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Individuality, Custom and Progress*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Jonathan Riley
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Extract

If harm is restricted to mean perceptible damage suffered by an agent against his wishes, so that his mere dislike with no evidence of injury is excluded, then Mill's liberty principle arguably is ‘one very simple principle’ as he claims. But even so, what of John Gray's charge that the liberty principle relies on a ‘radically defective’ notion of individuality or autonomy that is incompatible with every civil society's cultural and moral traditions? If he is correct about this, then Mill's principle lacks appeal even if it can be stated in a definite and coherent manner.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , November 1991 , pp. 217 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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Footnotes

*

For helpful comments, I am particularly grateful to Fred Rosen. Responsibility for the views expressed remains mine. The bulk of this paper was written while I was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Ethics, Rationality and Society, The University of Chicago. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ingrid Creppell and Russell Hardin for their warm hospitality. It is also a pleasure to acknowledge research support in the form of a Faculty Research Grant from the Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Tulane University.

References

1 See Riley, , ‘One Very Simple Principle’, Utilitas, iii (1991), 1–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy, London and New York, 1989, p. 224Google Scholar. Gray's charge reflects a common concern in the secondary literature on Mill's thought. See, for example, Chlor, Harry M., ‘Mill and Millians on Liberty and Moral Character’, Review of Politics, xlvii (1985), 3–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A similar concern pervades the general literature relating to liberalism, and is expressed by many who associate liberalism with so-called ‘value pluralism’. William Galston, for example, argues that different strands of ‘the liberal tradition’ converge on a ‘common core’ conception of intrinsic individual excellence or virtue—‘a vision of individuals who in some manner take responsibility for their own lives’ (‘Liberal Virtues’, American Political Science Review, lxxxii (1988), 1287)Google Scholar. Lockean rational self-direction, Kantian moral autonomy, and Millian individuality all share that vision, despite their differences in other respects. But this liberal core conception of individual excellence, Galston admits, is inconsistent ‘in important respects’ with instrumental virtues such as ‘law-abidingness’ and ‘loyalty’ required to maintain the liberal polity itself. ‘Indeed, it would not be farfetched to interpret some of the deepest tensions within liberal polities as a clash between means and ends, that is, between requirements of liberal citizenship and aspirations toward liberal excellence’ (‘Liberal Virtues’, 1288).Google Scholar

3 Liberalisms, p. 224.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., p. 227, emphasis in original.

5 Ibid., pp. 224–5.

6 Ibid., pp. 225–6.

7 Ibid., p. 226.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., p. 227.

11 Ibid., p. 248. Gray's view here is reminiscent of what Rorty, Richard calls ‘pragmatist social theory’, for which ‘the question of whether justifiability to the community with which we identify entails truth is simply irrelevant’ (‘The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy’, The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: Its Evolution and Consequences in American History, ed. Peterson, Merrill D. and Vaughan, Robert C., Cambridge, 1988, p. 259).Google Scholar

12 Liberalisms, p. 229.Google Scholar

13 Mill's phenomenalism is developed most fully in System of Logic, [1843,] ed. Robson, John M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1974Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vii–viiiGoogle Scholar; and in An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, [1865,] ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1979Google Scholar, CW, ixGoogle Scholar. For further discussion, see also Riley, , Liberal Utilitarianism, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 133–63.Google Scholar

14 ‘On Liberty’, [1859,] Essays on Politics and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1977Google Scholar, CW, xviii. 274Google Scholar. Given his defence of ‘moral causationism’ (determinism) as opposed to the free will doctrine, Mill's view that circumstances (including our given power of will) determine individual character is hardly surprising. More generally, Mill follows Hume in holding that the doctrine of universal causation is compatible with our practical feeling of moral freedom (i.e. our feeling that we do have some power to alter our circumstances if we wish). See Logic, CW, viii. 836–43Google Scholar; and Hamilton, CW, ix. 437–69Google Scholar. For Hume's rather similar argument, see A Treatise of Human Nature, [1739–40,] ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A., 2nd ed., Oxford, 1978, pp. 78–172Google Scholar; and Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, [1748,] ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A., 3rd ed., Oxford, 1975, pp. 60–103.Google Scholar

