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The ‘Multicultural’ Mill*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Charles Lockhart  and
Aaron Wildavsky
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Extract

An argument has been made for identifying Mill as an individualistic thinker. Certainly, A System of Logic (1843) develops views, such as methodological individualism and a conception of the ‘art of life’, which portray persons as having unique essences that, when supported by autonomous choices with respect to life experiments, reveal their individuality. These views are at least loosely applied in later works. Principles of Political Economy (1848) treats economic aspects of social life frequently in terms consistent with those of classical economists for whom the self-interested actions of individuals achieve economic growth. On Liberty (1859), the flagship volume in this view, and, less centrally, The Subjection of Women (1869) provide impressive testimony for an individualistic way of life in terms of its contributions to social progress. Considerations on Representative Government (1861) examines means for institutionalizing an individualistic way of life. And Utilitarianism (1863) provides a basis for justifying an individualistic view of this social programme: more satisfaction of individual desires. But such an account, Mill's own assessment notwithstanding, would be unsatisfactory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , November 1993 , pp. 255 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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Footnotes

*

We want to thank Larry Biskowski, Richard Ellis, Richard Galvin, and Dennis Thompson for assistance with previous versions of this paper.

References

1 For Mill's assessment see, Autobiography, ed. Robson, John M. and Stillinger, Jack, Toronto, 1981Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, i. 132Google Scholar; for dissenting views of Mill's contemporaries see Kinzer, Bruce L., Robson, Ann P., and Robson, John M., eds., A Moralist In and Out of Parliament, Toronto, 1992.Google Scholar

2 Rees, John, ‘The Thesis of the Two Mills’, Political Studies, xxv (1977), 369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Gray, John, Mill on Liberty: A Defence, London, 1983, p. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Laine, Michael, Bibliography of Works on John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1982CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for the critical literature on this and other points.

4 Haskell, Thomas L., ‘Persons as Uncaused Causes: John Stuart Mill, The Spirit of Capitalism, and the “Invention” of Formalism’, The Culture of the Market, eds. Haskell, Thomas L. and Teichgraeber, Richard F. III, New York, 1993.Google Scholar

5 Anschutz, Richard P., The Philosophy of J. S. Mill, Oxford, 1953, p. 5.Google Scholar

6 For individualism see Berlin, Isaiah, ‘John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life’, Four Essays on Liberty, ed. Berlin, Isaiah, Oxford, 1969, p. 173.Google Scholar For hierarchy see Cowling, Maurice, Mill and Liberalism, Cambridge, 1963, p. 136Google Scholar; and Letwin, Shirley R., The Pursuit of Certainty, Cambridge, 1965.Google Scholar

7 Contrast Honderich, Ted, ‘The Worth of J. S. Mill on Liberty’, Political Studies, xxii 1974), 463CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Himmelfarb, Gertrude, On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill, New York, 1974, p. 107Google Scholar with Stephen, James Fitzjames, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Cambridge, 1967 [1873]Google Scholar; and Himmelfarb, , On Liberty and Liberalism, p. 107.Google Scholar

8 Compare Ashcraft, Richard, ‘Class Conflict and Constitutionalism in J. S. Mill's Thought’, Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Rosenblum, Nancy, Cambridge, Mass., 1989, p. 269Google Scholar n.61 with Gray, , p. 46–7.Google Scholar

9 See Himmelfarb, Gertrude, ed., Essays on Politics and Culture, New York, 1963, pp. vii–viiiGoogle Scholar; Himmelfarb, , On Liberty and LiberalismGoogle Scholar; Letwin, , p. 306Google Scholar; and Ryan, Alan, J. S. Mill, London, 1974.Google Scholar

