Abstract
One century after the publication of On Liberty, Sir Isaiah Berlin delivered his celebrated Inaugural Lecture before the University of Oxford entitled “Two Concepts of Liberty.”1 Berlin’s lecture is described by Ronald Dworkin as “the most famous modern essay on liberty” and praised by John Gray as developing “an argument of unsurpassed perspicuity.”2 It is therefore understandable that scholars would consider it alongside the famous nineteenth-century essay On Liberty and apply Berlin’s ideas to those of John Stuart Mill. Unfortunately, imposing Berlin’s two concepts on Mill’s theory has been a source of confusion and has added to the misunderstanding that surrounds Mill. The goal of this chapter will be to clear up this confusion and thereby regain a better understanding of Mill’s theory of liberty.
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Endnotes
Mill’s On Liberty was first published in February, 1859. Berlin’s lecture took place on October 31, 1958, and was published later that year. All page references to Berlin are taken from Four Essays on Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969). In addition to “Two Concepts of Liberty” (pp. 118–172), I will be citing Berlin’s “Introduction” (pp. ix-lxiii), and his essay “John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life” (pp. 173–206).
Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 267; John Gray “On Negative and Positive Liberty,” Political Studies 28:4 (1980), p. 508, reprinted in Gray’s Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 46. Dworkin also praises Berlin in “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Edna and Avishai Margalit, eds., Isaiah Berlin: A Celebration (London: The Hogarth Press, 1991), esp. p. 100; and, in the opening paragraphs of “Liberty and Pornography,” New York Review of Books,August 15, 1991, reprinted as “Pornography and Hate,” in Freedom’s Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 214ff. More recently, Lesley A. Jacobs echoes Dworkin’s sentiment when he describes Berlin’s essay as: “The single most important and influential analysis of freedom by a modern political philosopher.” See An Introduction to Modern Political Philosophy: The Democratic Vision of Politics (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997), pp. 72, 83. William L. McBride describes Berlin’s work as “a most unusually influential essay.” See “’Two Concepts of Liberty’ Thirty Years Later: A Sartre-Inspired Critique,” Social Theory and Practice, 16:3 (Fall, 1990), p. 298. See also Susan Mendus, “Tragedy, Moral Conflict, and Liberalism,” in David Archard, ed., Philosophy and Pluralism (Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 191–92.
Berlin, p. 121.
Ibid., pp. xliii, xlix, 122, 130, 132, 160, 166, (cf. p. 158).
According to J. P. Day, Plato was the creator of the concept of positive liberty. See “Individual Liberty,” in Of Liberty, A. Phillips Griffiths, ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 17. (Cf. Berlin, pp. xl, 129.) On page 18, Day also points out that Jeremy Bentham coined the term ‘negative liberty.’ For this see Bentham’s letter to John Lind (March/April, 1776), in The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. I, Timothy L. S. Sprigge, ed. (University of London: Athlone Press, 1968), letter #158, p. 310.
This has already been done by others. See for example William A. Parent, “Some Recent Work on the Concept of Liberty,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 11:3 (July, 1974). A good discussion is found in John Christman’s “Liberalism and Individual Positive Freedom,” Ethics, 101:2 (Jan., 1991). See also George G. Brenkert, Political Freedom (London: Routledge, 1991), ch. 1, sect. II.
Berlin, p. lvi.
Ibid., p. 127 (emphasis Berlin’s).
Ibid., pp. 122–23. Beyond negative liberty (and also social and political liberty), it is not clear if inabilities (such as not being able to fly) and unfulfilled wishes (such as not being a movie-star) would count as unfreedoms, since they are not caused by deliberate human interference. If we understand ‘freedom’ to mean the absence of constraint to actual and possible desires, and we understand a ’constraint’ to be whatever prevents satisfaction of an actual or hypothetical desire, then it follows that we are unfree to do what we are unable to do, regardless of the source of our inability. However, if we accept this reasoning, and consider any unfulfilled wish as unfreedom, then we run the risk of making freedom an ’utterly empty and unapproachable ideal.’ For a discussion on this point, see Joel Feinberg, Social Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), ch. 1, esp. pp. 8–9, 12–14. Feinberg suggests that “We should think of freedom as related to actual and possible wants rather than idle wishes.” (p. 8.)
Ibid., pp. 121–22, 130.
Ibid., p. 144.
Ibid., p. xlvii.
Berlin takes the position that negative liberty is valuable in and of itself, and not just instrumentally as a requisite for positive forms of liberty. But he also points out, in his response to critics, that “The freedom of which I speak is opportunity for action, rather than action itself.” (p. xliii.)
Berlin, p. 131.