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17 Ibid., 261; quoting Von Humboldt, Baron Wilhelm, The Sphere and Duties of GovernmentGoogle Scholar, [1854,] reprinted as On the Limits of State. Action, ed. Burrow, J. W., Cambridge, 1969, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

18 ‘On Liberty’, CW, xviii. 262.Google Scholar

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., 272.

21 Ibid., 261.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid., 263.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid., 267.

26 Ibid., 264.

27 For references to Mill's compatibilist doctrine, see note 14.

28 ‘On Liberty’, CW, xviii. 274.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., 274.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid., 274–5

32 Ibid., 275, emphasis added.

33 ‘De Tocqueville on Democracy in America, Part II’, [1840,] ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1977Google Scholar, CW, xviii. 198.Google Scholar

34 ‘On Liberty’, CW, xviii. 274.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., 261, emphasis added. For the reference to utility in the largest sense, see ibid., 224.

36 Ibid., 260, emphasis added.

37 Ibid., 260, 276.

38 Rights must also be delegated to government officials to facilitate the implementation of suitable legal coercion.

39 Ibid., 293.

40 Ibid., 262.

41 Ibid., 264–5. See also 220–3, 229ff.

42 Ibid., 262.

43 Ibid., 265.

44 Ibid., 272.

45 Ibid., 262.

46 Ibid., 269.

47 Ibid., 279.

48 Against Mill, Chlor seems to defend blind adherence to custom as part of the very meaning of what it is to have a tradition. For example, he suggests that ‘the customary American practice of respect for the Constitution and obedience to the decisions of the Supreme Court’ deserves to be called a tradition only ‘because it has some authority over the minds and conduct of those subject to it’. His point seems to be that traditional authority is incompatible with a standing invitation to citizens to deliberately assess customary practices:

[A] disposition to exercise my own independent judgment (in the full Millian sense) as to the claims of the Constitution and the courts is at variance with a disposition to observe this practice as a tradition If multitudes of people accepted the invitation [critically to assess the claims in question,] what would exist at most is the anomaly of “traditions” without any authority. Mill and his supporters cannot have it both ways. You cannot have at the same time and place significant customs and a population of thoroughgoing individualists (‘Mill and Millians’, p. 17).Google Scholar

But why is it impossible for a reasonable individual to choose to support customary practices which in his judgement are generally expedient? Chlor never explains why reason necessarily destroys the authority of tradition. Why can reason not reinforce ‘fit customs’? Americans may well be disposed to respect the Constitution and obey the judiciary, for example, yet may also choose independently to assess and publicly criticize particular constitutional arrangements as well as particular Court decisions. Indeed, the First Amendment of the Constitution itself invites individuals to do this, with the caveat that the existing laws must be obeyed until new legislation or a constitutional amendment is passed. In this regard, it must be recalled that Mill's liberty principle does not protect any person's liberty to disobey duly enacted laws whose purpose is to regulate impartially conduct harmful to others. On the contrary, Mill insists that society is entitled to use whatever forms of coercion are most generally expedient to enforce such general laws.

49 ‘On Liberty’, CW, xviii. 266Google Scholar. Kateb, George's notion of ‘democratic individuality’Google Scholar seems to connote a similar ideal blend of Millian individuality and moral custom. As described by Kateb, democratic individualists seem to combine ‘Pagan self-assertion’ with a willing conformity to certain egalitarian practices associated with a democratic public culture. See Kateb, , ‘Democratic Individuality and the Claims of Polities’, Political Theory, xii (1984), 331–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Democratic Individuality and the Meaning of Rights’, Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Rosenblum, N., Cambridge, Mass., 1989, pp. 183–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Walt Whitman and the Culture of Democracy’, Political Theory, xviii (1990), 545–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 ‘On Liberty’, CW, xviii. 265.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., 266.

