Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation

1. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • Comments • 1. Locating Mill’s concept of liberty • David Miller’s proposal: there are 3 traditions of liberty • (1) The republican • (2) The liberal • (3) The Idealist • Where is Mill’s theory? Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 1

2. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • Comments • 2. On Liberty remains immensely influential to this day. When the Wolfenden Committee in England recommended that laws against homosexual behavior be changed, they appealed to Mill’s argument: “There must remain a realm of private morality and immorality which . . . is not the law’s business.” Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 2

3. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • Debates over legality & morality of pornography. • Has almost become part of popular culture--if speech or action does not harm others, should not be legally proscribed and, many would say, should not be regarded as immoral. Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 3

4. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • 3.Alan Ryan observes that the book is about more than a principle of liberty. It is about a certain way of life. • Mill is making a plea for a way of life which gives full play to imagination, spontaneity (“experiments in living”), diversity, variety, individuality vs routine, security, & community. Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 4

5. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • Problems with Mill’s principle and justification of it • 1. The difficulty of making the distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding • examples Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 5

6. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • Lord Devlin in his famous The Enforcement of Morals argues that the distinction does not hold. All actions are in some way other-regarding. • 2. Does freedom of expression always enhance truth? • A distinction is necessary. Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 6

7. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • Civil discourse which has as its goal truth vs polemical discourse which has as its goal winning the argument. • 3. Does Mill emphasize individualism at the expense of the values of community? Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 7

8. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • 4. A case study: Dyzenhaus on Mill & pornography • Feminists argue that pornography should be legally proscribed because it causes harm to women. • Those opposed to legal restrictions on pornography appeal to Millian arguments. Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 8

9. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • Pornography does not cause physical harm to women. • Pornography is purely self-regarding. • Dyzenhaus’ thesis: Mill, on the basis of his own principle, would call for legal restrictions on pornography. Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 9

10. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • Mill in On the Subjection of Women call for perfect equality between men and women. • For Mill, the inequality of women prevents women from achieving their autonomy, which in turn is a necessary condition of happiness Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 10

11. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • To those who object that men & women are naturally unequal, Mill would respond that what we take as natural is in fact the construct of a society of inequality (39). • Is this consistent with On Liberty? • Dyzenhaus: Yes. Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 11

12. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • In the opening lines of On Liberty, Mill talks about the limits of power exercised by society, not only the government,over the individual. • He is concerned not only with government tyranny but also with social tyranny. Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 12

13. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • Indeed, he describes that latter as often “more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since . . . it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself” (Gray 8-9). Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 13

14. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • Mill is concerned with the coercive power of social classes and groups, not only the coercive power of the government (41). • This suggests that the power exercised by men over women through pornography is one of these kinds of social and moral coercion (42). Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 14

15. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • Cf. Dyzenhaus’ Millian defense of the legal restrictions on pornography with the conservative defense. • Conservatives wish to censor pornography because it offends against community norms of morality. • And conservatives usually want to preserve patriarchy. Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 15

16. Mill’s On Liberty ~ critical evaluation • Mill would (acc. to Dyzenhaus) reject the conservative position because it retains patriarchy and thus does not allow women to achieve true autonomy. Mill's On Liberty - critical evaluation - 16