On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill. - book reviews

National Review, Oct 1, 1990 by Matthew Scully

Comb through the works of just about any philosopher, particularly one as prolific as John Stuart Mill, and you're going to hit upon a few contradictions. Here for instance is Mill writing in his central work, On Liberty:

The object of this Essay is to assert

one very simple principle, as entitled to

govern absolutely the dealings of society

with the individual.... That principle

is, that the sole end for which

mankind are warranted, individually or

collectively, in interfering with the liberty

of action of any of their number is

self-protection.

Now listen to his observations on the radical French philosophers of the era:

The very first and fundamental principle

of [their] whole system, that government

and the social union exist for

the purpose of concentrating and directing

all the forces of society to some one

end ... What a foundation for a political

science this is! Government exists

for all purposes whatever that are for

man's good; and the highest and most

important of these purposes is the improvement

of man himself as a moral

and intelligent being.

In a debate, the comparison would clearly have put Mill in a tough spot. And yet if this were the only point of Gertrude Himmelfarb's On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill (published in 1974 and lately reissued by ICS Press, 351 pp., $10.95), one could dismiss it as a captious attempt to belittle one of the great modem thinkers. But her argument goes well beyond that.

Despite a reputation as the archetypal modern rationalist, in On Liberty Mill contradicted just about everything he wrote before and after. Let error stand, he wrote in one of the book's many grand phrases, and "in the end" truth will emerge from the ongoing collision of adverse opinions." The raw material of human nature" was free of evil, and needed only to be shaped according to one's "personal impulses and preferences." And yet in other writings quoted at length by Miss Himmelfarb-many composed within months of On Liberty-we find Mill urging order, discipline, and reverence for tradition: Temperate" and "fair-minded" debate could be tolerated provided "elevated things" were kept in view and society's fundamental tenets remained "above discussion."

As Miss Himmelfarb exhaustively presents it, the evidence of schizophrenia" between the Mill of On Liberty and the more sober Mill is incontestable. It's as if de Sade had laid aside the sweat-stained manuscript of Justine to pen an eloquent tract on the case for continence-the difference being that Mill was not a fevered madman but the principal theorist of modem political thought. How could the author of A System of Logic, a man by all accounts one of the era's intellectual titans, contradict himself so wildly.2

One explanation, according to Miss Himmelfarb, is simple browbeating at the hands of his wife and editor Harriet Taylor Mill, an early feminist, during their collaboration on On Liberty. To judge by Harriet's letters and extensive manuscript revisions, all accepted after meek protests, that ongoing collision of opinion so vital to the rest of society came to an abrupt end at the Mill doorstep. Left alone at home one day when an unexpected problem arose, we find the lovestruck logician in turmoil because, as he sniveled in a letter quoted by Miss Himmelfarb, "it is necessary that something should be decided immediately without waiting for the decision of my only guide and oracle." Advanced thinkers like themselves belonged to "a finer breed," his oracle assured him.

But the more profound explanation for Mill's inconsistencies, argues Miss Himmelfarb, is to be found in the ideas of On Liberty themselves. To subordinate all values to "Liberty" by means of one very simple principle" is to exalt will over reason and enter a boundless field of contradiction. Just as statesmen today can lecture movingly on community" and family" while defending absolute choice," so the upright Mill could declare bold new liberties confident they would be used only for 'elevated things."

"He looked to liberty as a means of achieving the highest reaches of the human spirit," concludes Miss Himmelfarb. "He did not take seriously the possibility that men would also explore the depths of depravity." This was in 1974, and even now her examples of what extremes might emerge from the collision of opinion"-licentious books, a controversial government report on homosexuality-seemdated.

Today one could cite better instances, such as the definitive formulation of Mill's doctrine offered recently by New York vulgarian Al Goldstein to Newsday. There's a right to cablecast anything. The more offensive it is, the more right it has to exist," observed Mr. Goldstein-a still finer breed of progressive. One man's obscenity is another man's indecency. One man's perversion is another man's religion."