way of life. “Different persons also require different conditions for their spiritual development” states Mill, “and can no more exist healthily in the same moral than all the variety of plants can in the same physical, atmosphere and climate.” 47 Each person in this romantic‐expressivist vision has something special to offer the world through his or her mode of existence. Either criticizing or following others may betray our respective ways of life. What public and civil life ought to honor and promote is only whatever sorts of behavior and outlook, whatever kinds of institutions and practices, liberate individuals, as choosing beings, from all unchosen constraints. Romantic‐ expressivism, in short, is resistant to establishing modes of existence as higher or lower. At the end of chapter 3 in On Liberty, Mill leaves us with the question of whether wisdom and diversity may be inherently antithetical or at least, to a degree, adversarial. Certainly almost all contemporary commentators, who generally portray Mill as the archetype theorist of negative liberty, ignore his concern for wisdom. 48
Alan Wolfe, One Nation After All: What Middle‐Class Americans Really Think About; Penguin, New York, 1999. 46 On Liberty, CW, 18: 220, 223. 47 On Liberty, CW, 18: 270. 48 Notable exceptions are Thompson, John Stuart Mill and Representative Government, 54‐90; Berkowitz, Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism, 134‐69.
45
65
When it comes to cultivating higher modes of life and wisdom, Mill’s political philosophy faces constraints. He is determined to extend liberalism’s commitment to secure the conditions of free human conduct through limiting the restrictions imposed by law and public opinion. He also adheres to the romantic‐expressivist view that, as Wordsworth put it, the glory of the human soul is with infinity and therefore with “something ever more about to be.” Still, as an empiricist he recognizes that self‐developed ways of life are not generated spontaneously and do not arise necessarily; they are cultivated and sustained by circumstances. To actualize them, laws and civil society must develop practices and beliefs that generate developed minds and strong wills. Mill’s liberalism, in short, must by definition be broadly inclusive of diversity, yet it cannot be totally indifferent to the character of its citizens. A society based on free human conduct and self‐development is dependent on the human qualities that it does not spontaneously generate and sustain. These human qualities cannot be imported from the outside, for they must be immanent to the liberal way of life. Mill insists that only free moral agents can attain the highest human qualities and that it is not the role of law and public opinion to compel higher modes of existence; only free men and women can release the vital energies of life – most notably reason and the will – so long held down by customs and conventional practices. His commitment to free human conduct and self‐development requires exercising restraint in regard to the steps that would contribute to the cultivation of the qualities he believes liberal societies need if they are to prosper and protect liberty itself. 49 By turning to Aristotle’s Politics we gain insights into Mill’s dilemma. In the Politics, Aristotle notes that different types of regimes cultivate different types of citizens so that the characteristics of citizenry differ from one type of political order to another. Oligarchic regimes tend to produce citizens primarily concerned with wealth; democratic regime cultivates citizens with a political disposition centered on freedom and equality. Regimes, in short, curry citizens in the image of their central political principle. As Aristotle puts it, if the organization of composition is different, the compound creates a distinct mix of the same elements. What characterizes an excellent citizen derives from the primary aim of the political association. “Although citizens are dissimilar,” Aristotle argues, “preservation of the partnership is their task, and the regime is [this] partnership; hence the virtue of the citizen must necessarily be with a view to the regime.” As Aristotle explains it, the qualities of citizenship and the best life are not the same because the primary goals of the political association are in tension or opposition to the comprehensive development of the human faculties: “If, then, there are indeed several forms of regime, it is clear that it is
This tension between liberalism and virtue is examined thoroughly in William Galston, Liberal Purposes (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002) and Berkowitz, Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism.
49
66
not possible for the virtue of the excellent individual to be a single or complete virtue. That it is possible for a citizen to be excellent yet not possess the virtue in accordance with which he is an excellent man, therefore, is evident” (emphasis added). 50 From the perspective of Aristotle’s teachings, it follows that a regime grounded in Mill’s harm principle will cultivate tolerant citizens with dispositions that generally shun from commenting on whether this or that individual or social practice is better or worse, as long as these individuals and practices respect the rights of others. The root of the problem is that, as the primary goal of equality in freedom – the inviolable principle of Mill’s liberalism – gains a foothold in the liberal citizen’s character, rather than existing as the highest good among many, it slowly becomes the one and only aim or good. Further, Mill’s argument that the free individual is not to rest and refer to an established standard but to move on in the ceaseless journey of new experiences limits our ability to say that one way of life is better than another. There is a vitalism intrinsic to romantic‐expressivism which privileges that which lives, moves, and changes over that which establishes static or general standards. This emphasis on movement and change limits Mill’s ability to succeed in his challenge to Plato. Mill regretted that Plato’s could not reconcile the goals of wisdom and liberty; he charged that Plato grew frustrated by his inability to discover justice and increasingly became concerned solely with the character, disposition, and wisdom of a small elite – of philosophers and legislators. 51 Mill’s problem comes from the opposite direction. His concerns for an overarching morality of justice and self‐realized ways of life preclude his ability to develop the circumstances that will cultivate wisdom and higher ways of life. Although Mill wants to promote higher modes of existence, he always insists that we must respect the moral agency of others; even those we think are acting foolishly. Over time, as Nietzsche predicts, modern culture loses more and more confidence in its ability to identify higher and lower, better and worse, practices and ways of life: the modern intellectual is characterized by either the complacent observation (social science) or tepid celebration (historicism) of different values; the modern mind protects differences and celebrates ambiguity. “Whither are we moving?” Nietzsche asks, “Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up and down?” 52
Aristotle, The Politics; Trans. Carnes Lord, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984, scts. 1276b15‐1277al20: 89‐91; Berkowitz, Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism, p. 175. 51 See Devigne, Reforming Liberalism, pp. 29‐40. 52 Frederich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, sct. 125: 181; Geneology of Morals, Trans. Walter Kaufmann, Vintage, New York, 1967, Essay 2, scts. 20‐21: 90‐92; Essay 3, scts. 24‐27: 148‐59; Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to the Philosophy of the Future; Trans. Walter Kaufmann, Vintage, New York, 1966, scts. 207, 223‐24: 126‐28, 150‐53.
50
67
To be sure, Mill is neither silent nor indifferent to the connection between promoting self‐development and discovering new truths and better ways of life.
