Thomas Carlyle - On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History

John Gray's Criticisms of Mills "On Liberty"Keith Parker

  

 1)  �The principle of liberty cannot give individual liberty the priority and equal distribution that any liberal morality requires and that Mill himself plainly desired.�

Mill follows a liberal morality which he wants to found on a utilitarian basis.

�The problem for Mill is that the Principle of Liberty can supply only a necessary and not a sufficient condition for a just restraint of liberty.�  It is true, Gray notes that the Principle of Liberty using the notion of harm rules out large areas of paternalistic and moralistic restraint on liberty however once the trip wire is crossed then even trivial harms to others could sanction substantial restraints on liberty. �Thus unfair discrimination against a particular minority social group is consistent with acceptable terms of co-operation and with stability in the larger society � and in these circumstances expediency may well mandate unfairness-This is a general objection to utilitarianism in all of its varieties.�

 2) �The prohibition on paternalist restraints of liberty entailed by the Principle of Liberty cannot be given any compelling utilitarian justification�

 Mill rules out such intervention on the grounds that we cannot identify circumstances in which paternalistic intervention can be successful. Gray notes that in some areas self regarding actions cause serious harms e.g. using crack cocaine. Intervention here is feasible and not overtly costly. �Even if self harming conduct injures the interests of the agent and of no one else, it is utilitarianly unreasonable to rule out of court restraint of the liberty to engage in it. Or, to put the same point in other terms, if banning all liberty limiting paternalism is indeed a necessary ingredient in all liberal political morality, it is one that cannot be given a utilitarian justification.�

 3) �No evaluatively uncontroversial or morally neutral conception of harm can be formulated of the sort needed by the Principle of Liberty.�

Mills argument presupposes a conception of harm that enables a utilitarian calculus of harms,� which depends at no point on controversial conceptions of human well being.� In reality Gray notes judgements about the relative weight of harms varies with divergent moral outlooks. �If this is so it is a devastating blow to the Principle of Liberty, since it deprives it of the chief use Mill hoped for it- that of settling issues about restraint of liberty that arise between people of different moral outlooks.� Mills one very simple principle cannot be formulated.

 4) �The account of human well being required by the view of harm specified by the Principle of Liberty is not an application of any utilitarian theory but an expression of an ideal of the good life whose underlying ethical theory is perfectionist.�

Mill commits himself to the idea that once liberty is experienced then humans will not in general trade it away. It is clear that he has an ideal type of personality in mind. The fundamental criticism of Millian liberalism is,� that it is not a derivative of any utilitarian morality �. But instead a defence of a specific ideal or way of life- the way of life of a liberal culture, in which autonomy and individuality, making choices for oneself and trying out `experiments of living` are valued as intrinsically important goods.�

 5) �The account of human flourishing contained in this perfectionist theory is unrealistic and implausible in privileging the human interest in autonomy.�

 Mill sees human well being in terms of pursuit of self chosen projects valued as ends in themselves. Life should be active and concerned with self discovery and development. Once experienced the higher pleasures that go with being autonomous and developing individuality will not be traded off for any lower pleasure.  Gray notes it is not clear why choice making is given this privileged position. He notes that under Mill�s conception arranged marriages could never be happy. 

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