J. S. Mill Jr.: his “Rousseauian” education and his life

The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history

1. Utilitarianism, what is it? What is the rationale for this kind of liberalism? Who were its founders and what is its overall principle?

Utilitarianism is a theory in normative ethics holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes utility, usually defined as maximizing happiness and reducing suffering.

Classic utilitarianism's two most influential contributors are Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.

Bentham and Mill believed that a utilitarian government was achievable through democracy. Mill thought that despotism was also justifiable through utilitarianism as a transitional phase towards more democratic forms of governance.

Theory based on the principle that "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness."

Mill justifies the value of liberty through a Utilitarian approach. His essay tries to show the positive effects of liberty on all people and on society as a whole. In particular, Mill links liberty to the ability to progress and to avoid social stagnation. Liberty of opinion is valuable for two main reasons. First, the unpopular opinion may be right. Second, if the opinion is wrong, refuting it will allow people to better understand their own opinions. Liberty of action is desirable for parallel reasons. The nonconformist may be correct, or she may have a way of life that best suits her needs, if not anybody else's. Additionally, these nonconformists challenge social complacency, and keep society from stagnating.

J. S. Mill Jr.: his “Rousseauian” education and his life

(20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873) was an English philosopher

John Stuart Mill was born on Rodney Street in the Pentonville area of London, the eldest son of the Scottish philosopher, historian and economist James Mill, and Harriet Burrow. John Stuart was educated by his father, with the advice and assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place. He was given an extremely rigorous upbringing

-His father was trying to follow Rousseau’s example how to raise an ideal baby i.e.Mill started greek and latin from the early age.

3. Modern vs. pre-modern dangers for liberty: how does Mill define the difference? What was liberty in pre-modern (pre-democratic) time?

Rulers were the separate body and they threatened liberty

Focuses on the threat of freedom in our contemporary society.

4. What is the nature of the threat to liberty in a representative democracy?

The tyranny of the majority. In a representative democracy, if you can control the majority (and get them to vote for, and elect, your candidates) then you can control everyone (because your candidates, once "democratically elected", will pass whatever laws are needed for this, as was done by Hitler's agents in the 1930s in Nazi Germany and seems to be happening today in the U.S.A.).

Numerical majority

-voices are not heard

-it’s a human feature we think that people should believe the way we do.as a majority

-majority is medeocraty .You don’t have great people in government. No great individuals

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Action of government,social presuure. Social pressure is more threatening than governmental pressure.

Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs as protection against political despotism.

the danger is that the majority denies liberty to individuals, whether explicitly through laws ... or more subtly through morals and public opinion ...

5. How does the majority exercise its power? Is it eager or not to employ force? Is democracy dangerous for individual liberty?

6. What is the only principle which justifies the use of force against an individual or a group, according to Mill Jr.?

7. Which basic freedoms Mill considers indispensable for a free society?

1. The freedom of thought and emotion. This includes the freedom to act on such thought, i.e. freedom of speech

2. The freedom to pursue tastes (provided they do no harm to others), even if they are deemed "immoral"

3. The freedom to unite so long as the involved members are of age, the involved members are not forced, and no harm is done to others

A necessary cost of liberty is allowance of any view in our society.If we prohibit certain theory or principles we don’t know how to fight against it.

There were some moments on history when people believed that slavery is normal and unquestionable.

It is not true that truth will always win.

Its not true to say that true believe will win itself. Truth not always wins.

8. What are Mill’s arguments for admitting a variety of opinions, even the most obnoxious?

9. How does Mill treat individuality? Is it good or bad for society? Or how about a mediocrity? Is it on the rise or decline as society advances?

The expression of individuality is essential for individual and social progress.

A basic problem that Mill sees with society is that individual spontaneity is not respected as having any good in itself, and is not seen as essential to well-being.

