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• Revision:John Stuart Mill's Art of Living - by Alan Ryan

TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > Politics > John Stuart Mill's Art of Living - by Alan Ryan

• Accepted view: JSM was trying to draw a line between the area of morality and the area of law, & hence what On Lib condemned was legislation on moral matters.

• Ryan says: was rather a working out of the consequences of a social and philosophical doctrine (other elements found in System of Logic, essay on Bentham, & Util’m). Distinction is not between law & morality, but between the sort of conduct subject to law-or-morality on the one hand and that which is subject to neither of these but to prudential or aesthetic appraisal on the other.

• In On Lib, tyranny feared always tyranny of opinion; in so far as Mill expects law to be oppressive it’s only cos. he expects public opinion to mould the law in its own image.

• Mill’s Doctrine of the Art of Life: (in System of Logic) a body of directions for our conduct in three branches: In each of these branches of A of L the aim is to achieve happiness and avoid pain, but in different ways:
  1. Morality: (concerned with the right: social relations/dealings with other people: concerned largely with rules directing us to abstain from conduct calculated to harm others; aimed at achieving interpersonal goods such as peace/justice/honesty).
  2. Prudence: (concerned with the expedient: that is, the good of the agent – his own happiness & misery, not that of other people – its rules indicate what to do/avoid to make ourselves happy) – an imp. conclusion is that there can be no such things as duties to oneself. Self development…
  3. Aesthetics: (concerned with the beautiful or expedient – involves something akin to perception rather than calculation (what M & P involve). Concerned with the quality of the good sought).

• Morality is distinct from both Prudence and Aesthetics. The logical form of morality is that of law, not that of prudence or aesthetics. Morality is concerned with clearing a space within which aesthetic & personal ideals can flourish, within which people can pursue their own goods. On Lib: only part of a man’s behaviour for which he should be subject to social coercion is that which concerns others without their free and undeceived consent. Principle amounts to a limitation of morality to this sort of behaviour. i.e. it’s only in actions that concerns others that appraisal in terms of wrong, immoral, or wicked is appropriate: only in this area that deterrence and retribution as they operate in morals, that is, operation of social (dis)approval, the weapon of public opinion, can ever be justified. Where only the agent is involved, or where others are involved only with their free and undeceived consent – matter isn’t a moral one, therefore it can’t be a matter involving punishment. E.g. when Mill distinguishes what we can/can’t say about a man who drinks too much: he may be said to be behaving foolishly, in an ugly manner; but (if others not involved) he can’t properly be said to be immoral/wicked.

• So if say an action’s wrong, are committing ourselves to view that the action’s socially harmful, and we’re invoking the aid of public opinion in stopping that action.

• Mill chiefly against the coercion of public opinion – justified where the matter really is a moral one, but tyranny where it isn’t.

• (JSM’s position more radical than Wolfenden Committee: said that private morality not the law’s business – JSM would have argued that this isn’t a question of morality at all – would have been incensed cos. it still leaves untouched social prejudice/coercion).

A Re-Reading of Mill On Liberty: by J.C. Rees

• In Autobiography, JSM describes the essay as ‘a philosophic text-book of a single truth… the importance, to man and society, of a large variety of types of character, and giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself in innumerable and conflicting directions’.

• Essay thus had practical aim of helping to ward off the dangers which trends of age seemed to carry with them (esp. mediocrity, social encroachment on indiv…). Preservation of individuality & variety of character poss., he believed, only if a princip. were observed whereby each person accorded an area of liberty in thought & action.

• Progress & the attainment of the truth were, as JSM saw it, the work of a select few; and to promote & safeguard the conditions for the distinctive activity of this elite in face of the growing power of the mediocre mass was a result he hoped his essay would achieve.

