Political Philosophy: An Introduction by Jason Brennan

Author:Jason Brennan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: ebook
Publisher: CATO Institute
Published: 2016-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

7

Civil Rights: Freedom of Speech and Lifestyle

Let’s turn now from economic liberties to civil liberties, such as the freedom of lifestyle choice, sexual freedom, the right of assembly, freedom of religion, and the right to free speech. How much freedom should people have in these domains?

John Stuart Mill wrote On Liberty , a classic defense of civil liberties, at a time when a few European countries had begun experimenting with democracy. While Mill’s father, philosopher James Mill, had thought democracy would solve the problem of tyranny, John Stuart Mill recognized that democracy allowed for the tyranny of the majority. Further, John Stuart Mill believed that social pressure can be as despotic and oppressive as making things illegal. Mill thought that if people were highly intolerant—if they tended to shun everyone who didn’t conform to the social and religious norms—this would impede progress almost as much as government-mandated censorship.

Mill was a type of sophisticated utilitarian; that is, he rejected the crude utilitarianism we discussed above. He thought that ultimately the correct moral code was whatever code was most conducive to general human happiness. Mill didn’t say that every right action had to itself maximize human happiness. Rather, he thought morality as a whole tended to maximize it.

Further, Mill had an expansive notion of happiness. Unlike many utilitarians, he believed happiness was not simply about pleasure. Instead, Mill argued, people could discover what forms part of a happy life through experience (or through learning from others’ experience). Mill was highly influenced by the German Romantic movement in poetry and literature. He concluded that the Romantic concept of Bildung , autonomous self-development, is the essence of what makes us human and what makes human life worthwhile.42 A happy life, Mill argued, was an autonomous, self-directed life, in which people are the authors of their own actions and in which they rationally affirm their conceptions of what is good or valuable. Thus, Mill rejected crude hedonism, saying, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”43

On Liberty asks, What’s the proper sphere of personal autonomy? How much freedom should people have? What may society regulate (whether through law or social disapprobation), and what properly belongs to the individual (free of punishment or censure)? Mill proposed the following solution: we should delimit the sphere of personal liberty at the points where doing so will tend to generate the best overall consequences. He then argued on empirical grounds that this will mean imbuing each individual with an extremely wide sphere of personal liberty.

To illustrate, consider the question of scientific freedom, such as the freedom to pursue new knowledge in physics. Mill would have agreed that such freedom is lost on most of us. Most of us simply don’t have the skill or will to do anything with this freedom. Why not, then, allow the government to forbid most of us from writing about physics?

For one, Mill argued, even if some ideas are false or bad, there’s tremendous value in grappling with bad ideas.

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