“It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference which pretends that human beings have no business with each other’s conduct in life, and that they should not concern themselves about the well‐doing or well‐being of one another, unless their own interest is involved. . . . I am the last person to undervalue the self‐regarding virtues; they are only second in importance, if even second, to the social. It is equally the business of education to cultivate both. But even education works by conviction and persuasion as well as by compulsion, and it is by the former only that, when the period of education is past, the self‐ regarding virtues should be cultivated.” 53
For Mill, there is no contradiction between self‐development, tolerance, and conflicting opinions, on the one hand, and the increasingly universal acceptance of new synthetic standards of good and bad, on the other hand. Fostering differences, criticisms, and contradictory paths did not mean for Mill that we quit discovering better and worse ways of life. The former was a necessary condition for the latter, and while it may seem from the focus of many Mill commentators that Mill prefers the current of his thought that contributes to liberty and self‐development to the current of his thought that focuses on wisdom and discovering the truth, in fact, Mill regards neither by itself as a likely or desirable way to develop the good society. But Mill’s leading principles‐‐protection of all self‐regarding activity, self‐ expression as the best life‐‐sets in motion a conceptual dynamic that all too easily induces silence about what ideas or practices are best. Indifference to questions about their cultivation result. Whether or not Mill’s harm principle rejects legal enforcement of practices that cultivate rationality and fortitude, refuses to limit alternative modes of existence, or, most important, makes individual choice the touchstone of human development, 54 Mill’s leading political principles shift focus away from a determinate set of excellences of character. Moral and intellectual qualities that determine the good human being somehow get lost in the dynamic. Indeed, spurred on by Mill’s injunctions against judgmentalism, his successors become skeptical critics of Mill’s judgment that there are higher and lower ideas and modes of existence. Tellingly, much of the contemporary literature on Mill focuses on the presentation of his harm principle, not as he himself presented it, but “reconstructed” and “improved,” so that he is shown as one who would have
53 54
On Liberty, CW, 18: 276‐77. On Liberty, CW, 18: 262‐63, 269, 284‐86. 68
agreed with expanding liberty of action in more and more spheres of society. 55 These commentators ignore Mill’s view that both the romantics and ancients taught qualities of character that would lead to higher forms of individualism, and they eschew his position that the waning conflict between competing conceptions of the good life required the tactical embrace of eccentricity as an expression of the human good. In these analysts’ eyes, Mill and liberalism are indifferent to substantive ethical concerns, apathetic to the human bonds that hold societies together, and antagonistic to human excellence. One cannot accuse Mill of failing to see the necessity of wisdom and higher modes of existence for the development of individual happiness and a prosperous liberal society, for these he put forth with impressive clarity. To be sure, it is one thing for Mill to say that people should continue to be open to what ideas and practices are better or worse, and quite another for analysts of Mill to say that these questions are irrelevant to human happiness and liberalism’s well‐being. Mill’s political philosophy, however, was left vulnerable because, having underestimated the vulnerability of all sectors of liberal society to the actualization of the liberal spirit, he failed to provide adequate sustenance of the mental and moral qualities that are necessary for liberalism’s comprehensive moral development. On Liberty does not fully clarify the disproportion between liberalism’s need for moral and intellectual development and the means he proposes to identify the qualities it needs its citizens to possess. The Democratic Intellectual Accordingly, Mill’s expectation that the “instructed minds” would develop as either statesmen willing to stand above public opinion or, in some circumstances, special elites who perceived and pursued the general interests, has not been realized. One could apologize for Mill by pointing to other influential modern thinkers‐‐both before and since‐‐who also believed that either intellectuals or “noble minds” could be specifically cultivated as statesmen or classless leaders of society. For instance, Mill’s belief that proportional representation would contribute to an enhanced political role for those individuals driven by higher considerations than party or pressure group is not fundamentally different from Alexander Hamilton’s proposal that an electoral college will enable presidents to be statesmanlike figures who stand above the “vicious arts” of partisan politics. “Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State,” notes Hamilton, “but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union. […] It will not be too strong to say that there will be a constant
55
See John Gray & G.W. Smith (eds.), J.S.Mill: On Liberty in Focus; Routledge, London, 1991. 69
probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre‐eminent for ability and virtue.” 56 Mill’s proposal that extra votes be given not to property owners but to those who have attained higher levels of intellectual excellence is consistent with the spirit of Thomas Jefferson, who argued for the need to diminish in democracy an “artificial aristocracy, founded on wealth and birth,” while welcoming within government a “natural aristocracy” grounded in “virtue or talents.” “This “natural aristocracy,” Jefferson goes on to say, “I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, the government of society. […] May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?” 57 Rousseau asserted in the Social Contract that an “elected aristocracy” was the best form of government, the administration of laws by those whose superiority was due to such conventional attributes as honesty, soundness of understanding, and experience in public affairs. 58 Hegel asserted the necessity of “executive civil servants” for the purpose of “protecting the particular rights [of the corporations], legality and the universal interest of the state.” 59 Karl Mannheim, among many other twentieth‐century thinkers, consistently expressed a Millian‐like view that intellectuals comprise the only group that can at least temporarily ignore their private interests that modern societies engender in them and take on a detached view of the common good. 60 However, identifying Mill’s affinities with other seminal thinkers regarding modernity’s need to cultivate in statesmen or elites a universal outlook or moral and intellectual excellence should not obscure his failure to assess accurately the character of the modern intellectual. Mill never offered a roadmap showing how this uniform outlook was to be forged among the intellectual elite. Consistent with his position that the character of speculative
Alexander Hamilton & James Madison & John Jay, The Federalist Papers; Penguin, New York, 1961, no. 69: 414. Also see Considerations on Representative Government, CW, 19: 525. “When the highest dignity in the state is to be conferred by popular election once in every few years, the whole intervening time is spent in what is virtually a canvas. President, ministers, chiefs of parties, and their followers, are all electioneers: the whole community is kept intent on the mere personalities of politics, and every public question is discussed and decided with less reference to its merits than to its expected bearing on the presidential election.” 57 Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, October 28, 1813, in Merrill D. Peterson (ed.), The Portable Jefferson; Viking, New York, 1975, p. 534. 58 Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract; in Rousseau’s Political Writings; Trans. & ed. Donald Cress, Hackett, Indianapolis, 1987, bk. 3, ch. 5: 181‐82. 59 G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right; Trans. T.M. Knox, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1952, sct. 289: 189‐90. 60 Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia; Trans. Louis Wirth & Edward Shils, Norton, New York, 1963, p. 136.
56
70
thought is the most decisive factor in founding and establishing social practices, 61 Mill assumes that his project to reconcile the fundamental divisions of Western political philosophy will unify the intellectuals of the future. What is required to unify the intellectuals is the right set of political principles. “If your opinions or mine are right,” he writes to Sterling in a letter discussing his goal to reconcile the major divisions in political philosophy, “they will be in time adopted by the instructed classes.” 62 Indeed, there is a not very well thought out current of pantheism in Mill’s approach to the modern intellectual. Pantheism, which is a characteristic of romanticism and later Continental thinking, 63 assumes that if historical forces are obeyed a primordial unity of subjective and objective good, which existed in Genesis or among the ancient Greeks, will be restored at a self‐conscious or higher level. Pantheism emphasizes history as the midwife or transmitter between unity lost and unity gained. While individuals often play decisive roles at crucial moments in forging unity, pantheism tends to promote the belief that no one acts voluntarily, and that whole peoples are being driven toward unity by grand historical forces above or outside of them. Mill does not assume that society is automatically moving toward unity, but he does state at times – despite his revulsion from English intellectual life – that the intellectual sector of English society is on the edge of full‐scale agreement regarding the subjective and objective good. 64 “For my own part,” he writes, “not believing in universal selfishness, I have no difficulty in admitting that Communism would even be practicable among the [intellectual] elite of mankind.” 65 Here Mill’s thought would have benefited from the treatment of democratic intellectuals and culture in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Tocqueville’s thesis is that democracy overruns modern culture and politics. 66 His concern is that in democracies, unpopular and alternative ideas will no longer be proposed at all, as individuals of independent minds will become isolated and dispirited by the weight of public opinion. Tocqueville believes that as democratic individuals become more and more alike, the belief of general equality of the intellect insinuates itself slowly into the public outlook, and it becomes extremely difficult for the views of exceptional
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive (hereafter, Logic), CW, 18: 267. Mill to John Sterling, October 20, 1831, CW, 12: 77. 63 Frederick Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte; Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 43‐45. “Thanks to the controversy [between Jacobi and Mendelsson in 1783], pantheism became, as Heine later put it, ‘the unofficial religion of Germany.’ […] In short, to use the jargon of Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel: it is necessary to find ‘unity in difference.’” Also, M. H. Abrams, Naturalism and Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature; Norton, New York, 1971, pp. 218‐278. 64 For a position that Mill did believe society was being moved by historical forces toward unity, Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism; Routledge, London, 1957, pp. 105‐130. 65 Considerations on Representative Government, CW, 19: 405. 66 De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, v. 2, pt. 1: 403‐78.
61 62
71
individuals, whatever they may be, to exercise influence over the public opinion. The modern intellectual, Tocqueville warns, discovers that very few things elevate “him much above them [the public] and distinguishes him from them,” and he “begin[s] to distrust himself when they are at war with him.” Not only will the modern intellectual “doubt his strength, but he comes to doubt his right to it, and he is very near to recognizing that he is wrong when the greater number affirms it. The majority does not need to constrain him; it convinces him.” Henceforth, the substantive outlook of the modern intellectual will not be fundamentally different from that of the mass individual, who, in turn, will display little concern for debating alternative ideas and social practices, as he is now focused exclusively on improving his material well‐being. In the cultural realm, for instance, “the democratic social state and institutions give to all the imitative arts certain particular tendencies that are easy to point out,” states Tocqueville. “They often turn them from the depiction of the soul to apply themselves to the body: and they substitute the representation of motion and sensations for that of sentiments and ideas; finally, in place of the ideal they put the real.” 67 Tocqueville, in short, dismisses a vision of democracy in which intellectuals evaluate alternative experiences originated by creative individuals in civil society, contributing to people discovering the best life and having the opportunity to gain more control over their mental and moral faculties. In Mill’s generally laudatory reviews of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America in 1836 and 1840, he explicitly rejects Tocqueville’s thesis regarding the “learned class” being subsumed by democracy. 68 Mill counters that, in England, intellectuals generally embrace the idea that “the most serious danger to the future prospects of mankind is the unbalanced influence of the commercial spirit,” and he puts forth that these learned minds must be cultivated as a social bulwark “for opinions and sentiments different from those of the mass.” Mill insists that the intellectuals’ capacity for limiting the excess of commercialism “by a contrary spirit, are at once apparent.” He concludes that England has an advantage over America in that it possesses a well‐articulated intellectual class and that energy must be devoted to making it better and better qualified for the important function of representing a unified impartial outlook in society. 69 While Mill’s view of modern intellectuals does not necessarily detract from his thesis that competent minorities or statesmen are necessary for liberalism to prosper (a position Tocqueville also maintains), it is now clear that the present day intellectual is unable to fulfill this role. Indeed, the contemporary one‐ sided reading of Mill as a theorist who focuses exclusively on liberty of action
De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, v. 2, pt. 1, ch. 11: 442; v. 2, pt. 3, ch. 21: 615. De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [I], CW 18:82‐90; De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [II], CW, 18: 194‐204. 69 De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [II], CW, 18: 198.