Ibid., pp. 122, 130. See also page xlvii.
Ibid., pp. lvii, 132, 144.
Unless otherwise stated, all citations in this paragraph and the following are from Berlin, p. xliv, or p. 132.
Berlin, pp. 132, 150.
Ibid., p. 148. Here, Berlin is commenting on Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Du Contract Social [1762], Bk. I, ch. 7, sect. 54) and other prominent thinkers who claim that paternalism actually liberates us. Martin Hollis makes an interesting point when he likens Mill to Rousseau on this matter. “The final comment on Mill’s expostulation that ‘the principle of freedom cannot require a man that he be free not to be free’ is Rousseau’s that, men, being born free and being everywhere in chains must be forced to be free.” “J. S. Mill’s Political Philosophy of Mind,” Philosophy, XLVII:182 (Oct. 1972). Cf. John Plamenatz, “On le forcera d’Être libre,” Annales de Philosophe Politique, vol. 5 (1965), reprinted in Maurice Cranston and Richard S. Peters, eds., Hobbes and Rousseau: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972), pp. 318–332.
Ibid., p. 157. Here, Berlin quotes Immanuel Kant.
Ibid., p. 152.
Ibid., p. 154.
Ibid., p. 131, see also p. 144.
Ibid., p. 141.
Ibid., pp. 141–44.
Berlin connects negative freedoms with liberal political theory. See for example pp. 122–31 (esp. pp. 127–29), pp. 139, 163, 164.
Berlin, p. 134.
For example, Leslie Paul Thiele writes that Berlin thought positive liberty was treacherous. See hinking Politics: Perspectives in Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Political Theory (Chatham, New Jersey: Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1997), p. 176.
Berlin, pp. 127, 128, 139, 155, 160–61, 163, 165. See also “John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life,” p. 197.
Ibid., p. 160.
Ibid., pp. 127–28.
The closest Berlin comes is when he notes that some of Mill’s reasons for desiring liberty have little to do with his conception of freedom as noninterference (p. 160). Still, it does not occur to Berlin that Mill might also advocate positive freedoms. See also the introduction to the Four Essays, where he suggests that Mill saw ‘democratic self-government’ (an aspect of positive liberty) as a means to the attainment of happiness (p. xlvii).
In addition to Berlin, a legion of writers view Mill exclusively or primarily as a proponent of negative liberty. Among them are: Anonymous, “Mill on Liberty” The National Review, v. VIII (April, 1859), p. 407; Matthew Arnold, “A Courteous Explanation” (1866), cited in Douglas Bush, Matthew Arnold: A Survey of His Poetry and Prose (New York: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 150–51; Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill (London: Longmans Green, and Co., 1882), p. 104; Brian Barry, Political Argument (New York: Humanities Press, 1976), p. 42, pp. 141–45; Richard Bellamy, “T. H. Green and the morality of Victorian liberalism,” in Richard Bellamy, ed., Victorian Liberalism: Nineteenth-Century Political Thought and Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 135; Fred R. Berger, Happiness, Justice,and Freedom (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 250–51 (cf. p. 229); Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 46–47; Howard Cohen, Equal Rights For Children (Totawa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1980), pp. 63–65; Stefan Collini “Liberalism and the Legacy of Mill,” Historical Journal 20:1 (March, 1977), pp. 237–38; Roger Crisp, Mill on Utilitarianism (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 198–99; Lawrence Crocker, Positive Liberty: An Essay i n Normative Political Philosophy (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980), pp. 1, 71; J. P. Day (op. cit., endnote 5), pp. 19, 22, 29; Morris Dickstein, “Introduction: Pragmatism Then and Now,” in Morris Dickstein, ed., The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law, and Culture (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1998), p. 14; Wendy Donner, The Liberal Self John Stuart Mill’s Moral and Political Philosophy (Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 162; Gerald Dworkin, “Paternalism,” in Morality and the Law, Richard Wasserstrom, ed. (Belmont CA: Wadsworth, 1971), pp. 107–8; William Ebenstein, “John Stuart Mill: Political and Economic Liberty,” in Nomos IV: Liberty, Carl J. Friedrich, ed. (New York: Atherton Press, 1962), p. 94; James S. Fishkin, Justice, Equal Opportunity, and the Family (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 39–40; F. W. Garforth, Educative Democracy: John Stuart Mill on Education in Society (Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 9, and, John Stuart Mill’s Theory of Education (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1979), pp. 89, 165; James W. Garner, “Government and Liberty,” Yale Review XV (Feb., 1907), p. 364; Gerald F. Gaus, The Modern Liberal Theory of Man (London and Canberra: Croom Helm, 1983), pp. 164–65, 196 n. 5; Robert Goehlert, “Individuality and the Active Society: J. S. Mill’s Man as a Progressive Being,” Ph.D. thesis, Indiana University, 1981, pp. 27–29; James Gouinlock, Excellence in Public Discourse: John Stuart Mill, John Dewey, and Social Intelligence (New York: Teachers College Press, 1986), pp. 47, 51; F. L. van Holthoon, The Road to Utopia (Assen, the Netherlands: Van Gorcum & Company, 1971), p. 24; Richard Holt Hutton, “Mill On Liberty,” The National Review, vol. 8 (1859), p. 407; Lesley A. Jacobs, An Introduction to Modern Political Philosophy: The Democratic Vision of Politics (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997), pp. 69–75; Stewart Justman, The Hidden Text of Mill’s Liberty (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), pp. 4, 25, 66; Charles E. