John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life: by Isaiah Berlin
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-         continued to profess happiness sole end of human existence, but his conception of what contributed to it changed into something v. diff. from that of his mentors, for what he came to value most neither rationality nor contentment, but diversity, versatility, fullness of life – the unaccountable leap of indiv. genius, spontaneity &  uniqueness of man/group/ civilisation.

-          Perhaps a natural compensation for his drilled/emotionally shrivelled/warped childhood & adolescence.  ‘For Bentham individualism is a psychological datum, for Mill it is an ideal’.  In JSM’s writings, happiness comes to mean something v. like ‘realisation of one’s wishes, whatever they may be’.

-          Issues to which JSM was dedicated, whether in published views or actions, concerned not with typically utilitarian projects advocated by Bentham, but with the extension of individual freedom, esp of speech, seldom with anything else. 

-          Didn’t oppose state intervention as such; welcomed it in education or labour legisla cos. He thought that without it weakest would be enslaved & crushed. 

-          Wrote that utility is the ultimate appeal in ethical questions.  Also wrote that ‘when two or more of the secondary principles conflict, direct appeal to some first principle becomes necessary’ – this principle is utility.  But he gives no notion of how this notion, drained of its old, materialistic but intelligible content, is to be applied.  Mill’s tendency to escape into ‘vague generality’ leads one to ask what Mill’s real scale of values as shown in his writings & actions was.  If his life & causes he advocated are any evidence, seems clear that in public life the highest values for him (whether or not he calls them ‘secondary ends’) – were indiv lib, variety, and justice.  Variety – would have defended on lines that without it many forms (at present wholly unforeseeable) would be left unknown.  Was committed to the answer that we can never tell (until we have tried) where greater truth or happiness may lie. 

-          Detested and feared standardisation: perceived that in name of philanthropy, democ., & equality a society was being created in which human objectives were artificially made narrower & smaller, & the majority of men were being converted… ‘collective mediocrity’ gradually strangling originality and individual gifts

-          Those who killed Socrates & Christ sincerely believed them to be purveyors of wicked falsehoods. 

-          Without infallibility how can the truth emerge save in discussion?  The premise implicit in this argument of JSM: was an empiricist: i.e. believed that no truths are or can be rationally established except on the evidence of observation; new observations could in principle upset a conclusion founded on earlier ones (believed this to be true for physics & even logic & maths).  Much more the case in ‘ideological’ fields where no scientific certainty prevailed: ethics/hist/pol/rel, the entire field of human affairs, where only probability reigns – here, unless full liberty of opinion & argument permitted, nothing can ever be rationally established.  (Doesn’t tell with those who believe that absolute truth is discoverable once and for all).  JSM’s argument plausible only on assumption that human knowledge was in principle never complete, & always fallible. 

-          Another weak argument: says that unless the truth is contested, it is liable to degenerate into dogma or prejudice; men would no longer feel it as a living truth; opposition needed to keep it alive.  (resembles Hegel’s argument for war as keeping human society from stagnation) If truth in human affairs were demonstrable like in, say, arithmetic, we’d hardly need to knock over false propositions to preserve our understanding. 

-          Mill believes in liberty, that is, rigid limitation of the right to coerce, cos. he’s sure that men can’t develop and flourish & become fully human unless they’re left free from interference by other men within a certain minimum area of their lives, which he wishes to  make inviolable.

-          Limits of private and public domain difficult to demarcate.

-          E.g. as to why Muslims shouldn’t forbid eating pork to all (genuinely disgusted), the answer, on utilitarian grounds, by no means self-evident.  Might be argued that there is no a priori reason for supposing that most men wouldn’t be happier – if that’s the goal – in a society where private life & personal freedom reduced to vanishing point, than in JSM’s individualist order; & that whether this is so or not is a matter for experimental verification.  If damage to bigots (objectionable religion…) on instinctive/intuitive & not founded on any rational ground, doesn’t make it less painful or, to that extent, damaging to them.  Why should rational men be entitled to the satisfaction of their ends more than the irrational?  If human happiness only criterion, burning of witches (when public strong feelings) OK in util terms.  At centre of JSM’s thought is not his utilitarianism, nor about private/public dividing line (JSM states that State may invade private domain to promote education, hygiene, social security/justice) but rather his passionate belief that men are made human by their capacity for choice – of evil and good equally.  Aware of the many-sidedness of the truth.  ‘Overmastering’ desire for variety and individuality for their own sake emerges in many shapes: ’Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each other to live as seems good to the rest.’. 

-          JSM’s suspicion of democracy as the only just, and yet potentially the most oppressive, form of government, springs from the same roots.  Dependence of each on all might grind down into ‘surveillance of each by all’, ‘tame uniformity of thought, dealings and actions’, produce ‘automatons in human form’ and ‘liberticide’. 

-          Criticisms of JSM:

-          1.  Richard Livingstone charges JSM with attributing too much rationality to human beings: ideal of untrammeled freedom may be the right of those who’ve reached the maturity of their faculties, but of how many men today, or at most times, is this true?  Surely JSM asks far too much & is far too optimistic?  JSM ‘on the whole was a pessimistic man, and consequently defended and distrusted democ.’ 

-          2.  JSM’s psychology’s become antiquated; justly criticised for paying too much attention to the spiritual obstacles to the fruitful uses of freedom – lack of moral & intellectual light; and too little (though nothing like as little as his detractors have maintained) to poverty, disease, and their causes, and for concentrating too narrowly on the freedom of thought and expression – all this is true.  

-          For JSM: if human life to be tolerable, info must be centralised & power disseminated.  If all knows as much as possible, & has not too much power, then we may avoid a state which ‘dwarfs its men’

-          JSM’s defence of lib not ‘of the highest intellectual quality: most of his arguments can be turned against him; certainly non is conclusive, or such as would convince a determined or unsympathetic opponent.’ But the inner citadel, central underlying thesis, has stood the test: clearest & most persuasive/moving expression of a desire for an open and tolerant society. 

-          But his ideas remain relevant to us today: who’d doubt what position he’d have taken in Dreyfus case/Apartheid/colonialism/Wolfenden Report?

-          JSM believed that it was not rational thought or domination over nature which distinguished men from the rest of nature, but freedom to choose and experiment.

Other Notes in this Category

1. Jane O’Grady’s Introduction to On Liberty
2. John Stuart Mill and Isaiah Berlin – The ends of life and the preliminaries of morality: by Richard
3. John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life: by Isaiah Berlin
4. John Stuart Mill’s Art of Living: by Alan Ryan
5. Mill’s Conception of Happiness & the Theory of Individuality: by John Gray
6. Mill’s Defence of Liberty: by C.L. Ten
7. Social Liberty and Free Agency – some ambiguities in Mill’s conception of freedom: by G.W. Smith

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