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Mill's On Liberty and Social Pressure
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 January 2020
Abstract
Mill's On Liberty is centrally concerned with avoiding social tyranny. But Mill's Principle of Liberty defines interfering, in the context of social pressure, as intentionally punishing and it seems to allow speech and actions that critics have thought would conflict with liberty in self-regarding matters. To critics, Mill draws distinctions among social influences where no genuine difference is to be found and he permits more social pressure than can be accepted by someone who values liberty highly. In this article, I explain where and why Mill draws the line he does between permitted and forbidden influences and show the line is coherent and tracks a genuine difference. I also show that although the Principle leaves residual social pressure, Mill has resources besides the Principle that can prevent social influences that threaten individuality while retaining beneficial social influences.
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1 The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. by John M. Robson, 33 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963–91), XVIII: Essays on Politics and Society, 272. The Collected Works are available at <https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/mill-collected-works-of-john-stuart-mill-in-33-vols>. Because many of us have our own editions of On Liberty, I have also provided references by chapter and paragraph number, so this reference is OL 3, 17.
2 Mill does not name his principle so I follow John Rawls in calling it the ‘Principle of Liberty’. See Rawls, Mill III: The Principle of Liberty, in his Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, ed. by Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press, 2007), pp. 284–96.
3 Joseph Hamburger, one of the unfriendly commentators, states that Mill's treatment of social pressure in On Liberty has been neglected and Mill's illiberalism in consequence overlooked. See Hamburger's Liberty and Control (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) as discussed below. I do not agree that Mill is illiberal, but Hamburger was right about the neglect and it remains true that Mill's treatment of social pressure is under-discussed even where one might expect to find it. It is largely absent from e.g. Wendy Donner, Mill on Individuality, in A Companion to Mill, ed. by Christopher Mcleod and Dale E. Miller (Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 2016), pp. 425–39; Ben Saunders, Reformulating Mill's Harm Principle, Mind, 125 (2016), 1005–32; Brink, David O., Mill's Progressive Principles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Turner, Piers Norris, ‘Harm’ and Mill's Harm Principle, Ethics, 124 (2014), 299–326CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (Turner's article does make the important point, developed here in a different context, that the Principle of Liberty is not all there is in Mill's treatment of liberty.) I have, however, found helpful, in addition to Hamburger's book, these commentaries: Ryan, Alan, The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill (London: Macmillan, 1970)Google Scholar; Riley, Jonathan, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Mill on Liberty (London: Routledge, 1998)Google Scholar; Scarre, Geoffrey, Mill's On Liberty (London: Continuum, 2007)Google Scholar; Jeremy Waldron, Mill as a Critic of Culture and Society, in Mill, John Stuart, Bromwich, David, and Kateb, George, On Liberty; Rethinking the Western Tradition (Newhaven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 224–246Google Scholar.
4 The article leaves aside social pressure in the other-regarding sphere. Mill encouraged social pressure in such matters as having unsociable dispositions or fitness to raise a family. Some commentators have considered his views to be risky, others positively illiberal. Scarre thinks it risky at Mill's On Liberty, pp. 89–90. Hamburger thinks it illiberal at Liberty and Control, pp. 227–8.
5 Collected Works, XVIII, 223–4 (OL 1, 9).
6 Collected Works, XVIII, 219 (OL 1, 5).
7 Collected Works, XVIII, 220 (OL 1, 5).
8 Ibid.
9 Collected Works, XVIII, 222 (OL 1, 7).
10 Collected Works, XVIII, 268 (OL 3, 13).
11 Collected Works, XVIII, 217 (OL 1, 1).
12 Collected Works, XVIII, 261 (OL 3, 2).
13 Collected Works, XVIII, 275 (OL 3, 19).
14 Collected Works, XVIII, 272–4 (OL 3, 17–18).
15 Collected Works, XVIII, 264 (OL 3, 6).
16 Collected Works, XVIII, 265 (OL 3, 6).
17 Collected Works, XVIII, 265 (OL 3, 8).
18 Collected Works, X: Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society.
19 Collected Works, X, 415–16.
20 Collected Works, X, 415.
21 Collected Works, X, 416.
22 The Subjection of Women is one obvious example. Less obvious ones include the Principles of Political Economy, if we take education broadly to include, for instance, the experience of membership in a workers’ cooperative. See R. J. Halliday, Some Recent Interpretations of John Stuart Mill, in Mill, ed. by J. B. Schneewind (New York: Anchor Books, 1968), pp. 354–78.