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 47; H. J. McCloskey, “A Critique of the Ideals of Liberty,” Mind 74:296 (October, 1965), p. 486 (cf. John Stuart Mill: A Critical Study [London: Macmillan, 1971], p. 104); C. B. MacPherson, Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1973), essay V, and, review of On Liberty and Liberalism, Mill Newsletter, XI:1 (Winter, 1976), p. 23; Michael S. McPherson, “Mill’s Moral Theory and the Problem of Preference Change,” Ethics, 92 (January, 1982), p. 267; Robert H. Murray, Studies i n the English Social and Political Thinkers of the Nineteenth Century, v. II (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1929), ch. VII, p. 301; William Allan Parent, “Mill’s Conception of the Summum Bonum,” Ph.D. thesis, Brown University, June, 1970, pp. 390, 401–2; Philip Petit, “Negative Liberty, Liberal and Republican,” European Journal of Philosophy, 1:1 (April, 1993), p. 34; Peter Radcliff, ed., Limits of Liberty: Studies of Mill’s ‘On Liberty’ (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1966), intro., p. 4, Berlin selection, pp. 74–81; Andrew J. Reck, review of Gouinlock’s Excellence in Public Discourse, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 27:1 (Jan. 1989), p. 166; J. C. Rees, Mill and His Early Critics (University College, Leicester, 1956), pp. 14, 39 (Cf. John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985], p. 49); Melvin Richter, The Politics of Conscience: T. H. Green and His Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 201; George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 3rd edition, 1961), p. 711 (cf. pp. 708, 715, 729); Vardaman R. Smith, “Friedman, Liberalism and the Meaning of Negative Freedom,” Economics and Philosophy, 14:1 (April, 1998), p. 78; David Spitz, preface to On Liberty (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1975), p. x; Leslie Paul Thiele, Thinking Politics: Perspectives in Ancient, Modern,and Postmodern Political Theory (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1997); Anthony Thorlby, “Liberty and Self-Development: Goethe and John Stuart Mill,” Neohelicon, 1:34 (1973), p. 93; David F. B. Tucker, Essay on Liberalism: Looking Left and Right (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), p. 3; W. L. Weinstein, “The Concept of Liberty in Nineteenth Century English Political Thought,” Political Studies, 13:2 (June, 1965), p. 145; Alan R. White, Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 138; Robert Wokler, “Rousseau’s Perfectibilian Libertarianism,” in The Idea of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin, Alan Ryan, ed. (Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 237, 245; and, The London Review, v. XIII (October, 1859), p. 274 (unsigned). I should point out that Berger, as well as Ebenstein, Garforth, Goehlert, the posthumous Rees, and Sabine recognize that elements of positive liberty are found in Mill’s writings, and therefore have a more balanced view of Mill’s theory of liberty. The ranks of those with a balanced view on Mill’s theory have grown significantly since I noticed the problem with applying Berlin’s two concepts to Mill. Among those who see both negative and positive liberty in Mill are: Christian Bay, The Structure of Freedom (Stanford University Press, 1958), p. 54; John N. Gray, “On Negative and Positive Liberty,” Political Studies, 28:4 (December, 1980), pp. 519, 523, and Liberalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), ch. 7; Alan S. Kahan, Aristocratic Liberalism: The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) ch. 4; Bruce Mazlish, James and John Stuart Mill: Father and Son in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1975), pp. 384–85; Maria H. Morales, Perfect Equality: John Stuart Mill on Well-Constituted Communities (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), p. 110; Peter Nicholson, “The reception and early reputation of Mill’s political thought,” in The Cambridge Companion to Mill (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 484–88, 495 n. 84 (Nicholson points out that Thomas Green and Bernard Bosanquet construe Mill to be a negative libertarian); Richard Norman, Free and Equal: A Philosophical Examination of Political Values (Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 11, 12, 35; Alan Ryan, Property (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 39, 42; Roger Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein, second edition (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 228; John Skorupski, John Stuart Mill (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 343 (cf. p. 20); and, his “Introduction” to The Cambridge Companion to Mill (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 4; Paul Smart, Mill and Marx: Individual liberty and the roads to freedom (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1991), pp. 2, 9799; G. W. Smith, “The Logic of J. S. Mill on Freedom,” Political Studies 28:2 (June, 1980), pp. 244–47; Gail Tulloch, Mill and Sexual Equality (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1989), p. 150; and, E. G. West, “Liberty and Education: John Stuart Mill’s Dilemma,” Philosophy 40:152 (April, 1965). See also Susan Mendus, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1989), pp. 47, 146.