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15 See M. Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky, intro. and ch. 1. This claim is backed by a fair amount of cultural analysis. See, for instance, Evans-Prichard, E. E., The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of the Nilotic People, Oxford, 1940Google Scholar; Dumont, Louis, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications, trans. Sainsbury, Mark, Dumont, Louis, and Gulati, Basia, Chicago, 1980Google Scholar; Strathern, Andrew, The Rope of Moka: Big-Men and Ceremonial Exchange in Mount Hagen, New Guinea, Cambridge, 1971CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Uchendu, Victor C., The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria, New York, 1965.Google Scholar Additionally, while the claim is controversial, it is obviously less limiting than the widely accepted notion that only variations on two ways of life—hierarchy and individualism—are socially viable. See Lindblom, Charles E. Politics and Markets: The World's Political-Economic Systems, New York, 1977.Google Scholar

16 In contrast to the other “grand theorists” we mention—Locke, Rousseau, Smith, Marx—Plato, whose practical reason is directed toward a limited range of specified ends, is essentially—along with Kant—‘off the map’ of cultural theory (Figure 1). See O'Neill, Onora, ‘Theories of Justice, Traditions of Virtue’Google Scholar, paper presented at ‘Constructions of Reason: A Conference on the Work of Onora O'Neill and “Explanations of Kant's Practical Philosophy”’, University of Notre Dame, September 27–8, 1991. None the less, the polity Plato describes in The Republic is clearly a hierarchy in the sense of cultural theory. Burke is an hierarchical theorist whose views are readily charted by cultural theory.

17 See Banfield, Edward C., The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, New York, 1958Google Scholar; and Turnbull, Colin, The Mountain People, New York, 1972.Google Scholar

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20 See Ryan, , p. 37Google Scholar; and Duncan, Graeme, Marx and Mill: Two Views of Social Conflict and Social Harmony, Cambridge, 1973, p. 209.Google Scholar

21 Principles of Political Economy, ed. Robson, John M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1965Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ii. 203Google Scholar; and see as well Ryan, , p. 209; and Haskell.Google Scholar

22 Berlin, , pp. 197–8.Google Scholar

23 Duncan, , pp. 259–61.Google Scholar

24 Thompson, Dennis, p. 85.Google Scholar

25 Duncan, , pp. 264–5.Google Scholar

26 See Ashcraft, , pp. 111, 118–19Google Scholar; and Duncan, , p. 219.Google Scholar

27 von Hayek, Friedrich A., The Road to Serfdom, Chicago, 1944.Google Scholar

28 Compare with Berlin, , pp. 178, 192.Google Scholar

29 Ashcraft, , p. 124.Google Scholar

30 Thompson, Dennis, pp. 178–9.Google Scholar

31 On Liberty, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1977Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, xviii. 223.Google Scholar The Subjection of Women fits nicely with On Liberty as a work with a predominantly individualistic orientation. Mill argues that women should have equal opportunities (including property and voting rights) vis-a-vis men with respect to marriage, political participation, and labour market careers, not because (all) women and (all) men are equal, but because gender is not a useful criterion for assessing the varying capacities of persons.

32 Gray, , p. 74.Google Scholar

33 Berlin, , p. 173.Google Scholar

34 Principles of Political Economy, CW, ii. 351–2.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., CW, ii. 227.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., CW, iii. 795.Google Scholar

37 Ibid., CW, iii. 745.Google Scholar

38 ‘We look in vain among the working classes in general for the just pride which will choose to give good work for good wages; for the most part, their sole endeavour is to receive as much, and return as little in the shape of service, as possible’, ibid., CW, iii. 767.Google Scholar These tirades are particularly out of character for other—hierarchical or egalitarian—Mills. One of Mill's early astute discoveries was that people were in a significant degree the products of their experiences: nurture over nature, see Ryan, , pp. 17–18.Google Scholar Hence we get his concern with circumstances of life apt to elicit improvement. And he applies this view adroitly in The Subjection of Women, arguing that we do not know what women are really like and thus the nature of their capabilities. The women present in Victorian society have, according to Mill, been shaped (socialized) in peculiar and limiting ways.

