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portant bearing, at least in those circumstances where things are in flux and can still go one way or the other. I wouldn’t say that Mill’s tone is particularly optimistic. He is doing what he thinks he can best do in the present circumstances.
The parts of Mill’s On Liberty to read particularly carefully:
I: entire
II: ¶¶1–11; and the last 5 paragraphs, 37–41
III: ¶¶1–9; 14; 19; and an important passage in ¶13
IV: ¶¶1–12
V:¶¶1–4; and the last 8 paragraphs, 16–23 (re government and state socialism and bureaucracy).
§2. Some Preliminary Points about Mill’s Principle
1. Before taking up the meaning and force of Mill’s Principle of Liberty, I consider a few preliminary points relating to it. Note first that he thinks of it as covering certain enumerated liberties. They are given by a list and not by a definition of liberty in general, or as such. (This procedure was used in justice as fairness, where Mill is followed in this respect.) It is these listed liberties which receive special protection and which are defined by certain legal and moral rights of justice.
(a)First (covering the inward domain of consciousness), liberty of conscience, liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical and speculative, scientific, moral or theological. Freedom of speech and press is practically inseparable from the preceding.
(b)Second, liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the “plan of our life to suit our own character,” without restraint so long as we do not injure the legitimate interests (or moral rights) of others, and even though they think our conduct foolish, degrading, or wrong.
(c)Third, liberty to combine with others for any purposes that do not injure the (legitimate) interests of others; freedom of association. (For a, b, c, see: I: ¶12.) Mill adds that “No society in which these liberties are not, on the whole, respected, is free, whatever may be its form of government; and none is completely free in which they do not exist absolute and unquali-
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fied” (I: ¶13). Thus, for the most part, Mill presents his argument by defending these specific liberties. He focuses primarily on the first two in Chapters
IIand III, respectively.
2.Next, observe the scope and the conditions under which Mill says the Principle of Liberty applies:
(a) It does not apply to children and immature adults; or to the mentally disturbed (I: ¶10).
(b) It does not apply to backward societies: he says: “Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion” (I: ¶10). Mill notes that the nations with which he is concerned in the essay are nations that have long since reached this stage.
(c) Later Mill adds that the Principle does not apply to a people surrounded by external enemies, and always liable to hostile attack. Nor does it apply to a people beset by internal commotion and strife, in either of which a relaxation of self-command might be fatal (I: ¶14).
3.From these remarks it is clear that the Principle of Liberty is not a first or supreme principle: it is subordinate to the Principle of Utility and to be justified in terms of it. Rather, the Principle of Liberty is a kind of mediate axiom (Utilitarianism, II: ¶¶24–25). But nevertheless one of great importance: it is a principle of public reason—a political principle to guide the public’s discussion in a democratic society.
That the Principle of Liberty is viewed by Mill as a mediate axiom, a subordinate principle (II: ¶24), is confirmed by what he says in I: ¶11: he writes: “. . . I forego any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right, as a thing independent of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions.” He adds the very crucial rider: “. . . but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.”
In the next lecture, I shall discuss these permanent interests and try to connect them with the psychological principles that underlie Mill’s view. For now I note that among them are interests in the firm guarantee of the moral rights of justice, which establish the “very groundwork of our existence” (Utilitarianism, V: ¶25). Another permanent interest is an interest in the conditions of free individuality, which conditions are an essential part of the engine of progressive change.
Mill’s idea is that only if a democratic society follows the Principle of
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Liberty in regulating its public discussion of the rules bearing on the relation of individuals and society, and only if it adjusts its attitudes and laws accordingly, can its political and social institutions fulfill their role of shaping national character so that its citizens can realize the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.
§3. Mill’s Principle of Liberty Stated
1.Mill states the Principle of Liberty in I: ¶¶9–13; IV: ¶¶3, 6; V: ¶2, with further explanation in ¶¶3 and 4. In the first statement it reads as follows (I: ¶9): “. . . 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.” He adds that: “. . . 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 a sufficient warrant.” Someone’s own good is a good reason for: “remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise.” To justify such coercion requires that the conduct in question is likely to produce evil to some one else. Regarding the part of a person’s conduct which concerns himself alone, Mill says: “his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign” (I: ¶9).
2.This principle is, of course, intended by Mill to apply to restraints on liberty that are the result of what Mill calls the “moral coercion of public opinion,” as well as to the restraints of law and other institutions enforced by sanctions of the state. We can formulate the principle of liberty in the form of three clauses as follows:
(a)First Clause: Society through its laws and the moral pressure of common opinion should never interfere with individuals’ beliefs and conduct unless those beliefs and conduct injure the legitimate interests, or the (moral) rights, of others. In particular, only reasons of right and wrong should be appealed to in public discussions. This excludes three kinds of reasons: Liberty, III: ¶9; IV: ¶3.