67 68
72
reinforces Tocqueville’s thesis that the modern intellectual turns from the soul to the body, substitutes motion for sentiments and ideas, and replaces the ideal with the real. Conceptions of Freedom As Mill also draws from the various currents of political philosophy to reframe the modern conception of liberty, it becomes necessary to evaluate his theory from the perspective of his self‐imposed task of mediating the differences between the empiricists’ and romantics’ conceptions of freedom. And here we find his theory of liberty to be far more coherent and consistent than his proposal that diversity and contrasting modes of existence will cultivate new synthetic truths and wisdom. The opposite of freedom for empiricists such as Hobbes, Locke, and Hume was a specific kind of constraint, restrictions on human conduct coming from another human being or group of human beings. Human actions are necessitated, and therefore unfree, only when they are coerced, and they are coerced only by external impediments, imposed intentionally by other persons. On the traditional empiricist understanding of liberty, it does not matter much what we do so long as we agree to do it. From this perspective one is free to act, not free to will, as antecedent circumstances determining the will always exist. In both the Logic and Hamilton Mill agrees with the empiricists’ position that liberty requires free action. But based on a deeper conception of freedom, he recognizes that even a society that is free by egalitarian standards is not sufficient to provide “moral freedom” or the opportunity to choose one’s way of life. Mill claims traditional empiricism’s conception of circumstances is too narrow: it tends to overlook consideration of the motives that propel human activity and therefore ends up misunderstanding the circumstances affecting human conduct. More important, empiricism has failed to recognize that, when an agent comes to the realization of his own role in determining ends, the antecedent circumstances for human conduct undergo an important change. In particular, a life dominated by customs is one of servitude and weakness due to its ignorance of causes, whereas the free life is one of deliberative action, a life in which the more one reflects on the character of his experiences, the larger becomes our awareness of his power and free agency. An agent’s outlook does not merely reflect but alters his world, so that it is the state of the individual’s mind, as part of the empirical conditions, which enables him to be a free individual. 70 From this more developed idea of freedom, for our actions to be genuinely free, we must will the outcome we desire. Such an understanding of freedom attempts to address the challenge raised by Rousseau, Kant, Coleridge, and the romantics concerning the origin,
70
G. W. Smith, The Logic of J.S. Mill on Freedom; in “Political Studies”, 1980, pp. 240‐241. 73
status, and quality of our desires. If my desires are not chosen but derive externally, then any goal I pursue as a reflection of them actually deepens my entrenchment in an external system of commands and prohibitions. Rather than being in charge of my life, I become an accomplice to my own dependence. In both the Logic and Hamilton, however, Mill recognizes a conundrum as he attempts to reconcile the empiricist view of causation and the romantics’ concern for free will. Human beings, in his account, are basically unfree in all activities in which desires can be understood as determined only by causes external to the will. But as an empiricist, he holds that whatever happens is determined by antecedent events and circumstances. Mill, in short, requires external or antecedent circumstances that form individuals with a character that regards self‐development and self‐realization as the good. Mill is aware that the individual’s self‐consciousness does not exist in isolation and that the structure of the mind is socially developed through and in conflict with other minds. Where will these antecedents come from? As Mill asks in the Logic, “Our character is formed by us as well as for us; and how?” 71 Mill’s expressivist conception of liberty attempts to close the gap between empiricism’s view of causality and the romantics’ conception of the free will. The actualization of different ways of life will induce people to make choices about their own character, thus further promoting self‐determined modes of existence. Freedom, instead of being the capacity to satisfy any desire that might occur, becomes the capacity to satisfy a particular desire‐‐that of modifying or choosing one’s character. In Mill’s view, choice in regard to different modes of existence performs the same task as Plato’s dialectic: allowing for the development of human judgment, which is the highest good of human life. The alternative modes of existence will create the circumstances that enable the desires for self‐command to arise among human agents. Two things are necessary for “human development,” insists Mill, “namely freedom and variety of situations.” 72 Diverse modes of existence will create the antecedents needed to promote the romantic‐expressivist goal of self‐ development within the empiricist view of causation. Here it is instructive to situate Mill’s position in relation to the dichotomies that Kant’s and Hegel’s negative and positive conceptions of freedom create. For Kant, the state creates “conditions of negative freedom that are instrumental […] to the positive freedom of individuals,” but neither state nor society is capable of creating the conditions or experiences that cultivate the realization of autonomy in the most complete sense. 73 A focus on developing the conditions for a fully self‐defined existence will end up being the worst
John Stuart Mill, Logic, CW, 8: 840. Also see, Skorupski, John Stuart Mill, pp. 38‐43; Smith, The Logic of J. S. Mill on Freedom, p. 240. 72 On Liberty, CW, 18: 261. 73 Paul Franco, Hegel’s Philosophy of Freedom; Yale University Press, New Haven, 2002, p. 19.
71
74
enemy of the “autonomy” it purports to aid. Therefore, the state creates a legal environment for the realization of autonomy by extending negative freedoms so that one can be self‐determining through exercise of the moral law. The laws and practices of society should not obstruct the individual’s ability to attain autonomy. They should grant him the external freedom to find internal autonomy. 74 Hegel responds to this argument by charging Kant with confusing different stages of freedom‐‐abstract right and subjective freedom‐‐and argues that state and society are not mere instruments for the self‐determination and positive freedom of the individual. Rather, the individual must experience a genuine identification with the universal interests of civil and political institutions, most notably the state. As individuals recognize their own minds – their own conception of subjective freedom, realized in the constitution of the state – they come to view the state and its institutions not as mere instruments of their freedom, but as expressions of it. It is only at this moment, with the natural workings of the mind‐‐freed from myth and tradition‐‐finally coinciding with a functioning concrete social world that one realizes the ideals Kant told us had to remain as “oughts.” Only then does the individual enter the final and most complete stages of freedom. 75 Like Hegel, Mill maintains that circumstances and experiences are crucial to shaping and realizing, not merely reducing obstacles to, the free will. Here Mill follows Tocqueville, however, and rejects proposals focusing on centralized states as potentially dangerous. Mill also rejects the claim that it is through identification with the universal that the individual becomes totally free. 76 Like Kant, Mill retains a commitment to a negative liberty that restricts what others can do to the individual by the exercise of their wills. This negative liberty is an essential condition for the freedom of the individual, but freedom itself is not completely realized merely because a condition for its exercise has been met. Hence, Mill advocates a romantic‐expressive conception of the best life and transforms the Platonic dialectic whereby individuals defend their way of life against opponents. The goal is to form individuals with the qualities of mind and character capable of exercising choices skillfully, boldly, and autonomously. It is only through conflict and contradictory roads that one learns who and what one is and the possibility of growing as an individual. It
Immanuel Kant On the common saying: ‘That may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice,’ and Toward perpetual peace, in Practical Philosophy, scts. 8: 289‐312: 290‐309, scts. 8: 366‐67: 335‐36. Also see, Patrick Riley, Kant’s Political Philosophy; Rowman & Littlefield, Totowa, 1983. 75 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, pars. 29, 258, 260‐61, 265, 268: 33, 155‐59, 160‐62, 163‐64; Franco, Hegel’s Philosophy of Freedom, 20, 225, 280, 283. 76 On Liberty, CW, 18: 305‐310; Autobiography, CW, 1: 203. Also see, H. O. Pappe, Mill and Tocqueville; in “Journal of the History of Ideas”, vol. 25, 1964, pp. 217‐38.
74
75
is these learned experiences that Kant and others mistakenly identify as an innate free consciousness.