Gerald MacCallum, in a footnote, challenges Berlin for lumping philosophers into positive or negative camps; however, he pays no special attention to Mill. “Negative and Positive Freedom,” Philosophical Review, 76:3 (July, 1967), p. 321. R. J. Halliday criticizes commentators for saying that Mill adopts a negative notion of liberty, but he cites only George H. Sabine’s A History of Political Theory, ch. 32, for evidence. Sabine does not actually say this; he develops his interpretation of Mill along different lines. Halliday goes on to suggest that the positive/negative distinction did not exist during Mill’s lifetime. John Stuart Mill (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 115.
As far as I know, only five writers call Mill a positive libertarian. See Richard Vernon, “John Stuart Mill and Pornography: Beyond the Harm Principle,” Ethics, 106:3 (April, 1996), pp. 623–24; H. S. Jones, “John Stuart Mill as Moralist,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 53:2 (April-June, 1992), p. 299; D. D. Raphael, Justice and Liberty (London: Athlone, 1980), p. 56, and Moral Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 83; Michael St. John Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill (New York: Macmillan, 1954), p. 403; and, Bernard Semmel John Stuart Mill and the Pursuit of Virtue (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 14, 166, 170–71, 196–97. While Semmel emphasizes positive liberty, he does recognize the negative dimension to Mill’s theory of liberty.
Berlin, p. 161. See also pp. xlvi, 163, 165, where Berlin places Mill squarely in the liberal tradition.
Mill did approve of authoritarian rule for underdeveloped countries, but only insofar as it promoted individual improvement and social progress. (On Liberty, p. 224.) I shall discuss Mill’s views on dominion and authority in chapters six and seven.
Berlin, p. 202. See below, endnote 40.
For instance, Berlin is mistaken when he writes of Mill that “His father brought him up in the strictest and narrowest atheist dogma.” (p. 203.) James Mill was an ordained Presbyterian minister who later turned to agnosticism. In his Autobiography,Mill writes of his father: Finding, therefore, no halting place in Deism, he remained in a state of perplexity, until, doubtless after many struggles, he yielded to the conviction, that, concerning the origin of things nothing whatever can be known. This is the only correct statement of his opinion; for dogmatic atheism he looked upon as absurd; as most of those, whom the world has considered Atheists, have always done. Autobiography of John Stuart Mill (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924), p. 28 (Collected Works I, p. 41). Others make a similar oversight. See, for example, Geoffrey Scarre Utilitarianism (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 83; William Stafford, John Stuart Mill (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press, 1998), pp. 10, 19 [cf. pp. 26, 45, 64]; and, J. Salwyn Schapiro, “John Stuart Mill, Pioneer of Democratic Liberalism in England,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 4:2 (April, 1943), p. 128. [Cf. James E. Crimmins “Bentham on Religion: Atheism and the Secular Society,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 47:1 (Jan-Mar., 1986), p. 99, n. 21; Crimmins’ Secular Utilitarianism: Social Science and the Critique of Religion in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); and, Crimmins’ “Introduction: Secular Utilitarian Critics of Organized Religion,” in Utilitarians and Religion (Bristol, England: Thoemmes Press, 1998), pp. 263ff.] As far as J. S. Mill’s beliefs are concerned, he denies atheism in his correspondences to Charles Westerton (June 21, 1865), and Frederick Bates (November 9, 1868), Collected Works XVI, pp. 1069, 1483. [Cf. the closing of Mill’s letter to the newspaper Republican (January 3, 1823), p. 26 (Collected Works XXII, p. 9).] Mill’s most substantial work on theology is his Three Essays on Religion (Collected Works X). The interested reader should also see Alan Millar, “Mill on religion,” in John Skorupski, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Mill (Cambridge University Press, 1998); David Berman, A History of Atheism in Britain:From Hobbes to Russell (London: Croom Helm, 1988), pp. 235–47; Jim Herrick, Against the Faith: Essays on Deists,Skeptics and Atheists (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1985) pp. 170–75; George C. Kerner, Three Philosophical Moralists: Mill, Kant, and Sartre (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Bernard Lightman The Origins of Agnosticism: Victorian Unbelief and the Limits of Knowledge (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); and, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1872–1914 (Vol. 1) (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967), pp. 47–48.
