Evaluate Mill's liberty principle. What does Mill mean by liberty? What other principles are important to Mill's argument?

Another problem with the HP is the question of what counts as harm. It is obvious that physical abuse should be restricted, and acts such as fraud, deception and robbery. But what about emotional and psychological abuse? Should this be restricted? Is it even possible to restrict this? It would mean restricting the use of harmful utterances, which is impossible unless the language is conditioned in a style similar to that of the Party in George Orwell's 1984, and this would be a totalitarian measure which restricts freedom completely, and goes contrary to what Mill originally wants. Is it possible to tell what causes harm? It is very difficult to establish the causal connection, for example there is rising gun crime in the country, and some people are blaming rap and hip-hop music, because of their (debatable) glorification of guns and violence. This is a very controversial statement as there is no obvious link between this and gun crime.

This "very simple principle" has now become more complicated. Unfortunately, it gets more complicated still. There is another principle that comes prior to the application of the LP, and that is the rationality principle (RP). Mill states that "liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion". By this he means that the LP does not apply to people and societies that are uncivilised. The LP only applies once people are capable of responding to the reasoning of others (this may be his attempt to justify his work in the East India Company, because they ran India in an authoritarian manner which should go contrary to Mill's beliefs. The RP allows Mill to say that the Indians were uncivilised and therefore it was ok to rule them in this way, because the LP does not apply to them). However, this then means that in an uncivilised society, the state can impose whatever restrictions it wants. Of course, all Western developed countries are civilised according to Mill.

The RP has numerous problems. Is there an objective standard of rationality by which Mill thinks we can judge whether a society is civilised? Mill seems to just assume that this is the case, but it is highly debatable. It could be said that Mill is being ethnocentric with his idea that the modern Western world is civilised, yet countries like India are not. Mill could be described as a "modernist" philosopher because he believes different cultures are less advanced than ours. However, Mill does value difference for its own sake, much like "postmodernist" philosophers.

The final aspect of the LP is the utility principle (UP). The UP states that utility is the "ultimate appeal on all ethical questions"; therefore the greatest happiness for the greatest number can override liberty as long as it is in "the permanent interests of man as a progressive being". For Mill, utility is human progress and the advancement of political and moral thought. This is more important than liberty because it will ultimately benefit society. Some thinkers however have accused Mill of jumping from utility to liberty and back whenever it suits his argument.

Although the LP in theory is an important part of Mill's argument, he also tries to ground the idea of liberty in an historical context. Mill sees history not just as past events, but part of an overall scheme of events that lead to an ultimate goal. The present is just a phase of this overall scheme. This is similar to Marx's approach, and could be said to be a teleological view of history. Just as Marx claims that history is characterised by the dialectic of class struggle,3 Mill claims that history is dominated by the struggle between liberty and authority. Mill's dialectical approach states that there have been several stages in history and in each stage liberty and authority - two opposing ideas - have struggled with each other and allowed society to progress. Liberty has had a different meaning in every stage as it has encountered different counterforces.

Mill surveys the history of Greece, Rome and England. This is a very restrictive approach (possibly done so that his evidence fits in with progress) because he misses out many important historical eras e.g. the dark ages, when society seemed to regress rather than progress.

The first stage is the tyrannical era, where liberty is the "protection against the tyranny of the political rulers". Politics begins as tyranny, and liberty is born as a reaction to this. This means that liberty is born outside of politics, because in this early stage, the political sphere ends outside the will of the rulers. Liberty is therefore the opposite of the political - a human social principle that grows in the face of tyranny. Mill does not see the state as being the natural source of liberty, but its enemy. Contra Rousseau, who says that "man was born free", Mill states that freedom only came into existence as a reaction against the rule of tyrants.

The second stage is the birth of democracy. This begins when people begin to participate in the political sphere, when politics gradually ceases to be the opposition to liberty (this is the dialectic at work). Liberty gains a new meaning. Freedom is democratic political participation, and the ability to exert power on rulers; in other words, access to power rather than protection from power. In this stage, the people believe that tyranny is impossible, because they themselves are in power - they surely cannot tyrannise themselves?

In the third stage, a tyranny of the majority has occurred. Because the majority now rule, people are being oppressed - not politically, but by opinion and custom. Society collectively is the oppressor. There is a social rather than political tyranny, which is harder to identify because it affects the way people think (this is also similar to Marx and his idea of false consciousness). In this stage, liberty means free thought and freedom of expression i.e. not being forced into a particular custom or to have a particular majority opinion. The classic example of social tyranny is the Victorian times (which is when Mill was writing) when people were forced into upholding certain rules of etiquette, abiding dress codes and generally having enormous social pressure exerted on them to conform with the majority.

Mill has a very dark view of this stage. In the previous stages, tyranny was external e.g. brute force where it was possible to react through action. In this stage, the tyranny is internal and grows inside a person to the point where they are unable to notice it because they simply cannot notice it - they have internalised social norms and expectations until they have become part of their thought processes. Social tyranny "leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself".

Unfortunately, this stage is not the darkest moment of the tyranny of the majority. There is a fourth stage which has not yet occurred, and there are two possibilities for it. It could either be a) a complete tyranny where every exception to the social norm is suppressed by law (it could be said that the national curriculum already does this, through its restriction of individual learning differences and interests) where liberty will simply be the principle of difference - the age of conformity, or it could be b) the age of diversity, where liberty is the main principle of society and there is individual freedom of speech and expression.

Mill does not try and predict the future precisely as Marx did (i.e. communism is the ultimate goal of society) and he leaves us with two possibilities. According to Mill's dialectic, the two opposing ideas of liberty and tyranny should collide and leave us with an age of diversity. But Mill leaves it open ended, which is actually consistent with his theory. He believes that no one is infallible, and so therefore his ideas are not definitely true4.

It is interesting to note that Mill was writing in the Victorian era - a very strict moral period where etiquette and moral beliefs were almost forced upon people. It is easy to see how Mill was considered to be radical in his time.

2 Some could argue that drug use is a self-regarding act, but there have been instances of drug driving and drug related killings, which show that maybe drug use is an other regarding act.

3 The original idea of the dialectic came from Socrates, who's arguing style involved finding an opposing argument to everything. He saw a thesis, and found an antithesis. The thesis and antithesis collided, and eventually the best parts of both were fused to create a synthesis. This then became a new thesis to be attacked. This dialectical approach is praised by Mill who believes that society progresses because of opposing ideas struggling together and eventually the best coming out, which is why he champions free speech (so that all sides of an argument can be heard) but it got Socrates put to death in his day. Marx's approach is dialectical. He claims that there are "stages" of history where there have been two classes - one class with more power than the other. In each stage there has been a struggle between each class, and the ruling class is eventually overthrown by the lower class. The lower class then become the ruling class, and history progresses into the next stage. This is dialectical because it shows how two opposing sides collide and allow history to progress.

4 It is interesting to note that Marx's communist vision of the future has never actually materialised. There have been attempts (Soviet Russia and China) but they have been based on revised Marxist ideas and never the actually ideas of Marx himself. According to Mill, Marx is not infallible and so made a mistake is forming a definite theory for the future.