52 Ibid.

53 The Theory and Practice of Autonomy, Cambridge, 1988, p. 20Google Scholar. See also the conception of ‘self-direction’ defended by Kekes, John, Moral Tradition and Individuality, Princeton, 1989, pp. 105–27, 173–84, 196–200.Google Scholar

54 The Theory and Practice of Autonomy, p. 21Google Scholar. Mill may not agree with Dworkin on this point. Mill sometimes writes as if he believes that an autonomous person is psychologically incapable of making certain choices. For example, he suggests that an individual is unable (as a matter of psychological fact) to want to do something (such as cross a dangerous bridge) that in his own judgement will, with certainty, kill or seriously harm himself. Only people who are delirious or mentally incompetent or already terminally ill or severely injured with no hope of recovery can behave in this manner. Such people are not autonomous because (often through no fault of their own) they lack any capacity to choose an outcome other than that which their behaviour will actually bring about. Thus, for Mill, there may be some minimal restrictions on the content of any autonomous person's choices.

55 Ibid., p. 23.

56 Liberalisms, p. 228.Google Scholar

57 Ibid.

58 ‘Justice Under Capitalism’, Markets and Justice, Nomos, vol. xxxi., ed. Chapman, John W. and Pennock, J. Roland, New York, 1989, 122–62.Google Scholar

59 For further discussion of this point, see Riley, , ‘Liberal Philanthropy’, Virtue, Nomos, vol. xxxiv., ed. Chapman, John W. and Galston, William, New York, forthcoming.Google Scholar

60 ‘On Liberty’, CW, xviii. 293Google Scholar. See also 305–10.

61 Principles of Political Economy, [1848,] ed. Robson, John M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1965Google Scholar, CW, iii. 945Google Scholar. For Mill's discussion of ‘large exceptions’ to the general rule of laissez faire, see 947–71.

62 ‘On Liberty’, CW, xviii. 267.Google Scholar

63 Ibid., 261, 268, 271–4.

64 Ibid., 273–4. For further discussion of Mill's fear of stagnation and decline, see Burrow, J. W., Whigs and Liberals: Continuity and Change in English Political Thought, Oxford, 1988, pp. 77–124.Google Scholar

65 Liberalisms, p. 116.Google Scholar

66 ‘Spontaneous Market Order and Social Rules: A Critical Examination of F. A. Hayek's Theory of Cultural Evolution’, Economics and Philosophy, ii (1986), 75–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 Ibid., 82.

66 As Vanberg notes, ‘the mechanism of reciprocity’ can be expected to generate cooperation in these situations only under certain restrictive conditions. Ibid., 85–96. See also Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Co-operation, New York, 1984Google Scholar; Sugden, Robert, Rights, Co-operation and Welfare, Oxford, 1986Google Scholar; Sugden, , ‘Contractarianism and Norms’, Ethics, c (1990), 768–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, Michael, The Possibility of Co-operation Cambridge, 1987Google Scholar; and Hardin, Russell, Morality Within the Limits of Reason, Chicago, 1988.Google Scholar

69 Vanberg, , ‘Spontaneous Market Order’, 84.Google Scholar

70 Ibid., 81–5; Gray, John, Hayek on Liberty, London, 1984, pp. 52–5.Google Scholar

71 For the debate, see, for example, Mill, , LogicGoogle Scholar, CW, vii. 262–79Google Scholar; Mill, , HamiltonGoogle Scholar, CW, ix. 143–5Google Scholar; Mill, , Later Letters, [1849–73,] ed. Robson, John M., 4 vols., Toronto, 1978Google Scholar, CW, xvi. 1089–91Google Scholar (letter to Spencer dated 12 August 1865); Spencer, , ‘Mill Versus Hamilton—The Test of Truth’, [1865,] Essays: Moral, Political and Aesthetic, New York, 1883, pp. 383–413Google Scholar; and Spencer, , ‘Replies to Criticisms’, [1881,] Principles of Ethics, ed. Machan, Tibor, 2 vols., Indianapolis, 1978, ii. 483–504.Google Scholar