“Suppose that my experience of myself afforded two undeniable cases, alike in all the mental and physical antecedents, in one of which cases I acted in one way, and in the other in the direct opposite; there would then be proof by experience that I had been able to act in either one way or in the other. It is experience of this sort I learn that I can act at all, viz., by finding that an event takes place or not according as (other circumstances being the same) a volition of mine does or does not take place. But when this power of my volitions over my actions has become a familiar fact, the knowledge of it is so constantly present to my mind as to be popularly called, and habitually confounded with consciousness. And the supposed power of myself over my volitions, which is termed Free will, though it cannot be a fact of consciousness, yet if true, or even believed, would similarly work itself into our inmost knowledge of ourselves, in such a manner as to be mistaken for consciousness.” 77
Mill’s goal of creating options for the self‐amendment of character creates more openness and moral indeterminacy than Hegel’s corporate liberalism, while bridging Kant’s division between Rechtslere and Tugendlere: the legal duties of justice and the moral duties of a self‐determined existence.
77
John Stuart Mill, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, CW, 9: 450, n. 67. 76
George SCHEDLER
Southern Illinois University
A Conflict in “On Liberty”
Even though Mill’s general view in On Liberty is that words alone cannot do harm of any moral significance, in some places in On Liberty our words can inhibit the freedom of thought of others. Specifically, Mill’s arguments sometimes suggest that it is always morally permissible for society (or the majority of citizens in a society) to express its vigorous disagreement with the opinions of others and its disapproval of the lifestyles of others and to a limited extent act upon such disapproval, while in other places he argues that it is not always permissible to express such disagreement and disapproval. I will show the conflict by, first, laying the groundwork of Mill’s argument. In the second part of my paper, I will present his argument for the right to free expression regardless of the consequences of our words on others. In the third part, I present his argument requiring us to limit free expression because of the deleterious effects of our words on others. In the last part, I consider and reject three ways of reconciling these arguments. I. Mill’s background assumptions In the first chapter, Mill narrows his focus and states the principle for which he will argue. He restricts his discussion to individuals of mature years capable of informed consent. He limits his ultimate ethical principle to the principle of utility, understanding the term “utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.” 1 On this view, satisfying, for example, one’s intellectual curiosity would ceteris paribus have greater utility than experiencing some gustatory pleasure. The basic principle for which he argues is that society may, in some cases where there is a threat of harm to others, interfere in the private lives of individuals or restrict their freedom of speech, but it may never interfere solely for the good of the individual. By “society,” Mill sometimes means the state, which can threaten legal sanctions, and sometimes means the majority, which cannot impose legal sanctions but can stigmatize nonconformists. I will focus
On Liberty; Harlan Davidson, Arlington Heights, p. 10. This is undoubtedly an allusion to the distinction between higher and lower pleasures developed in his Utilitarianism.
1
solely on the extent to which the members of the majority (which I will also call “society,” following Mill) can express their distaste for the lifestyles of others. To appreciate the subtlety of society’s influence and Mill’s grasp of it, we should note what Mill says in Chapter 1 about the first of the three spheres of each adult person’s life in which “society […] has, if any, only an indirect interest; comprehending all that portion of a personʹs life and conduct which affects only himself, or, if it also affects others, only with their free, voluntary, and undeceived consent and participation. […] This, then, is the appropriate region of human liberty.” 2 The first sphere immune from interference, which is our focus, comprises “the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological.” 3 Now, it would appear from what he says up to this point that Mill means by the “inward domain of consciousness” freedom of expression, but he takes pains to add explicitly freedom of expression to this, thereby indicating the conceptual distinction between the freedom of consciousness and freedom of speech. “The liberty of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual which concerns other people; but, being almost of as much importance as the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same reasons, is practically inseparable from it.” 4 One conclusion we infer from this discussion and the basic principle above is that society is not justified in interfering with the freedom of thought of the adult individual when there is no threat of harm to others. This distinction between freedom of thought or consciousness and freedom of speech may seem rhetorical, but my view is that we need to read what Mill says in later chapters on conformity and individuality in light of this distinction. The concerns he voices throughout Chapter 3 and even parts of Chapter 2 about the pressure placed on intellectuals to conform stems from recognition on his part that society at large can change people’s thinking without threatening them. It can restrict the thinking of others without directly restraining their freedom of speech by intimidating the intellectuals so they desist from pursuing an unpopular line of thinking. Certain lines of thought would be taboo, and as a result problem solving, for example, might not be as creative as it otherwise would be. He asks rhetorically in Chapter 2: “Who can compute what the world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it should land them in something which
Ibid., p. 12. Ibid. 4 Ibid.
2 3
79
would admit of being considered irreligious or immoral? Among them we may occasionally see some man of deep conscientiousness, and subtile and refined understanding, who spends a life in sophisticating with an intellect which he cannot silence, and exhausts the resources of ingenuity in attempting to reconcile the promptings of his conscience and reason with orthodoxy, which yet he does not, perhaps, to the end succeed in doing.” 5 In Mill’s time, such intimidation was the only way available to society to restrict the thinking of nonconformists. However, in modern times there are other ways, such as hypnosis, subliminal messages, psychoactive drugs, and even surgical techniques, in which thinking and consciousness can be restricted without actually threatening punishment (or even ostracism) for expressing unpopular views. 6 Even though society’s interference with freedom of consciousness was more limited than it is now, it is clear that Mill in Chapter 1 does not believe society may interfere with freedom of consciousness (or thought) of adults merely for the good of the individuals with whose lives society interferes, though it may sometimes do so for the sake of averting a threat of harm to others who do not consent. Indeed, his example of the mob assembled at the corn dealer’s residence is a case in point: a speech to the mob that corn dealers starve the poor loses its immunity to state interference because of the immediate risk of serious harm (and lack of offsetting value of the speech). 7 I will refer to this case and the analysis of it as the “corn dealer” case. II. The unrestrained disapproval principle In Chapter 2, Mill’s general position is that we have absolute freedom of speech to discuss even the most absurd of opinions. Without freedom to discuss we will not only risk not learning the truth we also risk not understanding the basis for our true opinions once we find them. The absurdity of opinions is no argument for silencing those who hold them, because refuting plainly false opinions benefits us by enhancing our understanding of the true opinions we hold. Mill also puts no restriction on the way we choose to express our opinions about others. We need not be temperate in our expression, and the intemperateness of an opinion is no justification for silencing it. Mill has two arguments for this. First, if intemperateness were a ground for censure, inevitably the temptation to brand as intemperate arguments too difficult to refute would be too great. Second, Mill believed that intemperateness would more often be a label put on minority views. It would seldom if ever be a label
Ibid., p. 33. See, for example, http://www.psychosurgery.org/. 7 Ibid., p. 55.
5 6
80
minorities would attach to popular views. 8 For Mill, we need not worry about the effects of the expression of our disagreement with the opinions of others may have on others. Mill goes further and allows that we can be uninhibited in our criticism of the lifestyle of others. He says in Chapter 4: “Though doing no wrong to any one, a person may so act as to compel us to judge him, and feel to him, as a fool, or as a being of an inferior order: and since this judgment and feeling are a fact which he would prefer to avoid, it is doing him a service to warn him of it beforehand, as of any other disagreeable consequence to which he exposes himself. It would be well, indeed, if this good office were much more freely rendered than the common notions of politeness at present permit, and if one person could honestly point out to another that he thinks him in fault, without being considered unmannerly or presuming. We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavorable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours.” 9 Thus, we can conclude that, for Mill, it is always morally permissible for society (or the majority of citizens in a society) to express its vigorous disagreement with the opinions of others and its disapproval of the lifestyles of others and to a limited extent act upon such disapproval. We will refer to this as the unrestrained disapproval principle. This is consistent with the general tenor of On Liberty with its sharp distinction between words and actions. The consequences of actions have utilitarian significance, but the consequences of words do not, except in the extreme cases of immediate risk of serious injury with no offset significant benefit, such as that of the case of the corn dealer. III. The restrained disapproval principle However, in Chapter 3, Mill bemoans conformity of thinking and loss of individual spontaneity that comes with agreement among members of society. His argument for protecting nonconformists from being pressured to change their lifestyles is the straightforward utilitarian one that freedom to pursue unpopular ideas and lead bizarre lifestyles benefits society. We begin with the recognition that the consequences of our words have utilitarian significance. Indeed, he opens this chapter with the corn dealer case and expresses concern throughout about what might be called “elites” – a minority of especially gifted individuals who contribute to the improvement of society as a whole but may entertain unpopular ideas. He speaks of how valuable such elites are to society and how they can only benefit society if they are not intimidated into conforming to the mass’s standards. “It will not be denied by anybody, that originality is a valuable element in human affairs. There is always need of persons not only to discover new
8 9
Ibid., p. 53. Ibid., p. 78.