23 Collected Works, XVIII, 224 (OL I, 11). In the words of Piers Norris Turner, the Principle of Liberty is a ‘mid-level' rule. See Piers Norris Turner, Mill and Modern Liberalism, in Companion to Mill, ed. by Mcleod and Miller, pp. 567–82 (p. 575).
24 Collected Works, XVIII, 276 (OL 4, 4).
25 Collected Works, XVIII, 262 (OL 3, 3).
26 See Collected Works, XVIII, 296 (OL 5, 8) on the anomaly of punishing the accessory but not the principal, as when permitting gambling but prohibiting keeping a gambling-house.
27 Mill mainly sets out and explains this view in two paragraphs, XVIII 277–8; 279–80 (OL 4, 5 and 7). They are dense enough to be open to several interpretations and, indeed, misinterpretations and Mill does not help understanding by his confusing use of ‘penalty' and ‘punishment'. He says that someone who mismanages his own life bears the ‘whole penalty' of the mismanagement and that we should not punish him but should seek to ‘alleviate his punishment', XVIII, 280 (OL 4, 7). On this usage, penalty and punishment means bearing some cost, even if it is just being hungover. But Mill also talks of inflicting costs for the purposes of punishment, suggesting by ‘punishment' he means to include some purpose of retribution or deterrence.
28 Collected Works, XVIII, 279 (OL 4, 7).
29 Collected Works, XVIII, 278 (OL 4, 5).
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Some commentators make being held in contempt sound curiously agentless, as though it were a natural consequence, just like being hungover. Alan Ryan is an example. See Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, pp. 237–9.
33 Collected Works, XVIII, 278 (OL 4, 5).
34 Collected Works, XVIII, 279 (OL 4, 6). Scarre, Mill's On Liberty, p. 89 thinks Mill should not have resorted to a ‘dubious linguistic stipulation’ to argue against regarding self-regarding behaviour as immoral. It is true that Mill does not argue for this claim in On Liberty but I doubt it is merely linguistic. I think Mill regards his point as one of substance and one that his readers would accept as a premise.
35 Hamburger, especially ch. 8.
36 Mill, Collected Works, XVIII, 278 (OL, 4, 5).
37 Collected Works, XVIII, 277–8 (OL 4, 5). (Emphasis added.)
38 Hamburger, p. 215.
39 Hamburger also interprets disassociation as punishment, which we turn to in a later section.
40 Collected Works, XVIII, 292–3 (OL, 5, 3).
41 Hamburger, pp. 176, 181, 183.
42 Collected Works, XVIII, 279 (OL 4, 7).
43 Collected Works, XVIII, 224 (OL 1, 10).
44 Hamburger, pp. 177–8.
45 Hamburger misreads some parts of On Liberty and wrenches many others out of context. It would be tiresome to list every instance. One prime example involves a passage about the spirit of improvement at Mill, Collected Works, XVIII, 272 (OL 3, 17). Hamburger, pp. 177, 277, takes it as evidence that Mill wanted coercion for the sake of improvement, when Mill's point is clearly that having liberty is the best long-run method to achieve improvement. Hamburger does cite many texts besides On Liberty to support his claims. Whatever the value of those other texts in supporting claims about On Liberty, Hamburger also often misreads or wrenches them. An example is his assertion (at p. 168) that Mill's list of self-regarding defects at XVIII, 278 (OL 4, 5) equals the ‘miserable individuality’ in Utilitarianism (Collected Works, X, 216); reading the texts side by side shows the defects of selfish egotism in ‘miserable individuality’ to be almost entirely different.
