What are J.S. Mill’s notions of Liberty’? Explain.

 J. S. Mill’s On Liberty was influential in the academic debates in the 1960s. Mill’s work is seen as an exposition of the negative concept of liberty. At the basis of Mill’s arguments for individual freedom lay a strong sense of contempt for custom, and for legal rules and norms which could not be rationally justified. It is also sometimes argued that for Mill any free action, no matter how immoral, had some element of virtue in it, by the fact that it was freely performed. While Mill considered restraint on individual’s actions evil, he did not consider restraints to be entirely unjustifiable. He felt, however, that within the society there was always a presumption in favour of liberty. Any constraints on liberty, therefore, had to be justified by those who applied them.

For Mill, the purpose of liberty was to encourage the attainment of ‘individuality’. Individuality refers to the distinctive and unique character of each human individual, and freedom means the realisation of this individuality, i.e., personal growth or self determination. It was the property of individuality in human beings that made them active rather than passive, and critical of existing modes of social behaviour, enabling them to refuse to accept conventions unless they were found reasonable. Freedom in Mill’s framework, therefore, appears not simply as the absence of restraints but the deliberate cultivation of certain desirable attitudes. It is because of this that Mill is often seen as gravitating towards a positive conception of liberty. Mill’s conception of freedom is also rooted in the notion of choice. This is evident from his belief that a person who lets others ‘choose his plan of life for him’ does not display the faculty of ‘individuality’ or self-determination. The only faculty he or she seemed to possess was the ‘apelike’ faculty of ‘imitation’. On the other hand, a person ‘who chooses to plan for himself, employs all his faculties’. In order to realise one’s individuality, and attain thereby the condition of freedom, it was essential that individuals resist forces or norms and customs which hindered self-determination. Mill, however, was also of the view that very few individuals possessed the capacity to resist and make free choices. The rest were content to submit to ‘apelike imitation’, existing thereby in a state of ‘unfreedom’. Mill’s conception of liberty can be seen for this reason as elitist, since individuality could be enjoyed only by a minority and not the masses at large.

Mill, as other liberals, emphasised a demarcation of the boundaries between the individual and society. While talking about reasonable or justifiable restrictions on individual liberty, Mill distinguished between self-regarding and otherregarding actions, i.e., actions, which affected the individual only, and actions which affected the society at large. Any restriction or interference with an individual could be justified only to prevent harm to others. Over actions that affected only himself, the individual was sovereign. Such an understanding of legal and societal constraints conveys the idea of a society in which the relationship between individual and society is not ‘paternal’, i.e., the individual being the best judge of his interests, law and society could not intervene to promote a person’s ‘best interests’. Similarly, the idea that an act can be constrained only if it harmed others, rules out the idea that some acts are intrinsically immoral and therefore, must be punished irrespective of whether they affect anyone else. Further, Mill’s framework rules out ‘utilitarianism’, as enunciated by Bentham, which would justify interference if it maximized the general interest. Yet, the demarcation between the individual and the society is not strict in Mill in the sense that all acts do affect others in some way, and Mill believed that his principle did not preach a moral indifference towards the selfregarding behaviour of others, and felt that it was permissible to use persuasion to discourage immoral behaviour. Also, Mill strongly believed in the instrumental value of liberty in the promotion of social goods. This is especially true of his arguments for the complete liberty of thought, discussion and expression and the right to assembly and association. Mill felt that all restrictions on free discussion should be removed because truth would emerge from a free competition of ideas. It may be pointed out that in today’s catalogue of liberties, freedom of expression is valued perhaps more than economic liberty as a democratic ideal.

Subcribe on Youtube - IGNOU SERVICE

For PDF copy of Solved Assignment

WhatsApp Us - 9113311883(Paid)