81
truths, and point out when what were once truths are true no longer, but also to commence new practices, and set the example of more enlightened conduct, and better taste and sense in human life. [...] It is true that this benefit is not capable of being rendered by everybody alike: there are but few persons, in comparison with the whole of mankind, whose experiments, if adopted by others, would be likely to be any improvement on established practice. But these few are the salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. […] Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom. Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than any other people – less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character. If from timidity they consent to be forced into one of these moulds, and to let all that part of themselves which cannot expand under the pressure remain unexpanded, society will be little the better for their genius.” 10 This argument makes it clear that the elites need freedom to experiment, to pursue unpopular ideas, and to lead lives that are unconventional. Though Mill does not specify how the masses can restrict the lives of the elites, Mill certainly says, as we saw in the first part of this paper (by way of rhetorical question), that fear of being considered “irreligious or immoral” could discourage “promising intellects” from pursuing an “independent train of thought.” 11 Now, such fear can be instilled by speech that is critical of these elites. So, some criticism of certain elites could have deleterious effects, with little or no compensating benefit, and would therefore be morally wrong using the utilitarian calculus. Some words and some otherwise innocuous actions may inhibit the thinking of elite members of society, with the result that some individuals may not pursue certain lines of thinking, which if they were pursued would have improved society at large. 12 In Chapter 2, Mill says that stigmatization is the cause for the suppression of individuality and points out that at one time the legal penalties constituted the weapon for stigmatizing nonconformists, but “it is the opinions men entertain, and the feelings they cherish […] which makes this country not a place of mental freedom.” 13 Thus, we can conclude that, for Mill, it is not always morally permissible for society (or the majority of citizens in a society) to express its vigorous disagreement with the opinions of others and its disapproval of the lifestyles of others and to a limited extent act upon such disapproval. We will call this the restrained disapproval principle.
Ibid., p. 64. Ibid., p. 33. 12 Ibid., pp. 30‐31. 13 Ibid., p. 31.
10 11
82
IV. Conclusion Obviously, we cannot interpret Mill as holding both principles, for he plainly would not mean to say that freedom of speech to be both restricted and unrestricted. Three ways to resolve the conundrum are: (a) to point out an equivocation in the principles that renders them true but not contradictory; (b) to argue they are both true but apply to different situations; (c) to argue that the restrained principle is the correct one because there are so many exceptions to the unrestrained principle. Obviously, we cannot interpret Mill as holding both principles, for he plainly would not mean to say that freedom of speech to be both restricted and unrestricted. Three ways to resolve the conundrum are: (a) to point out an equivocation in the principles that renders them true but not contradictory; (b) to argue they are both true but apply to different situations; (c) to argue that the restrained principle is the correct one because there are so many exceptions to the unrestrained principle. A. Equivocation Perhaps they are not both true, but only appears to be because the phrase “express disapproval” is used equivocally. The unrestrained principle allows hostile criticism to be lodged against anyone, but the restrained version proscribes not just hostile criticism but censure and intimidation that goes well beyond mere hostile criticism. Once the equivocation is recognized, it will be argued that the conundrum disappears. Granting arguendo that the phrase “express disapproval” is not precise (whether it misleads is another question), this change in terminology presents the same conflict in a different light, because it makes it clear that there is one standard for treating elites and another for the masses. Criticism of the masses can be relentless to the point of intimidation but not of the elites. It is more beneficent to intimidate the masses, because such intimidation results in suppression of mediocrity. However, it does not make sense from a utilitarian perspective to stifle the genius of the elites. B. Different situations Could he hold that both principles are true but apply to different situations? For example, could one argue that members of majorities need only restrain their actions, not their speech, when criticizing members of the minority? He says in Chapter 4: “What I contend for is, that the inconveniences which are strictly inseparable from the unfavorable judgment of others, are the only ones to which a person should ever be subjected for that portion of his conduct and character which concerns his own good, but which does not affect
83
the interests of others in their relations with him.” 14 But when Mill said that stigma is what really intimidates, he admitted that the stigma is due to strongly held opinions of the stigmatizers. So, the majority suppresses individuality by merely expressing its opinion. It is the unfavorable judgment of members of the majority that does the harm. So, distinguishing between the effects of unfavorable judgment and persecution by word or deed does not help resolve the problem. C. Exceptions to unrestrained principle One way to embrace the restrained principle (and reject the unrestrained principle) is to widen the category of speech that loses its immunity for utilitarian reasons, as in the corn dealer case. He says in this connection that “even opinions lose their immunity, when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act.” 15 One can argue that certain kinds of speech, such as, racial epithets, fall into this category, because they are so often uttered in circumstances that threaten violence or other disutilities which outweigh any benefit they may have. If racial epithets can be banned on utilitarian grounds, then words uttered by members of a majority tending to crush individuality may also be banned. This response will not do for two reasons. The utilitarian balancing yields a different result in the case of the corn dealer from that reached in the case of the statements discouraging individuality. The overwhelming harm that would immediately flow in the corn dealer case from the utterance of the words pales in comparison with the minuscule intellectual benefit to the excited mob on hearing that corn dealers starve the poor. On the other hand, remarks that belittle individuality do not risk great harm immediately but cause harm cumulatively and may have some slight benefit of raising for discussion the utility of minority lifestyles. Such remarks do not have the immediacy and the degree of harm threatened by to an excited mob. The second problem is that this argument is essentially an act utilitarian argument for Mill’s rule utilitarian view. Mill’s opposition to the suppression of individuality is a blanket one – he does not argue for it on a case by case basis. But if we invoke the same principle that would punish the words in the corn dealer case for our argument for the prohibition of speech that suppresses individuality, each case would have to be considered for its effect on the nonconformist. We might then conclude as a rule of thumb that speech which intimidates minorities is subject to censorship, but we would not have a blanket rule of the kind for which Mill argues.
14 15
Ibid., p. 78. Ibid., p. 55. 84
Thus, the conflict between the right to free expression and the right of nonconformists to be free of suppression of their individuality in On Liberty remains. We may relentlessly criticize the masses without concern that they will be intimidated, but we must treat members of the elite less harshly.
85
Adrian‐Paul ILIESCU
University of Bucharest
J.S. Mill’s Views on Democracy: Are They Still Valid?
What happened, after Mill, in the area of reflection on democracy? A lot, of course. Elitism – from Nietzsche who claimed that «the Strong» are bound to lead while «the Weak» are predestined to comply, to Schumpeter, sometimes labelled as “a democratic elitist” – has rejected the (truly) democratic ideal as utopian. The «discovery» of special interest groups and of their extraordinary influence upon public affairs, together with the findings of the logic of collective action, have suggested that big groups and social or political «majorities» are doomed to stay passive or to be ineffective. Rational choice theories have proved that both individual decision, based on the calculus of costs and benefits, and interactive games, based on rational options, face problems and difficulties, some of which cast heavy doubts upon many traditional «democratic» suppositions (such as the one claiming that «what is rational for everyone individually is also rational for all together»). The limits of preference aggregation (proven by Arrow and then others) have thrown thick shadows upon the well‐known «democratic» methods of selecting «the best alternative» by taking into account all the options made by citizens. Finally, analysts like Carl Schmitt have developed interesting arguments about the «suicidal potential» of liberal‐democratic regimes and about the crucial role played by non‐democratic «sovereigns» who decide upon «exceptions». The result of such findings is that one is inclined to see the political landscape as much more complicated than it appeared in Mill’s writings and, consequently, that one is tempted to doubt the force of his arguments for democracy, as they seem to have been inspired by an unilateral and a too simple image of things. For instance (one can complain), Mill has had a much too narrow image of public debates and of their positive consequences: when public debates are so heavily shaped by influential groups of interests, can one continue to be optimistic about their social and individual role? And what
about political «haggling», which has quite different consequences from those expected by Mill? 1 Still, not all the news received after Mill’s death were bad. The understanding of the dispersed or dissipated character of socially‐useful information (Hayek), of value‐pluralism and its consequences (hard choice‐ situations) and of the importance of deliberative processes made paternalistic government even less plausible than it used to be during Mill’s lifetime. By better realizing the shortcomings of paternalism, one should these days be less vulnerable to its promises – and, consequently, more receptive to the democratic principles. To say nothing about the huge increase of the number of democratic regimes around the world. But, though the record is not simply bad – it’s rather mixed –, Mill’s heritage seems, in general, a little obsolete. My claim is that this was not bound to happen: for it is not the direct result of an intrinsic lack of force characteristic to Mill’s view – it is rather due to a strategic error he made in shaping his argumentation: he developed extensively the consequentialist argumentation for democracy, while mentioning only in passing the truly deep and forceful ideas he could have relied upon in defending the democratic regime as preferable. His Utilitarian arguments (about the positive consequences of democratic regimes) sound today less convincing not mainly because one generally distrusts consequentialism. The big problem is that for almost any positive and optimistic conclusion on democracy drawn by a Consequentialist inspired by nice historical examples, one can point out some negative and pessimistic ones, drawn by other Consequentialists who rely upon other (not so nice) examples. For instance, where Mill claims that democratic practice educates people and helps them to become politically mature, the pessimist would contend that shallow public rhetoric and pseudo‐argumentations characteristic to democracy only encourage half baked political ideas and attitudes and all sorts of illegitimate aspirations of those who entertain them. Public debate is an excellent means of political and civic education, but, unfortunately, also a very good medium for political manipulation. And so on and so forth. If Mill’s contribution consisted only in such Utilitarian argumentations, then, I think, he would indeed have been an old‐fashioned, weakly relevant, thinker. But I think that his major contribution to the theory of democracy lies elsewhere, namely in his endorsement of two «negative» principles that support (more or less visibly) his arguments: one is epistemological –the principle of fallibility; the other is moral – the principle of self‐government.