• Criticism of P of L: crucial point supposition that JSM’s princip. depends for its validity on there being some actions, incl. some imp. ones, which are free from social consequences - JSM wrongly assumes some human actions to be free of social consequences (egs of critics on this point: Fitzjames Stephen, Ritchie, Ernest Barker, Bosanquet, R.P. Anschutz). Rees argues that this assumption on part of critics false: Derives from a failure to observe the form of words which JSM often employs in the text: but Mill also uses word ‘interests’ – he says that the indiv is to be held accountable only for those actions which ‘are prejudicial to the interests of others’. (my point: admittedly, lack of consistency in the way JSM expresses this point – that’s prob. no 1; prob. no 2: is Mill’s definition of ‘interests’ all that helpful…) So not ‘effects’ which is imp. point but ‘interests’. Rees says: ‘it seems to me quite clear that a person may be affected by another’s behaviour without his interests being affected’. Rees’s answer to prob.1: it may be that ambiguity of the word ‘concerns’ responsible for concealing a coherent theory based on ‘interests’ rather than ‘effects’ & that we can so interpret the passages where the term ‘interests’’ isn’t specifically used as to yield a single consistent truth. After all, Mill appears aware of this ‘atomism’ objection: ‘no person is an entirely isolated being…’, but he goes on to insist that only when conduct affecting others violates a ‘distinct & assignable obligation to any other person or persons’ is ‘the case taken out of the self-regarding class, and becomes amenable to moral disapprobation’ (also Chapter 4). A further problem of consistency: also in chap 4, JSM talks of the ‘self-regarding deficiencies’ which a person may manifest & which ‘render him necessarily and properly a subject of distaste, or, in extreme cases, even of contempt’. For such vices, a man may ‘suffer very severe penalties at the hands of others for faults which directly only concern himself’. But also says no jurisdiction of society ‘when a person’s conduct affects the interests of no persons beside himself’. (by ‘constituted rights’ – law, rather than opinion, protecting those interests; other interests not to receive legal protection, though JSM doesn’t exclude possibility of their being regarded as rights, albeit legal ones. Rees thinks that JSM isn’t saying that rights and interests = same things, but that JSM implies that they’re closely related to one another.

• Rees’s Elucidation doesn’t solve the problem: as he admits: ‘how to decide when interests are affected? What are interests? Is there any commonly accepted criterion, or set of criteria, of an interest… They cannot be treated fully here and all I shall attempt are some preliminary and tentative remarks’. As the word ‘interests’ is generally used, ‘There is no precise and generally acceptable definition’. Rees decides to construe a definition for the purpose of JSM (does it work/help, though?): ‘It seems to be the condition in which a person’s claim to, or title to, or share in something is recognised as valid by others, or at least as worthy of consideration. … There is an objective element about it which precludes any fanciful demand from being an interest’.

• An imp point about how Mill saw the word ‘interests’: JSM’s repudiation of arguments of prohibitionists: JSM & the prohibitionist are disputing what may legitimately be claimed as rights & what counts as an injury to a person’s interests: JSM ridicules Alliance Secretary’s ‘ludicrously’ excessive claims as to what counts as interests (does this mean it’s unfair to say that the ‘brown shoe polish (Wolff) objection, i.e. something trivial might be construed as an interest, is unfair to JSM since JSM shows here that there are limits to what may be called an interest? What about consistency on this point? Does Mill make it easier for himself on the question of prohibition by basing his rejection of prohibition on a ridicule of an absurd claim: if the Alliance’s case were presented more reasonably, JSM would probably have a harder time of it…)

• Another problem for consistency: At one point he says that if something damages others, it need not be the case that others can intervene (&, see above, at one point he says that people can intervene when they’re not affected): Social interference, he says, is justifiable only when the interests of others are affected, but, he adds, ‘it must by no means be presupposed, because damage…, to the interest of others… always does justify such interference’ (Chap 5). (e.g. exams/competitive pressure) As JSM puts it (in Chap 4): ‘the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with [another person’s conduct] becomes open to discussion’. So P of L provides a clear directive only when can be sure that other people’s interests not involved (err no: offences v. public decency); when other people’s interests are affected we’re left with a margin of discretion & are advised to consider whether the general welfare is or isn’t likely to be promoted by interference in each particular instance.

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