1 BLACKBOARD NOTES ON ON LIBERTY, CHAPTER 1 Philosophy 13 Fall, 2007 In chapter 1 of On Liberty Mill states that the problem of liberty has changed its aspect with the emergence of modern democratic societies. When society was ruled by a king or a few aristocrats, the struggle for individual liberty took the form of limiting the power and prerogatives of the rulers. Once the possibility of replacing minority rule with democratic rule became salient, reformers identified the struggle for liberty with the struggle for democracy. In the middle of the 19th century, we now have experience of democratic regimes, and can see that a democratic constitution of society is fully compatible with tyranny of the majority--laws favored by the majority that wrongfully restrict the liberty of individual citizens. The tyranny of society over the "separate individuals who compose it" can be exercised by laws and official acts of government officials, but can also be exercised through informal means. Tyranny of the majority can be political or social, and social tyranny may be "more formidable than many kinds of political oppression," since the former type of tyranny "leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself" (all the quotations in this paragraph are from p. 4). The last phrase registers Mill's concern that in democratic society those who suffer from wrongful restriction of liberty may not experience the restriction as onerous or believe it to be wrongful. How do we draw the line between morally acceptable and unacceptable restrictions of individual liberty? Mill says we cannot merely rely on our prereflective judgments or sentiments about what is acceptable and what is not. Our prereflective views that strike us as just common sense or as intuitively obvious may simply reflect the fact that we have been socialized into the prevailing customs and traditions of our tribe and have internalized its dominant norms. Sounding a Marxian note, Mill writes that the norms dominant in a given society may be observed to differ greatly from the norms enforced in other societies, and in any given society the dominant norms are likely to reflect the interests of the dominant social groups. We cannot then rely on our gut feelings or untutored common sense. We need to think critically about the customs and morals of our own tribe and try to develop principles that can yield judgments about cases that make sense to us after critical reflection. Mill's proposed "one very simple" principle concerning the social regulation of individual liberty is stated on page 9; it's often called the Liberty Principle or the Harm Principle. The principle is stated in what look to be two different versions on the same page: Version 1: The only good reason to restrict individual liberty is to prevent harm to others. (Mill: "the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection.") Version 2: The only good reason to restrict individual liberty is that the individual conduct that it is proposed to restrict causes or threatens to cause harm to others. (Mill: "To justify [compelling him or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise], the2 conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else.") An example that illustrates the difference between the versions: If I refrain from giving my money to overseas famine relief, many will die. But my refraining from giving does not cause harm to those who will die. Society might restrict my liberty, by requiring me to give my money to famine relief, in order to prevent harm to others, namely, those who would die from famine in the absence of aid. Mill seems to be trying to deny the difference between the versions on page 11, where he writes, "A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury." See the editor’s introduction by Elizabeth Rapaport for a different interpretation of the basic liberty principle that Mill is asserting in this book. The entire discussion under the heading “Reading the Central Argument of the Text” in this Introduction is worth reading. Limitations of the scope of the Liberty Principle. Mill does not assert the Liberty Principle as being timelessly, universally valid for all persons. He asserts that the principle is to be applied only to sane nonfeebleminded adults (pp. 9-10). He also asserts that the principle should be applied only to modern, civilized societies, and that despotism may be "a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians" (p. 10). He restates this qualification: the Liberty Principle should be applied only "when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion." The relationship between the two formulations is unclear: surely members of nonliterate peoples can and do benefit from discussion of their common affairs and about how best to live. Perhaps Mill thinks they do not benefit enough, but how much is "enough"? Perhaps Mill's rough idea is that the Liberty Principle should be applied only to societies in which the population is educated and literate. Mill's ultimate allegiance. Mill declares on p. 10 that he is a utilitarian. The fundamental standard for assessing individual acts and social practices should be utility, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, according to Mill. He rejects the idea that abstract rights independent of utility are a reasonable guide for policy. One might say that the Liberty Principle expresses the idea that each person has a natural right of self-ownership, but Mill does not say this. He writes, "I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being." What is "utility in the largest sense"? Chapter 3 partially answers this question, but critics of On Liberty have queried whether Mill's argument for liberty as a whole does not implicitly appeal on a fundamental level to the idea of a natural right that Mill explicitly disavows. On p. 9 Mill writes, "In the part [of an individual's conduct] which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his