Mill argues that while people should be trained as children in the accumulated knowledge of human experience, they should also have the freedom as adults to interpret that experience as they see fit. He places great moral emphasis on the process of making choices, and not simply accepting customs without questions: only people who make choices are using all of their human faculties. Mill then links the desires and impulses reflected in individuality with the development of character: "One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam engine has character."

-people become more valuable to themselves and also more able to be valuable to others when they develop their individuality.

When society declines mediocracy advances. People need individuality so that a society could advance.

However, Mill worries that Europe is progressing towards the Chinese ideal of "making all people alike," and will thus face stagnation.

Individuality is good

Mediocracy is a threat.

10. What are Mill’s main objections to governmental involvement in the life of an individual and his/her community? Why does he think that the government has no right to interfere, even if it would do a better job than individuals?

Mill's answer is that society and the individual should each receive control over that part of human life that it is particularly interested in.

Mill gives three objections to such interference. First, the person most qualified to perform an action is usually the person with a direct interest in it. Second, it is useful that people do things themselves for their personal development. Third, it is bad to add to the government's power. A powerful bureaucracy will stifle reform as a means to preserve its own interests, and thus goes against the interests of free people. Drawing the line where big government becomes dangerous is one of the most important political questions. Mill's answer is to decentralize power as much as possible, but to centralize the dissemination of information. He warns about the evils of giving the state so much power that it stifles human development, because ultimately this lack of development will stifle the state itself.

Government should not interfere in our life: 3 reasons

1.If u can do everything on local level then u don’t need government at all.

2.even if the action of the central gov will be better. Because when we try to resolve our own problems,we have to do it on our own. In this way we will become more aware of our problems.

3.central government always threatens our liberty.If we agree to give up our possibility to resolve problems on our own and transfer this to authority,we contribute to the groth of central government.Example of `Tsarist Russia..The Tsar could have execute evryone

Jeremy Bentham’s principle of utility: “The greatest happiness of the greatest number.”

John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

“Utility, or the Great Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure . . . pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends.”

“It would be absurd that . . . the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone. . . . It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable that others. . . . The pleasures of intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments [are of] a much higher value as pleasures than . . . those of mere sensation.”

“No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person desires his own happiness. This . . . being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all it is possible to require . . . : each person’s happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.”

“Certain social utilities [like justice] . . . are vastly more important, and therefore, more absolute and imperative than any others are as a class . . . therefore, ought to be . . . guarded by a sentiment not only different in degree but also in kind.”

On Liberty

“The sole end for which mankind are warranted . . . in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection. That is 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 . . . is not sufficient warrant. He cannot . . . be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because . . . to do so would be wise or even right. These are good reasons for . . . reasoning with him, or persuading him . . . but not for compelling him. . . In that part which . . . concerns himself, his independence is . . . absolute. . . . Over his body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

“It is not the feeling sure of a doctrine. . . which I call an assumption of infallibility. It is undertaking to decide that question for others, without allowing them to hear the contrary side.”

“Complete liberty of contradicting . . . our opinion is the very conditions which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.”

“Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has [is that] it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages . . . [it] will . . . [be] rediscovered.”

“It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual . . . but by cultivating it . . . that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation. . . . In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is, therefore, capable of being more valuable to others. . . . Only the cultivation of individuality . . . can produce well-developed human beings”

“The sober truth [is that ] . . . mediocrity [gains] the ascendant power among mankind. . . . At present, individuals are lost in the crowd. In politics it is almost a triviality to say that public opinion rules the world. The only power deserving the name is that of masses and of governments.”

“Europe is . . . decidedly advancing toward the Chinese ideal of making all people alike.”

“The . . . most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government. . . . converts the active part of the public into hangers-on of the government. . . . If the roads . . . the banks, the insurance offices . . . the universities and . . . charities were all . . . branches of the government; if . . . the municipal corporation . . . became departments of the central administration; if the employees of all these . . . are appointed and paid by the government . . . not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution . . . would make this . . . country free otherwise but name.”

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 1115