39 Principles of Political Economy, CW, ii. 207.Google Scholar

40 Compare this proposal with the maximin approach of Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, Mass., 1971.Google Scholar Rae, Douglas et al. , Equalities, Cambridge, Mass., 1981Google Scholar, compare minimax, maximin, and other related efforts of reducing differences among persons. See especially ch. 6. The most immediate practical concern for egalitarians is generally improvements in the circumstances of those on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder; while individualists and hierarchists—for varying reasons—are apt to be extremely reluctant to accept absolute limits on accumulation, particularly through the virtual elimination of intergenerational transfers. So, maximin appears more appealing to a range of cultures than Mill's choice of minimax in this instance, and as we shall soon see, it is not Mill's routine preference.

41 Utilitarianism, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1969Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, x. 233.Google Scholar

42 Utilitarianism, CW, x. 216.Google Scholar

43 Utilitarianism, CW, x. 218.Google Scholar See also Green, Michele, ‘Sympathy and Self-interest: The Crisis in Mill's Mental History’, Utilitas, i (1989), 259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 See James Fitzjames Stephen.

45 Gray makes an interesting argument to the contrary with which we disagree. For him Mill is an ‘indirect’ utilitarian. That is, similarly to the arguments of rule utilitarians, Gray holds that human circumstances—e.g., incomplete information—incapacitate persons from directly applying the principle of utility effectively to everyday life. So while it remains the ultimate criterion, its function is axiological. Gray thinks that action is, in Mill's thought, appropriately guided by a principle of expediency (rough net utility benefit). Gray perceives the principle of liberty as an additional practical principle that is derivable from and which supplements the principle of utility. These two practical principles are, in Gray's view, further supplemented by a principle of equity for distributing the cost of supporting society.

46 How much protection obviously depends on the specification of harm. Gray, , pp. 49–50Google Scholar, for instance, suggests a narrow specification of damage to a person's most basic interests in security and autonomy.

47 Beyond this ‘social’ concern, Mill's critics have pointed out that the principles of utility and liberty are theories of different subjects: the good and of justice, respectively. See James Fitzjames Stephen; and Himmelfarb, On Liberty and Liberalism. If there is a means of achieving logical compatibility between these principles, it may be Richard Galvin's rule-utilitarian approach, ‘The Principles of Utility and Liberty in the Thought of J. S. Mill’, unpublished paper, Texas Christian University, 1992. He argues that the principle of utility is both foundational and fundamental. And stipulating, as he thinks Mill does, the empirical fact that, the greater the level of liberty, the greater the level of aggregate utility, the principle of liberty may be deduced as a corollary of the principle of utility. Further, the harm principle may be deduced from this pair inasmuch as the way to maximize individual liberty is to adopt only those social rules that prohibit harm to others, rules consistent with, if not optimizing of, the utilitarian principle.

48 Principles of Political Economy, CW, iii. 775–6, 795.Google Scholar

49 Ashcraft, , pp. 112, 116–17, 121.Google Scholar

50 Principles of Political Economy, CW, iii. 791–2.Google Scholar Barry, Brian, Theories of Justice, vol. 1 of A Treatise on Social Justice, Berkeley, Ca., 1989Google Scholar, makes similar claims. See also Kaus, Mickey, The End of Equality, New York, 1992.Google Scholar

51 Jeremy Bentham held that, in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, it was reasonable to assume that persons derive pleasure from income fairly similarly and thus that, in conjunction with a further assumption about the diminishing marginal utility of income, a roughly equal distribution of income would maximize utility across a population. See the discussion of Posner, Richard A., The Economics of Justice, Cambridge, Mass., 1981, pp. 55–6.Google Scholar As Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York, 1974, p. 41Google Scholar, points out, this leaves utilitarianism vulnerable to ‘utility monsters’ who require immense resources to derive the same satisfaction as others derive from much more modest amounts.