For an illuminating analysis of the difference between political «haggling» and political debate, see Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997, p. 198.
1
113
Why the first principle, the principle of fallibility, is «negative» seems obvious (it asserts a limit of knowledge); while the second one, the principle of self‐government, is «negative» doesn’t seem so obvious, but it becomes quite clear if one looks at Mill’s On Representative Government, Chapter 8. Self‐ government is, on one hand, required by justice:
“it is a personal injustice to withhold from any one, unless for the prevention of greater evils, the ordinary privilege of having his voice reckoned in the disposal of affairs in which he has the same interest as other people. If he is compelled to pay, if he may be compelled to fight, if he is required implicitly to obey, he should be legally entitled to be told what for; to have his consent asked, and his opinion counted at its worth, though not at more than its worth. There ought to be no pariahs in a full‐grown and civilized nation; no persons disqualified except through their own default. Every one is degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his destiny.“
On the other hand, it is more a precaution against misgovernment than an assertion of the positive contributions of every person to government:
“And even in a much more improved state than the human mind has ever yet reached, it is not in nature that they who are thus disposed of should meet with as fair play as those who have a voice. Rulers and ruling classes are under a necessity of considering the interests and wishes of those who have the suffrage; but of those who are excluded, it is in their option whether they will do so or not; and, however honestly disposed, they are, in general, too fully occupied with things which they must attend to to have much room in their thoughts for any thing which the can with impunity disregard. No arrangement of the suffrage, therefore, can be permanently satisfactory in which any person or class is peremptorily excluded‐‐in which the electoral privilege is not open to all persons of full age who desire to obtain it.“
My claim is that the importance given by Mill to the two principles mentioned above and the role attributed to them in his analyses are his true major contribution to the theory of democracy – and that this contribution remains unaffected by the more recent developments in political thought. If paternalism (in one form or another) is always presupposed by reasonable anti‐democratic doctrines, then Mill’s critical analysis and his rejection of paternalism do constitute a substantive and long‐lasting support for democracy. 2
I am speaking about «reasonable» anti‐democratic conceptions, like, for instance, Elitism, because there obviously are variants that are completely unreasonable: for example, some kinds of Social Darwinism that simply claim that not all human beings are entitled to survive and prosper. Such extremist views are not paternalistic any more, they are simply cynical. The unreasonable anti‐democratic doctrines are those we cannot take seriously;
2
114
The principle of fallibility, so convincingly defended by Mill in On Liberty, creates, I think, a peculiar but extremely significant sort of epistemological basis for political equality among citizens. It’s not an equality in political wisdom or influence, implying that everyone should participate because everyone is as clever and as effective politically as everyone else (Mill explicitly rejects such a primitive egalitarian argument). But rather some sort of negative equality, implying that political exclusion would be a mistaken strategy: anyone can err and fail, so nobody is entitled to political exclusiveness; nobody is immune to epistemological risks, so nobody should enjoy exclusiveness – which means that everybody should be equally included in the political process. Equality is based here, of course, not upon an a priori identity of intellectual resources or political merits, but upon an equal possibility to make mistakes: for it is obviously not the case that the ordinary people always make huge mistakes, while the great men always make only small ones; on the contrary, it could be said that very often great people make great mistakes, and this is a good argument against the concentration of power (in their hands) that Mill was not ignorant of. Moreover, equality (of participation) is a rational requirement because, while elites certainly contribute to truth, ordinary people can contribute with what Mill called «portions of truth» too. The «fragmentary» character of truth, on which On Liberty insists explicitly, appears to be a very good and a long‐ lasting pillar for any defence of democracy. Contemporary research, focussing on the social use of dispersed information, gives it even more credibility. As long as Mill relies on this idea, not only he is on firm ground, but he also tends to reach the «right», i. e. democratic, conclusions: the fragmentary character of truth and the universal risk of error imply the usefulness of intellectual exchange between all the participants who could contribute to political truth. If truth is always partial and one‐sided, then a public mechanism (and process) of search (of the whole truth) becomes indispensable. If it is true (as Mill said in the 2nd chapter of On Liberty) that
“on every subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the truth depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons”,
then even the stupid and the ignorant must be included in the process, for they have a role to play: they do constitute part of the mechanism, they could represent some «set of reasons», and thus their participation is useful even though only as the «minor» component. I conclude that both Mill’s plea for
such as, for instance, the doctrine that political leadership should only aim at the good of some elites composed of «superior people», while all other people, considered «inferior», should be exterminated or at least left to die from natural causes. Millʹs arguments could hardly be useful against such doctrines, because the British philosopher, patronized as he is sometimes for his trust in progress, has never had the idea to take them into account.
115
inclusiveness (or his criticism of exclusiveness) and his idea of deliberative democracy (or of «democracy as a process») do constitute a major and hard to overestimate contribution to democracy. Unfortunately, Mill has not elaborated enough this component of his approach to democracy. Instead, he has preferred to develop his Utilitarian analysis, which sometimes pushed him in a wrong direction. Mill was inclined towards intellectual encapsulation, a fact that even in his days did not go unnoticed. The best proof of this weakness is, of course, his claim that all relations between society and individuals could be encapsulated in “one simple principle”, the famous one proposed in On Liberty; to which, more realistic commentators, like James Fitzjames Stephen, pointed out that the whole complexity of such relations simply cannot be encapsulated in «one simple principle», whatever would that one be. Now, I think that the very inclination towards encapsulation, combined with Utilitarianism, created a peculiar context, in which elitist conclusions became plausible for Mill. Thus, if one who has such an inclination asks the general Utilitarian question «what are the consequences of intelligence», then one is of course pushed to answer that «the clever» make a greater contribution to the public good – how else could the complex and diverse human landscape labelled as «intelligence» be encapsulated, otherwise than by claiming that intelligence means «greater and better contributions»? Consequently, one is pushed to require that “superior weight” (a plural vote) be given to “the wiser or better”, exactly as Mill does in Chapter 8 of his On Representative Government, for they will certainly contribute more and increase the «total positive sum» that society should strive for. But, in doing so, Mill simply forgets the implications of his own arguments about universal fallibility and the fragmentary character of truth. «The wiser and the better», i. e. the elites, cease thus to be seen by him as fallible and as being in possession of only some fragments of truth; they simply (and magically, I am tempted to say) become only sources of «greater and better contributions». This, in turn, legitimates the «bigger weight» that should be given to them in the political process. It is the error of encapsulation that raises once more its ugly head. «The wiser and the better» are not seen as complex persons any more, with superior intellectual (and/or moral) competence but nevertheless with the potential failures and errors that any human being is liable to; they are exclusively seen as big contributors to the public good. The reader can be baffled by the fact that the British author did not make similar proposals concerning women, as he made about ordinary people. At the end of the day, in political matters women did not make the same contribution as men made and, perhaps, they were not even as much interested in such matters as men were, in Mill’s days. Then, why would not Mill say that men should be given «more weight» in political life than women?