46 Collected Works, XVIII, 276 (OL 4, 3).
47 Bain, Alexander, John Stuart Mill: A Criticism: with Personal Recollections (London: Longmans, Green, 1882), p. 109CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
48 Scarre, Geoffrey, Mill's On Liberty, p. 89.
49 Assume the fine is in 2019 dollars. $5 was the fine Henning Jacobson faced for refusing to be vaccinated against small pox. See Jacobson vs Massachusetts, 1905 (which Jacobson lost), excerpted in Public Health Law and Ethics: A Reader, ed. by Lawrence Gostin (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001). In 1905, $5 was roughly half the average weekly wage. See <https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nnc1.cu56779232;view=1up;seq=15>.
50 Stephen, James Fitzjames, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993), p. 104Google Scholar.
51 Waldron, p. 237.
52 Collected Works, XVIII, 279 (OL 4, 7)
53 Collected Works, XVIII, 279–80 (OL, 4, 7).
54 Collected Works, XXI: Essays on Equality, Law, and Education, p. 355.
55 One might ask whether any evidence indicates that communicating moral disapproval is especially motivating.
56 Collected Works, XVIII, 278 (OL, 4, 5).
57 Schoeman, Ferdinand DavidPrivacy and Social Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
58 The Dutch are famously direct in certain matters but Govert den Hartogh has told me he doubts they take personal criticism any more lightly than the English.
59 Collected Works, XVIII, 268 (OL 3, 11).
60 Collected Works, XVIII, 270 (OL, 3, 14).
61 Collected Works, XVIII, 259 (OL 2, 44).
62 Collected Works, XVIII, 278 (OL 4, 5).
63 Hamburger, p. 172.
64 Ryan, Alan, On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present, 2 vols (New York: Liveright, 2012), II, p. 719Google Scholar.
65 Ryan, Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, p. 237, emphasis in original.
66 Waldron, p. 235, emphasis added.
67 Riley, Mill on Liberty, pp. 161–2.
68 A further point is that it could be hard to differentiate in practice between avoiding for one's own sake and avoiding so as to inflict a cost. See the earlier comment about access to intentions.
69 In Privacy, ch. 2, Schoeman does attribute a theory to Mill but I do not think it is really Mill's. Schoeman interprets Mill as having such confidence in rationality that the problem of social pressure does not arise: rational people would get the benefit of, say, advice and warnings by weighing up whether the advice was justified, but they would be immune to the disapproval they might face if they ignored the advice. He says that Mill would ‘forswear all forms of influencing people that are not cognitively directed’ (Privacy, p. 35). Contrary to Schoeman, Mill is perfectly well aware that people are socially influenced non-cognitively and can, indeed, be benefited as a result. Schoeman overlooks Mill's view (which he even quotes) that people benefit from exhortation and encouragement. See Mill, Collected Works, XVIII, 277 (OL 4, 4).
70 Collected Works, XVIII, 242 (OL 2, 20); 263–4 (OL 3, 5); 268 (OL 3, 11).
71 Waldron, p. 240 interprets Mill as dealing with a problem of social pressure as follows: if people come to see the value of individuality, they will be able to retain their rights to advise, warn, or avoid but they will ‘exercise them more considerately’. Waldron may be right, but the idea needs more detail than he provides. If people were more considerate of individuality, that would not guarantee the right exercise of influences. For instance, someone falling into the stoner lifestyle might be better off if strenuously advised and warned rather than left alone as exercising individuality.
72 Collected Works, XVIII, 241 (OL 2, 19).
73 Collected Works, XVIII, 270 (OL 3, 14).
74 Collected Works, XXI, 332.
75 Collected Works, XVIII, 270 (OL 3, 14).
76 An analogy with John Rawls's theory, suggested by Joseph Chan, may help explain the division of labour I am suggesting here. John Rawls's theory of justice gives priority to certain basic liberties. It can be objected that these liberties are merely formal and his basic liberties principle fails to take account of the importance of, say, material resources in using one's liberties. Rawls replies that, except in the case of political liberties, the worth of liberties is taken care of by the principle of fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle. See Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 324f. The worth of liberties is important, but not all that is important about liberty has to be packed into one principle.
77 My thanks to Joseph Chan, Govert den Hartogh, Steve Holland, Monique Jonas, Geoff Kemp, Ben Sachs, and Steve Winter for their help and in particular to Kathy Smits for the hours discussing the ideas in this article. My thanks also to two anonymous referees and the editor.