Berlin seems to see Mill through rose-colored glasses. Writing on Mill, he asks: “Can anyone doubt what position he would have taken on the Dreyfus case, or the Boer War, or Fascism, or Communism? Or, for that matter, on Munich, or Suez, or Budapest, or Apartheid, or colonialism, or the Wolfenden report?” (p. 202.) I have many doubts about what position Mill would take on some of these events and institutions. Mill’s record on colonialism is mixed at best. He did criticize the British government’s colonial policies on certain occasions; nevertheless, he was among the chief architects of colonial policy in India for over thirty years. He lived during the heyday of the ‘Empire’ and he thought that colonization could be useful for easing England’s economic and political problems, relieving overpopulation, spreading ’civilization,’ and stimulating progress. His impression of most non-Western peoples was unflattering. It is therefore reasonable to doubt Berlin on what stand Mill would have taken on colonialism, Suez, and the like. Several works bring out this darker side of Mill. See Eileen P. Sullivan, “Liberalism and Imperialism: J. S. Mill’s Defense of the British Empire,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 44:4 (Oct.-Dec., 1983); Lynn Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford University Press, 1994); Jeanne Clare Blarney, “Savages and Civilization: References to Non-Western Societies in the Theories of John Locke and John Stuart Mill,” Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, June, 1983; E. D. Steele, “J. S. Mill and the Irish Question: Reform, and the Integrity of the Empire, 1865–70,” The Historical Journal,13:3 (1970), pp. 435–36. Cf. Abram L. Harris, “John Stuart Mill: Servant of the East India Company,” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 30:2 (May, 1964). I will take up the issue of Mill on colonialism in greater detail in chapter six below. Unfortunately, Berlin is not the only reputed scholar guilty of projecting his political opinions on to Mill. See, e.g., John Gray, Liberalisms (op. cit., endnote 2), pp. 2–3.
In one passage, Berlin writes: “I am not in agreement with those who wish to represent Mill as favoring some kind of hegemony of right-minded intellectuals. I do not see how this can be regarded as Mill’s considered conclusion.” (p. 206n.) Of course, Mill never advocated a dictatorship of the intellectuals, but he endorsed and relied on the ‘instructed classes’ to educate and lead society. To support his view, Berlin points out that Mill warned against Comte’s elitist despotism. It is true that Mill opposed Comte’s plan for the distribution of power, but this was because it involved the wealthiest members of society, was based on governmental coercion and a controlled press, and was ’so liable to perversion.’ Mill’s ideas on elitism and a clerisy differed greatly from Comte’s. See Mill’s August Comte and Positivism, Collected Works X, pp. 302–3, 313–15, 326–27, 352. See also, Mill’s Autobiography, pp. 148–49 (Collected Works I, p. 219). For a discussion on Mill’s disagreements with Comte’s elitism, see Maurice Cowling, Mill and Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 1963), pp. 22–23.
Peter P. Nicholson, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists: Selected Studies (Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 120–26.
Ibid., esp. p. 126. Nicholson makes the point about Green’s sparing use of the term ‘positive liberty’ on p. 121, and he cites Green’s Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract (1881), in Works of Thomas Hill Green, R. L. Nettleship, ed. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1906), Vol. III, pp. 372, 384. For other scholars who follow Berlin’s lead in misconstruing Green’s theory of freedom, see Nicholson’s endnotes, particularly note 31 on p. 269, and note 9 on p. 270.
Philosophical Review, 76:3 (July, 1967), p. 314. MacCallum was not the first to conceptualize liberty in this fashion (see his endnote 2, p. 314). Francis W. Garforth develops a similar format in his article, “The ‘Paradox of Freedom,”’ (Studies in Education, 3:4 [July, 1962]). I should point out that MacCallum and his predecessors do not focus their attention on Mill; rather, they approach the subject of liberty from a general point of view. For another viewpoint advocating a single concept of liberty, see Stanley I. Benn, A Theory of Freedom (Cambridge University Press, 1988). See also Rodger Beehler, “For One Concept of Liberty,” Journal of Applied Philosophy, 8:1 (1991), and Kristjan Kristjansson, “For a Concept of Negative Liberty—but which Conception?” Journal of Applied Philosophy, 9:2 (1992). Kristjansson’s Social Freedom: The responsibility view (Cambridge University Press, 1996), offers a thoughtful analysis of negative liberty. For a critique of MacCallum, see Tom Baldwin, “MacCallum and the Two Concepts of Freedom,” Ratio 26:2 (1984), pp. 125–42.
