Reaction Paper #2 – John Stuart Mill
(“On Liberty” 1859, “System of Logic” (excerpt) 1843)
Objectives:
Describe why you most liked the philosophy of John Mill
Evaluate Mill
Be creative, skilled, and fresh
2-3 pages
Surprise
From our lecture and online readings, it seemed that Mill had four points on why and how freedom of speech for all men is the most important of rights we may have. This first I do recall now and agree with, and it helps me remember why he was my favorite and most memorable author among our options. He spoke of the dignity of the human being, of the person voicing his views and being heard as a great and necessary thing, such that, if we do not voice our views, or are denied our voice, a greater injustice is done – essentially diminishing the value of a man and denying his ability to think-in and benefit his society, while-he-yet-lives, as if he did not!
That having been before committing to my choice of Mill, I can admit two things. Firstly, I am not at all used to learning so many names and terms as quickly as I have in this course, and I am, and most always have been rather bad with names. That to this: I mentally combined Mill with Hick when I chose to write on who-I-thought-was Mill. Secondly, I had read only in a cursory fashion Mill's 'On Liberty' essay in our text a few weeks back, relying mainly on our online lecture and summary materials for the assignments. While I apprehended nothing I'd disagree with, and generally understood the ideas he presented, I was wrong to say Mill's was at all a quiet voice amongst the political philosophers we read that week. A CLEAR voice may have been more accurate. Having now carefully and patiently waded through his essay, his voice resonates clear and direct – if exceedingly profound – as compared to more contemporary material. I can say now that the man here speaks with a voice both powerful and convicted. John Mill's “On Liberty” is at once both shaming for how far we have let our democratic ideas and efforts slip away from us, and a call to conscience, to redemption, of our dignity and society, from an apathy and corruption we have allowed ourselves to degenerate into.
Reaction Paper #2 – John Stuart Mill, cont'd
John Mill brings a prophetic vision to politics that, though I have never honestly looked for, I was truly shocked to find even existed. His work presents a razor-sharp awareness of how we as a society have developed since the ages of “Spartans and Helots, planters and Negroes, princes and subjects, nobles and roturiers”, of what these class divides meant in his day, of our collective sensibilities as human beings to fall toward an outsourcing of private contemplation of the worth of things, and of our old habits of avoiding the considering and remembering (re-membering) of what ideas mean, and of forgetting the values of all we pretend we still know.
Mill demonstrates an awareness of how we – both in his day, in ages past, and even today – tend to degenerate into old habits of thoughtlessness, ignorance, and neglect. Given this, Mill traces our political development from early-on. He describes the rise and problems of the iron-ruling Monarchical form of government popular in Europe at the time. He follows with the gradual and necessarily-sought solutions to tyrrany attempted by representative leadership, bodies, constitutional contracts, and eventually term-limits to safeguard the rights of the governed. The cycle of neglect continues, as we again outsource the proper defense of our rights to others with more power and, ultimately, less of an interest in protecting against combative authoritarian rule by a hostile few, or a one.
As the ruled group emerges with ever more power, Mill cautions us against what he calls the “tyranny of the majority”, where the self governance of the many and of individuals can just as easily turn into a tyranny by the will of the many, or only the most vocal party's opinions, against the will of the one. He recommends that all men be left to their own volition with matters pertaining to their person alone, that none should be imposed upon for any reason save to protect others against harm.
Our own sloth, mindlessly culturally promulgated today by the mantra of the modern age: “Don't Make Me Think!” and the handed-on and celebrated aesthetic of just working hard and “minding one's own business, and not harming anybody or calling any attention to myself” has permitted and encouraged us to compromise on what it means to be men (and women, inclusively): to protect what good there is in the world, and to cultivate these goods and virtues, for the betterment and realizing of ourselves and of all. If we include not other's opinions, what right have we – so uninformed and culturally diminished – not to? to go our own road alone? We do not know the value of the things we say or do because we do not question them often enough to even remember them now! All opinions must be welcome, as Mill says.
Reaction Paper #2 – John Stuart Mill, cont'd
In “On Liberty”, Mill presents what to me is a very heartening incidence of, what seemed to him, the only field upon which the battle of the matter of men successfully opposing government has been decided – religion. Here, he shares, few have stood successfully to defend the right of all men to believe as they would, with no need to justify their beliefs to others or the state. I can but wonder if he would hold that same view now a century and a half later, when the formed ideologies of mandate religious pluralism and political correctness/censorship so often verge on imposing against the individual's right to conscionably deny mandate provisions of the state with regard to life, fertility, abortion, immigration, charity, and the state of human dignity.
For the free will of men, or the possibility of, he presents what is alternately close to elements of indeterministic compatiblism of free will, and to soft determinism, where most possibilities beyond the individual are imposed him, but where his personal decision as to what he will be and think are free for him to decide upon. His writing here on the matter of our fate or freedom is again clear, if far less profound and complex than his famous essay from before, so much so that for a moment one could easily forget (as I did!) that the two were penned by the same hand and mind! My taste on the subject, and on most of such quality tends to less decided-upon resolutions than Mill presents us with, which leads me to greatly favor Richard Taylor's take on the subject instead. While Mill remains very clear about his take on free will, and is consistently resolute that man may determine his way, if not his environment, he is yet too closed-in and inclusive on the subject, and does not seem receptive to the mystery and undecidedness of imperfect life and development – something I am very sensitive about, and which Taylor acknowledges in not over-reaching his arguments to be as all-inclusive as Mill about.
Generally, Mill's view is one where the least governance of men is best. I tend to agree. We cannot economically or morally afford to have a cop on every corner, but a man or woman striving to know, love, and share the rightness in every home with the least amount of societal imposition into their lives is much preferable.
The distinction Mill presents between the concept of man and his society being at one time "self-governing", and at a later becoming governed "each by all the rest", and not just a ruler" impressed me. The rhetoric of our American Democratic ideals - personal freedom, rule of the governed, etc - gets regurgitated so often back to us with no real revelation or explanation, that such a thing as he commented on 150 years ago almost seems as a foreknowledge of what would become of democracy today.