116
I guess that the mechanism of encapsulation provides the answer here too. For it makes sense to encapsulate «intelligence» in «greater and better contributions» and to encapsulate stupidity or mediocrity in «lesser and weaker contributions»; but, for Mill, it does not make sense to identify male political action with «greater and better contributions» and female political action with «lesser and weaker contributions». He tends to encapsulate women as «physically weak» persons or even as possible «victims», rather than as «modest contributors». That is why he rejects this possible contrast by claiming that “Nobody pretends to think that women would make a bad use of the suffrage” (On Representative Government, Chapter 8). On the contrary, ordinary badly educated persons are not encapsulated as «socially weak», but rather as «modest contributors» – they could probably make a bad use of the suffrage, and, as «modest contributors», they shouldn’t be given the same political weight that the elites have anyway. As regards women, Mill is aware that they can be even more interested in good government than men, because, being weaker, “they are more dependent on law and society for protection” (Ibid.). But, one is prone to wonder, why wouldn’t the same argument apply to the poor and badly educated? Aren’t they “more dependent on law and society for protection” than the rich and well educated? If the answer is NO, then it is probably so because Mill wants to encapsulate ordinary people as «modest contributors» and as possible tyrants (participants in a tyranny of majority), but never as «the weaker partners». The affirmative answer seems much more plausible. His failure to see the obvious analogy I have just mentioned can be explained easily. Mill was of course worried about the threats posed by a tyranny of majority, and this made him suspicious of the «dangerous classes»; at the same time, he was preoccupied by the condition of women, and this made him very sympathetic of them. Women, he thought, should not be labeled as less competent than men; instead, they should be given a better chance to develop and flourish. Splendid attitude based, probably, upon a good implicit argument. The argument would obviously develop the idea that the existing differences in competence and achievements (between men and women) were not «natural» and permanent, but artificial and contingent, and consequently easy to eliminate through better education and better social conditions. Excellent argument, indeed. But now Mill has a problem: why shouldn’t his splendid attitude and his excellent argument be extended to the «ordinary people», i.e., to those not included among the “wiser and better”? Why wouldn’t they too be given a better chance to develop and flourish, rather than being doomed to the single vote as (permanently) less competent than the elites, who have access to the plural one? The only answer I can think of is the following: «Women can make progress, but the bad and the stupid cannot». This we can understand; but it’s not a convincing argument – were Mill to advance it (which he did not), it would have been another example of
117
encapsulation. Ordinary people should not be encapsulated in the formula «bad and stupid»; for if they were, the whole architecture of Mill’s political thought would have collapsed. Why should one praise individuality, freedom of expression and debate, participation and democracy, if the majority of the people are simply bad and stupid? In such a case, paternalism, collective guidance (towards a General Good) of the «bad and stupid» by the «wiser and better» and aristocratic government should be recommended. As long as Mill sticks to his major options, he is somehow bound to reject the identification of ordinary people as «bad and stupid»; thus, he simply cannot afford to make the above‐mentioned answer. But Mill’s tendency towards encapsulation still played a big role in the context of his Utilitarian analysis. It was this tendency that made him look at women exclusively as «weak», not as «modest contributors», while he looks at ordinary badly educated people exclusively as «modest contributors», not as «weak». This is a bit disappointing, and one cannot help thinking that it would have been much better if, while talking about democracy, Mill decided to stick to his two «negative» principles, the principle of fallibility and the principle of self‐government, than to enter such Utilitarian analyses. His support for the plural vote is arguably the biggest error of his theory of democracy. Any attempt of elaborating this claim should probably start from the simplest arguments. (i) there is no reasonable and operational method of dividing citizens in «modest» and «major» political (or electoral, for that matter) contributors, and consequently there is no non‐arbitrary algorithm for selecting those who should be granted the right to plural vote. Who is going to make the distinction and, accordingly, the selection (in an unbiased manner)? By what criteria or standards? The level of education and various kinds of intellectual competence can be assessed, but there obviously is no simple and direct relationship between them and some sort of «political competence» (whatever that could mean!) that should be evaluated and relied upon in any selection of «the wiser and the better». indeed, one should question the very meaningfulness of the idea of «political and moral competence»; both politics and moral life are fields characterized by deep, often unbridgeable, differences of opinion and judgement, and these differences preclude any consensus concerning «competence». We know quite well who should evaluate competence in mathematics (and how should this be done), but there is no reasonably uncontroversial method of evaluating political (or moral) competence. Different groups are bound to have different views on competence.
(ii)
118
(iii) the idea of a political and moral elite (comprising «the wiser and the better») is arguably meaningless too. As we know now, knowledge is inevitably dispersed, so that no one is in general more competent than anyone else – some are, of course, «wiser» than others, but not always and not on any subject matter. That is, there is no such thing as an elite that is always more competent than the ordinary people and should thus be granted a superior electoral weight in general. Some people find perhaps «a right decision» more often than others, but nobody is in general «a better decision‐ maker» than all the others, and nobody is immune to error. Moreover, in different cases different people can afford (and manage) to be morally impartial; in different situations, different people can attain a high level of moral understanding. Thus, it is not always one and the same group that reaches «the highest level» of «moral competence». At different moments (different ballots), on different political and moral topics, there can be different «elites», i.e. different groups of people who happen to be «wiser and better» than others. But this kind of «pluralism» (which is unavoidable when «elites» are at stake) cast heavy doubts upon the plural vote. (iv) Even more dramatic: ballots are necessary precisely because in politics there is no other «objective» or «impartial» method of making «the right decision»; to suppose that there could be a way of selecting «the wiser and the better» (i.e., the persons who, at least statistically, have demonstrated a greater capacity of making «the right decision») is to provide a spectacular piece of muddled thinking: we acknowledge that there is no unbiased procedure of deciding what «the right political decision» is, and consequently we accept ballots as the only reasonable way of making political decisions – and, at the same time, we suppose that political and moral competence (the capacity «to make the right decisions») can be impartially assessed, and can be rewarded accordingly (by offering the plural vote to those who proved competent). The error involved is striking: as long as there is no uncontroversial method of establishing what «the right decision» was (in political matters), there obviously can be no uncontroversial method of deciding who exactly proved to be «better» at «making the right decision» in the past. How should, then, «the wiser and the better» be detected? (v) Mill’s argument is also based upon an intellectualist error: ballot is tacitly supposed to be exclusively (or at least mainly) a matter of intellectual (and moral) competence, whereas it obiously is also (and, perhaps, mostly) a matter of private and group interests. Voters promote their interests, and granting the plural vote to some would
119
boil down to granting them better chances to promote their interests. But why should some be privileged in this way? Are their interests identical (by definition) with some sort of «general good»? A positive answer to that question would ruin Mill’s individualism and liberalism. (vi) Even if one stresses that ballot is not just about interests, but also about sound political judgement, one should not forget that sound political judgement is often inextricably linked to interests; the task of systematically separating sound judgement from special interests is almost hopeless. Thus, privileging some kinds of judgement, one would also inevitably privilege some special interests, a procedure that runs directly against the principles of democracy, especially against the principle of equal consideration of interests. Exactly as «one man, one vote» is linked to (Bentham’s) «each to count for one, and none for more than one»,3 the plural vote is linked to «some to count for more than others.» (vii) Finally, Mill’s should not have forgotten his own fallibilism. «The wiser and the better» are not less exposed to error than ordinary people; they make their errors at a higher level (of competence, information and sophistication). They do not make «vulgar» mistakes (of the kind uneducated or unsophisticated people make); they simply make other errors, but they are prone to make others, not necessarily smaller. One could even venture to say that often great men make great mistakes, which is only another way of saying that they are as fallible as ordinary people. Thus, Mill’s own fallibilism limits his freedom of privileging elites politically. Somebody could think that I have just advanced a cheap relativistic argument (almost a sophism); but a more detailed discussion can prove that is not the case. What it is emphasized above is not that all people are in fact equally wrong or equally stupid (although in different ways); rather, I have stressed that all people are equally liable to error (although in different ways). The wiser are better protected against the errors made by the less wise, but they are liable to other errors; this fact does not put them in exactly the same position as the stupid, but shows that there is no guarantee they would make «the right choice» when granted the plural vote. It is also not sure at all that they would make mistakes less often than the ordinary people: for, while they would probably avoid many vulgar errors, they could also make some other ones, possibly due to the greater complexity and the challenging character of their analyses or