(i)Paternalistic reasons, which invoke reasons founded on other persons’ good—defined in terms of what is wise and prudent from their individual point of view.
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(ii)Reasons of excellence and ideals of human perfection, specified by reference to our, or to society’s, ideals of excellence and perfection. (Utilitarianism, II: ¶6; On Liberty, IV: ¶¶5, 7. All of IV: ¶¶3–12 is important.)
(iii)Reasons of dislike or disgust, or of preference, where the disliking, disgust, or preference cannot be supported by reasons of right and wrong, as defined in Utilitarianism, V: ¶¶14–15.
Thus, one way to read Mill’s Principle of Liberty as a principle of public reason is to see it as excluding certain kinds of reasons from being taken into account in legislation, or in guiding the moral coercion of public opinion (as a social sanction). In the case of public reason, the three kinds of reasons given above count for zero.
I call your attention here to a question of interpretation. I have read the first clause of the Principle of Liberty as saying that society should never interfere with an individual’s belief and conduct unless that person’s beliefs and conduct injure the legitimate interests, or the moral rights, of others. This doesn’t always fit with Mill’s own way of stating the principle. He says in I: ¶9: “. . . the sole end for which mankind are warranted . . . in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection.” Or: “. . . to prevent harm to others.” Or: “the conduct . . . must be calculated to produce evil to some one else.” Or: “the only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others.” And in I: ¶11 he speaks of conduct “hurtful to others,” and in IV: ¶3, of conduct that “affects prejudicially the interests of others.”
Obviously much that others do concerns us, but that is not to say that what they do produces evil to us. As Mill says in IV: ¶3, “The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others . . . without going the length of violating any of their constituted rights.” “Concern” and “affect” are general terms covering much. We must decide, then, how to resolve this implicit ambiguity and vagueness of Mill’s language and to do so in a way that makes sense of his text. To this end I read the leading text as given by III: ¶9 and supported by IV: ¶3. So we say the following, drawing on IV: ¶3:
First Clause: Society should never interfere with the individual’s beliefs and conduct by law or punishment, or by moral opinion as coercive, unless the individual’s beliefs and conduct injure—that is, wrong or violate—the legitimate interests of others, either in express legal provisions (assumed to be justified), or by tacit understanding ought to be considered as (moral) rights.
This still needs some commentary and interpretation, but we are now
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getting a definite doctrine. Now let’s take bits at the start of III: ¶9 and later parts of the paragraph to render it more exact: Society is to allow the cultivation of individuality “within the limits imposed by the (moral) rights and the (legitimate) interests of others.” Hence, individuals are “to be held to rigid rules of justice for the sake of others” and within these limits they are to give fair play to the nature of different persons, allowing them to lead different lives as they choose, because “whatever crushes individuality is despotism.”
Accepting this for the moment, I continue the exposition.
Now, Mill is not denying that in other contexts—say in the context of personal life, or in the internal life of various associations—considerations that fall short of violating the (moral) rights of others can be sound reasons. Of course they can be. Nor is he denying that our dislike of and our annoyance with the beliefs and conduct of others is painful to us, even when it does not affect our rights or legitimate interests. Of course it is painful! And so it is a disutility, to use the general term.
His view is that to advance the permanent interests of humankind as a progressive being, society does better if it resolutely adheres to the Principle of Liberty which directs it to exclude the three kinds of reasons noted above. Thus, Mill’s principle imposes a strategic constraint on the reasons admissible in public political discussion and thereby specifies an idea of public reason. (Compare this to the idea of public reason in Restatement.)2
3. Second Clause: If certain kinds of individual belief and conduct do injure the legitimate interests and moral rights of others, as shown by the considerations of right and wrong admissible by the first clause, then public discussion may properly take up the question whether those beliefs and conduct should be in some way restricted. The question may then be discussed on its merits, but of course excluding the three kinds of reasons noted above.
Observe that because injury to the legitimate interests or moral rights of others (as currently understood, or specified) can alone justify the interference of law and moral opinion, it does not follow that it always does justify it. The question remains to be discussed on its merits in terms of admissible reasons.
2. To publicly justify our political judgments to others is to convince them by public reason, that is, by ways of reasoning and inference appropriate to fundamental political questions, and by appealing to beliefs, grounds, and political values it is reasonable for others also to acknowledge and endorse. Rawls, Restatement, p. 27. See also §26.
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