Responding to MacCallum, Berlin rejects his triad on the grounds that “A man struggling against his chains or a people against enslavement need not consciously aim at any definite further state. A man need not know how he will use his freedom; he just wants to remove the yoke.” (p. xliii, n. 1.) See also Claude J. Gallipeau, Isaiah Berlin’s Liberalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), chapter 4, esp. pp. 91–93. In other words, negative liberty can be an end in itself. As a limited case, Berlin’s (and Galipeau’s) point makes sense, however, in the context of Mill, negative liberty is never an end in itself, and so Berlin’s objection has little relevance here.
Collected Works XVIII, p. 217.
Ibid., p. 293.
Ibid., pp. 226, 294.
Berlin, pp. 127, 139.
See John Stuart Mill’s Theory of Education, pp. 89, 165. Garforth repeats himself, practically verbatim in Educative Democracy, pp. 103–4. (Both books are cited above in endnote 33.)
John Stuart Mill: A Critical Study, pp. 104–5.
William Parent, “Mill’s Conception of the Summum Bonum,” p. 399 (op. cit., endnote 33.)
Autobiography, p. 170 (Collected Works I, p. 249).
Lawrence Crocker, Positive Liberty: An Essay in Normative Political Philosophy (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980), p. 1.
Ibid., pp. 69–74. Crocker recognizes Mill’s enthusiasm for diversity, however he fails to understand how this complements Mill’s theory of liberty. This is because he does not recognize that Mill’s conception of liberty extends beyond the absence of restrictions. Crocker follows the common interpretation and classifies Mill as a strict negative libertarian. He therefore figures that Mill’s enthusiasm for diversity must be an exception. (p. 71.) Like Berlin and Garforth (and most everyone else), Crocker is guilty of analyzing Mill and On Liberty too narrowly, and this leads him to overlook some basic features of Mill’s theory of liberty.
On Liber ty, pp. 262–63.
Berlin, pp. 150–52. As mentioned above, Berlin goes further to connect positive liberty and elitism with paternalism, authoritarianism, and other forms of despotism.
See above, endnote 41.
The discussion in the remainder of this paragraph follows On Liberty, pp. 266–69. The two quotations that are not marked by endnotes are taken from page 267. Numerous examples of Mill’s elitism can be found throughout his writings. Garforth offers scores of references to Mill’s elitism in chapter four of his Educative Democracy (op. cit., endnote 33). See also, Joseph Hamburger Intellectuals in Politics: John Stuart Mill and the Philosophic Radicals (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), pp. 81–107; F. L. van Holthoon, The Road to Utopia (Assen, the Netherlands: Van Gorcum & Company, 1971), chapters four and five.
“Sedgwick’s Discourse,” London Review, April, 1835 (Collected Works X, p. 66). For a further analysis of Mill’s views on elitism, see below, chapter seven.
Many writers overlook this point, and charge that Mill’s elitism neglects the common man. See Manfred Weber, Verbesserung Der Menscheit: Untersuchungen zum politischen Denken John Stuart Mills (University of Munich, 1971), pp. 170–71; Paul Smart, Mill and Marx: Individual liberty and the roads to freedom (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1991), pp. 97, 104, 108ff; and, Judith N. Shklar, The Faces of Injustice (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 92. Maurice Cowling, whom I discuss in the following paragraphs, takes a similar view. These critics fail to consider Mill’s concern for the development of everyone and the elites’ role in elevating the masses. They do not account for important passages in On Liberty (e.g., pp. 243, 270). For other discussions demonstrating Mill’s concern with advancing the interests of the common people, see his letter to D’Eichthal (Nov. 7, 1829), Collected Works XII, p. 40, and The Early Draft of John Stuart Mill’s “Autobiography,” Jack Stillinger, ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961), pp. 188–89. See also, Wendy Donner, The Liberal Self John Stuart Mill’s Moral and Political Philosophy (Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 129, 159ff, and “Mill’s Utilitarianism,” in John Skorupski, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Mill (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 271.
Mill and Liberalism, pp. 86–93. (In 1990, Cambridge University Press published a second edition of Cowling’s work.)
