The Two Minds of a Philosopher

...which was in the common estimation placed above discussion...

...In his Political Economy Mill opposed the attempt to give a restrictive definition to the scope of government action: "We sometimes, for example, hear it said that governments ought to confine themselves to affording protection against force and fraud: that, these two things apart, people should be free agents, able to take care of themselves, and that so long as a person practices no violence or deception, to the injury of others in person or property, legislators and governments are in no way called on to concern themselves about him...

...On Liberty does not represent Mill's mature position, for the "other Mill's" views are expressed both earlier and later...

...But the experiences of this century have forced us to see civilized life as a rarer and more fragile growth than was commonly thought a hundred years ago, and as an edifice that rests on a more complex foundation than a simple commitment to liberty...

...Mill related in his Autobiography how he came to understand the elusive character of happiness...

...Another facet of this problem, I think, might profitably have been discussed in greater detail...

...The other fundamental difficulty with On Liberty is that it may accomplish just the opposite of what it seeks to do...

...As for Harriet Taylor, her influence on the book-called their "joint production" by Mill-was broad indeed, extending, Himmelfarb argues at length, to its whole mode of thought, especially to its simplistic and absolute character, and its rather arrogant and alarmist notion of the individual's relation to society...

...To understand On Liberty, therefore, one must explain its disparity with Mill's other writings...

...Profound and interesting variations among men do not derive from a dedication to individuality-which tends to produce mere eccentricity or even distasteful fakery-but are an indirect consequence of actions having goals other than liberty or individuality...

...What is remarkable about Gertrude Himmelfarb's On Liberty and Liberalism is that she finds, and brings forward for our consideration, alternatives to the position of On Liberty in the writings of Mill himself...

...On Liberty's earnest praise of individuality may unwittingly contribute to a new conformity...

...For this reason, On Liberty and Liberalism is only a beginning...

...on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end...

...To see this, it is perhaps enough to mention just two of the many instances cited by Himmelfarb...

...It is ironic," she writes, "that liberals who hotly reject the 'domino theory' in foreign affairs implicitly hold to some such theory in the realm of civil liberties, the denial of any particular liberty presumably setting in motion a process that will result in the toppling of all liberties...

...This point is elaborated in her last two chapters, on the legacy of On Liberty...

...Raised to be a utilitarian, he had turned against that philosophy as an oversimplification, and the majority of his works advance a complicated and nuariced view of human affairs, articulating not one principle but a variety of conflicting causes and values affecting social life...

...First, Mill's exclusive support of liberty leads to the rejection, or at least the undermining, of other values necessary for a good society...

...But why should people be protected by their government, that is, by their own collective strength, against violence and fraud, and not against other evils, except that the expediency is more obvious...

...However that may be, Himmelfarb seeks further for an explanation, and discovers it in two places: Mill's championship of women's rights, and his relationship with Harriet Taylor...

...She goes on to expose two fundamental difficulties in the philosophic teaching of On Liberty...

...Indeed, Mill, like Tocqueville, appears to have regarded the growth of equality, the increasing homogeneity of people's life situations, as the most important characteristic of modern society: On Liberty tries above all to oppose the mediocrity that unmitigated equality would bring...

...And in his Autobiography, he called the volume "a kind of philosophic textbook of a single truth...

...Yet to lose sight of these can prevent a clear understanding of the opinion one holds...

...Assistant Professor of Political Science, Claremont Men's Collage John Stuart Mill's On Liberty made an unprecedentedly straightforward and absolute argument, in a tone of urgency: An individual's speech and action should be free from interference by society, except in the case of quite direct harm to other people...

...Yet absolute liberty cannot be sustained, a fact suggested by a bizarre disjunction in contemporary liberalism...

...On the other, increasing governmental control is called for in all kinds of economic matters and, one might add, to prevent the moral abuses of racism and sexism...

...That doctrine has swept all competitors from the field...

...In On Liberty, however, he states that his aim is "to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control...

...Though her criticism raises an appropriate question, I find it insufficient because it does not do justice to Mill's legitimate appprehensions...

...Its effect was not fully obvious in the 19th century...

...Himrnelfarb characterizes this disjunction as "inherently untenable and unstable...

...Mill's essay on Coleridge contains a vivid plea for the necessity, if society is to flourish and endure, of an education that includes a large element of discipline, and a feeling of allegiance or loyalty: "In all political societies which have had a durable existence, there has been some fixed point...

...A complete analysis of the dilemmas of contemporary society must elucidate the complex, entangled (I am tempted to say dialectical) relations of liberty and equality...

...A third explanation is suggested in the Autobiography, where Mill declared his belief that On Liberty would be most valuable when a new body of convictions and practices had formed...

...In On Liberty, she notes, the situation of men is described in a way which could more plausibly apply to that of women, and the effect is to give men in general the same enemy and the same goal as feminists...

...Himmelfarb convincingly dismisses two easy explanations...

...Mill's argument was extreme and innovative, she says, particularly in its extension of freedom beyond speech and writing to action, behavior, the whole way of life...

...Most briefly, her fundamental goal is to demonstrate that while Mill, in On Liberty, is doctrinaire, at other times he is not...

...Himmelfarb treats some features of this with considerable insight, stating, for instance, that "the absolutist doctrine may have the perverse effect of depriving the most essential liberties of even that relative security they would enjoy under more modest auspices...

...Actually, it is surprising to find Mill taking this approach...

...He himself argued: to be doctrinaire was "to see a principle in its full force, and not to see the opposing principles by which it must be qualified...

...One hopes Gertrude Himrnelfarb will now turn her admirable talents to expounding this older tradition of liberalism...

...Himmelfarb maintains that this reading fails to demonstrate why the work abandoned the "other Mill's" more complicated defenses of freedom...

...people then could accept the doctrine of On Liberty with comparative ease because of their cheerful confidence, founded on existing decencies and hopes for progress, that liberty would not be misused...

...Himmelfarb's concerns, of course, are not merely historical...

...The point is well taken, but it is also here that we see the limits of her treatment of current problems...

...But it leaves the toughest task undone: to articulate and to put in coherent order the values that contribute to the good life of man in society and that are necessary for the continued existence of liberty itself...

...On the one hand, complete freedom of expression and behavior is advocated in the areas of ideas, sex, art, and most aspects of morals...

...Because Mill's teaching is so widely accepted, its radical character is often ignored, and one easily forgets that different definitions of liberty have in the past been seriously advocated...

...Whether true about happiness or not, the observation does seem appropriate to individuality...

...In fact, the measure of its success is how commonplace it now seems...

...something which men agreed in holding sacred...

...Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness...

...Nor can the book be considered an extreme response to the repressive character of Victorian society: In a highly entertaining chapter, Himmelfarb shows that the Victorian era was not so monolithically straitlaced, either morally or intellectually, as we have been led to think...

...This has been taken to indicate that Mill, like Tocqueville, feared a future of slavish conformity to mediocrity and mass opinion, and used the simple, dramatic rhetoric of On Liberty to combat this danger...

...For the motive behind the tendency to extend official control is the passion for equality, and despite Himmelfarb's suggestion that liberty is the single idea dominating our time, one must consider equality a serious rival...

...Himmelfarb shows, often with pleasing sharpness, how later developments on the basis of On Liberty introduced similar paradoxes and anomalies...

...It is a fine example of what intellectual history should be, combining a description and an analysis of the thinking of an age, reopening issues that were commonly thought to be closed and guiding the reader back to fundamental political problems...

...On substantive matters, too, On Liberty differs from the "other Mill...