3
Or, as well‐known, “Everybody to count for one, and nobody for more than one.” 120
inspired by arrogance or self‐sufficiency. Sophisticated thought has its own epistemic risks, from which the less wise are spared. Thus, fallibility lays no smaller traps for the clever than it does for the stupid. Now, it is very unlikely that somebody could challenge Mill’s principle of fallibility by maintaining that there actually are infallible leaders or elites. But it is pretty sure that some could deny its relevance. «Claiming that everyone is fallible is philosophically OK», could someone reply, «but in real life there are moments when one has to make decisions quickly, and in such cases it is certainly not possible to start the whole mechanism or process of democratic consultation». Inclusiveness is, it seems, a nice ideal but can we live up to it? If the President of a certain country has only some minutes to decide whether to react or not against what seems to be a nuclear first strike coming from abroad, can he be expected to engage in democratic consultations? The right answer to that question, I think, consists in pointing out that there is some confusion behind it. A proper theory of democracy cannot simply claim that absolutely all particular decisions should be made democratically, through a long and complicated process of political consultation ‐ exactly as civilized self‐defence cannot mean that in absolutely all cases one should go to Court in order to protect oneself from physical abuse. There are special cases in which political leaders must act for the good of their citizens without consulting them, and Mill was not unaware of this necessity, as his well‐known example about the unsafe bridge (in the last part of On Liberty) proves. But claiming that such cases falsify the theory of democracy would be as absurd as claiming that special cases of personal violence justified by immediate self‐defence needs falsify the theory that in society there should be a monopoly on deliberate violence. In fact, such special cases (as the «danger of a first strike» one) do not indicate a failure of the principle of fallibility, for they don’t show that the President is or should be considered infallible; they only show that, unfortunately, in some exceptional situations one has to act as if one was infallible, because the costs of verifying the relevant information were prohibitive. If this is the sense in which we should take Carl Schmitt’s idea of «exception», then Schmitt was right, but his conclusions are harmless truisms. If, on the other hand, we should take him to mean that there are leaders who can define exceptions at will, arbitrarily, then his conclusions are very provocative but as hard to accept as the idea that legitimate self‐defence can be defined arbitrarily by judges. Only a convincing argumentation for these hard to accept conclusions could question the principle of fallibility; but such an argumentation is not in sight. *
121
The second pillar of Mill’s theory of democracy is the moral one. When pleading for the plural vote, Mill seems to have suddenly forgotten his own principles about moral and existential autonomy, about self‐government. If (as he claims in the first chapter of On Liberty)
“mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest”,
what should be gained by introducing the plural vote? The «one man, one vote» principle is the expression of everyone’s right to live «as seems good to himself», more exactly, the expression of everyone’s equal possibility of shaping things «as seems good to himself»; it promotes everyone’s equal participation in the shaping of everyone’s life. On the contrary, the plural vote is the expression of a privilege (that only some have) to put pressure over the rest; for it promotes the ideal of an elite that participates more (than other people) to the shaping of everyone’s life. Such an elite would be “compelling each to live as seems good to” that particular elite, or, at least, it would influence things in this direction. Paternalism becomes thus unavoidable (for, presumably, the elite acts in its specific way for the own good of «the ordinary people» and of every member of the community). If voting is meant to shape everyone’s life, the plural vote would end up in limitations to self‐government. The only way in which Mill’s plural vote can be defended coherently seems to be by saying that its aim was protection against the tyranny of majority. But even if seen as such, it is nothing more than a poor expedient, and that can easily be shown by asking: how plural should the plural vote be? If it is designed in a timid manner, such that each of «the wise and the better» had, say, two votes instead of one, the plural vote could prove useless: due to their small number, the enlightened few would probably remain a negligible voice on the political scene. If, on the contrary, the plural vote is designed boldly enough, such that each member of the elite had, say, one thousand votes instead of one, then it would probably be very useful for those members, but it could turn the majority of ordinary people into a permanent and powerless minority: «the wise and the better» themselves could thus exert a «tyranny» of their own. There is absolutely no guarantee that the enlightened few would not take advantage of the plural vote in order to impose their wish upon the rest. And is there some way in which one could determine exactly how plural should the plural vote be, in order that both undesirable alternatives be excluded? Mill, of course, has never answered this question. It is very likely that he has never doubted (and has never investigated) the practical possibility of establishing «the positive consequences» of the plural vote; he has not compared these consequences with the possible negative consequences one can think of. Once again, Utilitarianism made him blind to an important problem.
122
My conclusion is thus that Mill’s arguments for democracy are not irrelevant today; but that he somehow put himself in an awkward position, by insisting too much on Utilitarian analyses and by not insisting enough on explorations of the logical consequences of his two «negative» principles.
123
About Contributors
John R. LUCAS is Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford, and of The British Academy. He is the author of On Justice (Oxford, 1980); The Conceptual Roots of Mathematics (Routledge, 1999); Responsibility (Clarendon Press, 1993; Ethical Economics, with M.R. Griffiths (Macmillans, 1997); An Engagement with Platoʹs Republic, with Basil Mitchell (Ashgate, 2003) and many others; he is currently completing his latest book, Reason and Reality. Christopher Kirwan is Former Fellow of Exeter College, University of Oxford. He is the author of Logic and Argument (Duckworth, 1978); Augustine (Routledge, 1989); he also translated and commented Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Valentin MUREŞAN is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest. His main books are Commentary to Plato’s Republic (Paideia, Bucharest, 2000); The “Utilitarianism” of J.S. Mill (Paideia, Bucharest, 2003); A Commentary to the “Nicomachean Ethics” (Humanitas, Bucharest, 2006); Commentary to the “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals” (Humanitas, Bucharest, 2006). He translated into Romanian several works of J.S. Mill, B. Williams, P. Suppes, R.M. Hare et alii. John SKORUPSKI is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the Philosophy Department, St. Andrews University. He published John Stuart Mill (Routledge, 1989/1991); English Language Philosophy (Oxford, 1993); Ethical Explorations (Oxford University Press, 1999); Why Read Mill Today (Routledge, 2006), etc. Rob DEVIGNE is Professor of Political Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Tufts University. His latest book is Reforming Liberalism: J. S. Mill’s Use of Ancient, Religious, Liberal & Romantic Moralities (Yale University Press, 2006). George SCHEDLER is Professor and Chair of Philosophy Department at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is the author of Racist Symbols and Reparations; Philosophical Reflections on Vestiges of the American Civil War (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). Adrian‐Paul ILIESCU is Professor of Political Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest. He is the author of Wittgenstein: Why Philosophy Is Bound To Err (Peter Lang, 2000); Solitude and the Birth of Modernity
(New Europe College, 2000); An Introduction to Political Theory (All, 2002); The Anatomy of Political Evil (Ideea Europeană, 2005), etc. Cristian DUCU is PhD candidate at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest. He edited: The Problem of Knowledge in the Middle Ages (12th‐14th Cent.) (Pelican, Giurgiu, 2007); Proceedings of the International “Plotinus 204/205‐2005” Colloquium (University of Bucharest Press, Bucharest, 2007). Eldon EISENACH is a Former Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He published extensively on Liberalism: Worlds of Liberalism: Religion and Politics in Hobbes, Locke, and Mill (University of Chicago Press, 1981) Narrative Power and Liberal Truth: Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, and Mill (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002); The Social and Political Thought of American Progressivism, ed. and intro. (Hackett, 2006). Peter CAVE lectures for The Open University and City University. His latest publication: Can an a Robot be Human? 33 Perplexing Philosophy Puzzles (Oneworld, London, 2007). Dimitris SOTIROPOULOS is visiting Lecturer of Political Economy and History of Economic Thought at the Department of Economics, University of Peloponnese and the Department of Sociology, University of the Aegean, Greece. He has published papers in various referred journals (in Greek, English and German). Drăgan STOIANOVICI is Professor of Logic at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest. He is the author of Argumentation and Critical Thinking (University of Bucharest, 2005); General Logic (1990), Logic and Law (Edit. Paideia, 1992). He translated fundamental books from Karl Popper, G.H. von Wright, Bertrand Russell et alii. Sorin COSTREIE is Lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest. Currently, he is completing a second PhD at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
235
Readers
Add Comment