Ibid., chapter 1. Cowling describes Mill’s works as a “morally insinuating, proselytizing doctrine.” Continuing, he writes: Mill was a proselytizer of genius: the ruthless denigrator of existing positions, the systematic propagator of a new moral posture, a man of sneers and smears and pervading certainty. It is in this respect that he has now to be considered. (p. 93.) For another critical interpretation of Mill advocating an intolerant, proselytizing ‘militant liberalism,’ see Aleksandras Shtromas, “Ideological Politics and the Contemporary World: Have We Seen the Last of ’Isms’?” in Aleksandras Shtromas, ed., The End of “Isms”? Reflections on the Fate of Ideological Politics after Communisms’s Collapse (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), pp. 193–94.
Ibid., p. 117, p. xii.
See Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), chapters 2 and 3, esp. pp. 64–71; H. J. McCloskey, John Stuart Mill: A Critical Study, p. 97; and, Shirley Robin Letwin, The Pursuit of Certainty (Cambridge University Press, 1965). See also, Stewart Justman, The Hidden Text of Mill’s Liberty (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), p. 122ff.
C. L. Ten offers a thoughtful refutation of Cowling’s thesis in Mill On Liberty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 144–51. See also, Graeme Duncan, Marx and Mill: Two Views of Social Conflict and Social Harmony (Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 276–80.
Berlin, p. xliv (see text above, corresponding to note 17).
In Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore Jr., and Herbert Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), pp. 86, 93, 106.
Ibid., p. 83. The interested reader might find it interesting to read Ariel Dorfman’s, “The Infantilizing of Culture,” in Donald Lazere, ed., American Media and Mass Culture: Left Perspectives (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987). This is excerpted from Dorfman’s The Empire’s Old Clothes: What the Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heroes Do to Our Minds (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983).
Ibid., p. 111.
Ibid., pp. 112–13.
Ibid., pp. 84, 90. For a liberal’s response to Marcuse, see David Spitz’s “Pure Tolerance: A Critique of Criticisms,” Dissent, 13:5 (Sept-Oct., 1966), pp. 510–25 [reprinted in The Real World of Liberalism (University of Chicago Press, 1982), ch. 4]; and Alasdair Maclntyre, Herbert Marcuse: an Exposition and a Polemic (New York: The Viking Press, 1970). The interested reader should also see Alex Callinicos, “Repressive toleration revisited: Mill, Marcuse, Maclntyre,” in Aspects of Toleration: Philosophical Studies, eds., John Horton and Susan Mendus (London and New York: Methuen, 1985), pp. 53–74.
I believe that Mill’s vagueness was intentional. On this point I disagree with Brenda Almond, who writes that in On Liberty, Mill “argued that a clear line could be drawn in answering such questions between the parts of a person’s conduct that concern or affect only that person, and those which also affect others.” The Philosophical Quest (London: Penguin Books, 1988), p. 55. See also Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 182; Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), pp. 76ff; and, H. J. McCloskey, John Stuart Mill: A Critical Study, p. 107.
See, for example, Robert Paul Wolff, The Poverty of Liberalism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), p. 24; J. R. Lucas, The Principles of Politics (Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 174–75, 345; and, J. A. Hobson, The Social Problem: Life and Work (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1901), pp. 88–89. See also John Allet, New Liberalism: The Political Economy of J. A. Hobson (University of Toronto Press, 1981) pp. 185–86.
See for example, Lord Patrick Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), ch. 1 (cf. ch. 6). See also James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (Cambridge University Press, 1967).
Autobiography, p. 177. (Collected Works I, p. 259.)
The Subjection of Women (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1869), p. 1 (Collected Works XXI, p. 261).
Ibid., p. 27 (p. 271).
Ibid., p. 98 (p. 302).
Ibid., p. 178 (p. 336). In this context, Mill writes: “After the primary necessities of food and raiment, freedom is the first and strongest want of human nature.
Ibid., p. 114 (p. 309).
Ibid., p. 182 (p. 338).
See, for example, James Fitzjames Stephen (op. cit., endnote 75), p. 167; Willmoore Kendall, “The ‘Open Society’ and Its Fallacies,” American Political Science Review, 54:4 (1960) [reprinted in both the Norton Critical Edition of On Liberty, David Spitz, ed. (op. cit., endnote 33), and Limits of Liberty, Peter Radcliff, ed. (op. cit., endnote 33)]; Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill, pp. 33, 272, and On Looking into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society, ch. IV, esp. pp. 76ff, 104ff; James Gouinlock, Excellence in Public Discourse: John Stuart Mill, John Dewey, and Social Intelligence (New York: Teachers College Press, 1986), pp. 47, 75; Max Lerner, introduction to Essential Works of John Stuart Mill (New York: Bantam, 1961), p. xxviii; Oskar Kurer, John Stuart Mill: The Politics of Progress (New York: Garland Publishing, 1991), p. 192; James A. Colaiaco, James Fitzjames Stephen and the Crisis of Victorian Thought (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), ch. 7, esp. p. 134; Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint (op. cit., endnote 73), pp. 185, 195–96; and, Thomas Hurka, Perfectionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 148.