52 Fishkin, James S., Justice, Equal Opportunity, and the Family, New Haven, Conn., 1983, pp. 67–8.Google Scholar

53 See Barry, , pp. 217–25.Google Scholar

54 Utilitarianism, CW, x. 231.Google Scholar

55 See Ryan, , p. 113.Google Scholar

56 Moore, G. E. Principia Ethica, Cambridge, 1903, pp. 77–81Google Scholar, among others, argues that Mill cannot subscribe both to pleasures of varying qualities and a consistent doctrine of hedonism. Dahl, Norman, ‘Is Mill's Hedonism Inconsistent?’ Studies in Ethics, ed. Rescher, Nicholas, Oxford, 1973, p. 37Google Scholar, attempts to rescue Mill from this attack. See also Gray, , pp. 86–9; and Laine.Google Scholar

57 ‘Bentham’, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1969Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, x. 94.Google Scholar

58 See note 45 above.

59 These works are: On Liberty (1859)Google Scholar, The Subjection of Women (1861, although not published until 1869)Google Scholar, Considerations on Representative Government (1861)Google Scholar, Principles of Political Economy (fifth edition in 1862)Google Scholar, and Utilitarianism (written during 1854–9, but not published until 1863).Google Scholar

60 Mill met Harriet Taylor in 1830, and the two carried on an intense if platonic relationship until John Taylor's death in 1849. Mill and Harriet married in 1851, and Harriet died in 1858. See Stephen, Leslie, The English Utilitarians, 3 vols., London, 1900, iii. 68Google Scholar; and von HayekFriedrich, A. Friedrich, A., John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor: Their Correspondence and Subsequent Marriage, Chicago, 1951.Google Scholar

61 Further, what we have accomplished in this regard could be expanded by including additional facets of the basic issues that we have examined. See Ryan, for instance, on Mill's neglect of political parties, pp. 203–4, the desirability of a ‘stationary state,’ pp. 180–3, and women's liberation, pp. 154–8. See also Berlin, , p. 200.Google Scholar

62 Haskell.

63 Additional support for our combinatorial view appears in the work of other critics. See Berlin, , p. 205Google Scholar on Mill's refusal to be tied to a fixed conception of human nature; and Ashcraft's portrayal of the development of Mill's ‘sociological’ view of society as divided into interest-based cultures with distinctive empirical-normative perspectives, pp. 107–9, as well as experiencing difficulties with these cultures talking to one another in the absence of the facilitating services of an independent entity that could stand apart from and above the fray, pp. 113–16.

64 Berlin, , p. 183.Google Scholar

65 Enzell, Magnus and Wildavsky, Aaron, ‘Hobbes's Natural Man Is a Fatalist: Implications of Cultural Theory for Interpreting Hobbes and His Critics’, unpublished paper, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar

66 Ellis, Richard J. and Wildavsky, Aaron, Dilemmas of Presidential Leadership From Washington to Lincoln: A Cultural Theory, New Brunswick, N.J., 1989Google Scholar; and Wildavsky, Aaron, The Rise of Radical Egalitarianism, Washington, D.C., 1991.Google Scholar

67 Duncan, , p. 279.Google Scholar

68 See Young, Michael, The Rise of Meritocracy, Harmondsworth, 1959.Google Scholar

69 Thompson, Dennis, pp. 196–7.Google Scholar

70 Compare, for example, with Smith, Adam, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Teichgraeber, Richard F. III, New York, 1985 [1776], p. 17.Google Scholar

71 See, respectively, Singer, Peter, ‘Animal Liberation’, New York Review of Books, xx (04, 1973), 17Google Scholar; and Gewirth, Alan, Reason and Morality, Chicago, 1978.Google Scholar

72 Or at least is seems appropriate to infer such a view from his repeated labelling of others with privileged upbringings as fools. See Stephen, Leslie, pp. 65, 70.Google Scholar

73 See, for instance, Barry; and MacIntyre, Alaistair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame, Ind., 1988.Google Scholar

74 Ryan, , pp. 17–18.Google Scholar

75 Thompson, Dennis, pp. 77–90.Google Scholar

76 Haskell.