72 In this regard, it is highly misleading to speak (as Gray does) of Mill and Spencer espousing more or less equivalent ‘rationalist’ versions of utilitarianism (Liberalisms, pp. 114–16)Google Scholar. Unlike Spencer, Mill avoids picking a priori intuitions out of thin air as a way of insisting on this or that ‘rational’ interpretation of human conduct. Instead, he attempts to ground interpretations of conduct on warranted inferences from experience of that conduct, using universal causation as a working hypothesis. But the law of universal causation is itself grounded, in his view, on nothing but an unusually broad induction from simple enumeration. For discussion of what Mill calls his ‘psychological approach to metaphysics’, see Hamilton, CW, ix.Google Scholar

73 For discussion of co-ordination games, see the references cited above at note 68.

74 ‘On Liberty’, CW, xviii. 269.Google Scholar

75 Ibid. For clarification of Mill's idea of genius, see also ‘On Genius’, [1832,] ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1981Google Scholar, CW, i. 327–39Google Scholar. He equates genius with ‘the very faculty of thought itself’:

According to my view, genius … is always where knowledge is, being itself nothing but a mind with capacity to know. … Nor needs genius be a rare gift bestowed on few. By the aid of suitable culture all might possess it, although in unequal degrees. … [T]he end of education is … to fit the mind for learning from its own consciousness and observation. … [W]e have occasion for this power under ever-varying circumstances, for which no routine or rule of thumb can possibly make provision. As the memory is trained by remembering, so is the reasoning power by reasoning; the imaginative by imagining; the analytic by analysing; the inventive by finding out. Let the education of the mind consist in calling out and exercising these faculties (‘On Genius’, 334, 338).Google Scholar

76 ‘On Liberty’, CW, xviii. 267.Google Scholar

77 See, for example, ibid., 305–10; Principles of Political Economy, CW, ii. 199–238, esp. 208–9Google Scholar; iii. 880–971; ‘Chapters on Socialism’, [1879,] Essays on Economics and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1967Google Scholar, CW, v. 703–53Google Scholar; and ‘Endowments’, [1869,] ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1967Google Scholar, CW, v. 613–29.Google Scholar

78 ‘On Liberty’, CW, xviii. 230.Google Scholar

79 Ibid., 267, 270.

80 Ibid., 252.

81 Ibid., 231.

82 Ibid., 231–2.

83 Ibid., 260–61

84 Ibid., 231.

85 ‘On Genius’, CW, i. 338.Google Scholar

86 Liberalisms, p. 245.Google Scholar

87 ‘On Liberty’, CW, xviii. 265.Google Scholar

88 ‘On Genius’, CW, i. 334.Google Scholar

89 ‘On Liberty’, CW, xviii. 232Google Scholar. For Mill, truth does not mean absolutely certain knowledge but merely warranted belief. A belief is warranted in a given society if and only if the judgements underlying the belief have not been controverted in accord with that society's acknowledged canons of evidence. But even those latter social rules are properly open to challenge. Mill suggests that complete liberty of discussion and of experimentation are compatible with a growing stock of knowledge because no evidence has been yet found that contradicts the hypothesis of universal causation. Thus, in his view, humans are warranted in believing that natural phenomena (including mental phenomena) are governed by uniform causal laws that can in principle be deciphered by using our mental capacities. Nevertheless, all knowledge remains contingent.

90 Ibid., 234, emphasis added.

91 Ibid., 263.

92 Ibid., 261.