At least, this is what Mill claims. Several writers have challenged Mill’s claims and contend that he was not a utilitarian or that he does not argue for liberty in a utilitarian way. For reasons given in chapter three, I do not subscribe to this view.
The Letters of John Stuart Mill, Hugh S. R. Elliot, ed. (London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1910), Appendix A, p. 379 (Collected Works XXVII, p. 661).
For instance, Willmoore Kendall, who never notices Mill’s message of growth, finds it easy to conclude that extending the freedoms Mill advocates in chapter two will “constitute a major onslaught against Truth.” (American Political Science Review [op. cit., endnote 83], p. 979.) In this egregious article (which has been reprinted several times in anthologies on and about On Liberty), Kendall attributes an extremist position to Mill, against which he then argues. He claims that Mill confronts the reader with a choice between ‘unlimited freedom of speech or all-out thought control.’ On Kendall’s interpretation, Mill’s over-enthusiasm for liberty (and disregard for truth and improvement) blind him to the dire consequences that unrestricted freedom brings. Kendall writes: a society as Mill prescribed, “that regards unlimited free speech as its primary value,” will descend ineluctably into ever-deepening differences of opinion, into progressive breakdown of those common premises upon which alone a society can conduct its affairs by discussion, and so into the abandonment of the discussion process and the arbitrament of public questions by violence and civil war. (p. 978.)
I do not wish to imply that liberty or individuality serve no other functions. To be sure, liberty is highly valued for numerous reasons beyond making individual expression possible. Individuality is highly valued as well. (See, for example, On Liberty,p. 261.) For those who construe Mill’s utilitarianism in a narrow way, this is puzzling. Garforth offers a thoughtful discussion of the value Mill places on individuality in Educative Democracy (op. cit., endnote 33), pp. 82–84.
Utilitarianism (Collected Works X, p. 216). See also Mill’s review of the second volume of Democracy in America (Collected Works XVIII, p. 169) and Principles of Political Economy, Bk. V, ch. xi, s. 6 (Collected Works III, p. 943). Several of Mill’s critics seem not to notice that he balances the principle of individuality with other values. See, for example, Frederic Harrison, “John Stuart Mill,” Nineteenth Century, 40:235 (July-December, 1896), pp. 493, 504; Henry D. Aiken, “The Justification of Social Freedom,” in Nomos IV: Liberty, p. 124; Susan Mendus, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1989), pp. 44, 71; Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), pp. 23, 30, 216; and, Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 133, 141. See also Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Looking into the Abyss (op. cit., endnote 73), pp. 79ff; and, James T. Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought,1870–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 52.
On Liberty, chapter four, p. 277.
On Liberty, p. 266.
Ibid., p. 267; see also Autobiography p. 179 (Collected Works I, p. 260).
Ibid., p. 261. In an article entitled “The Negro Question,” Mill writes: “spontaneous improvement, beyond a very low grade,—improvement by internal developement, without aid from other individuals or peoples—is one of the rarest phenomena in history.” (First published in Fraser’s Magazine, XLI [Jan., 1850], p. 29 [Collected Works XXI, p. 93].)
Ibid., p. 270.
See Principles of Political Economy, Bk. IV, ch. vii, s. 6–7 (Collected Works III, pp. 790–96); see also pp. 768, 942.
On Liberty, p. 274.
Ibid. See also Mill’s letter to De Tocqueville (May 11, 1840), in Collected Works XIII, p. 434. For brief discussions of Mill’s “Sinophobia,” see Edward Alexander, “The Principles of Permanence and Progression in the Thought of J. S. Mill,” in John M. Robson and Michael Laine, eds., James and John Stuart Mill/Papers of the Centenary Conference (University of Toronto Press, 1976), p. 134; and, Susan Mendus, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism, pp. 49, 67.
See, for example, James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 80, 84; and, Susan Mendus, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism, p. 27. See also, John Gray, Mill on liberty: a defence (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), p. 87.
On Liberty, p. 272. For a different view on ‘custom,’ see Principles of Political Economy, Bk. II, ch. iv.
John Stuart Mill: A Critical Study, p. 104.
Of course, Mill would agree that the freedom to make mistakes is indeed freedom. On this point, see Berlin, p. 148, note 1, and p. 192; and, F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 18. See also below, chapter seven.
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Habibi, D.A. (2001). On Liberty: Positive and Negative. In: John Stuart Mill and the Ethic of Human Growth. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 85. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2010-6_4
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