The Propriety of Liberty by Kelly Duncan;

Author:Kelly, Duncan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2011-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOUR

Taking Things as They Are:

John Stuart Mill on the Judgement of Character

and the Cultivation of Civilization

Taking ‘things as they are’ was an ironic phrase of the philosophic radicals. Though alluding most probably to William Godwin’s novel Caleb Williams, it naturally also bears some resemblance to Rousseau’s vision of taking men as they are, and laws as they might be. Yet although Rousseau’s legacy was only minimally important to the development of John Stuart Mill’s political thinking, other French writers from Montesquieu to Guizot, Tocqueville and Comte played a more obvious role. Thus, many standard accounts of Mill’s political thought tell us how he tried to transform a strict utilitarianism in ethics (grounded in seeking pleasure for the end of happiness), into an awareness of the incommensurable character of the values and goods that individuals cherish. That is to say, they discuss Mill’s movement away from a concern with liberty as one form of self-interest, to liberty understood as both an internal and an external (or social) orientation, where the sociological quality of French debates about the état social, among other things, seems to have helped foster this development. These standard accounts do not usually tell us, however, that in response to a question concerning the nature of statesmanship and the practicalities of upholding laws either as they are, or indeed as they might be, Mill replied that apart from Bentham ‘there are few writers better worth studying to an European thinker than Adam Smith, Montesquieu, [and] Tocqueville’.1 Smith indeed was early on recognized by Mill as ‘a great philosopher and practical judge of human nature’, both for his analysis of the corrosive effects of despotism on individual character and for understanding that an excess veneration for titles, ranks and riches could ‘warp the judgements of the people in favour of their rulers’.2 This set of connections will be particularly important to my discussion. For although it assesses some of the major developments in Mill’s political thought over time, this chapter aims to provide a synthetic interpretation that brings my account of liberty and propriety into the nineteenth century, and continues discussion about the importance of the post-Lockean political theory so far traced both for Mill in particular, and Victorian political thought in general.3

By 1861 and in light of many serious critiques of utilitarianism, Mill had formally recognized that even as he defended a modified utilitarianism, ‘questions of ultimate ends do not admit of proof’.4 This recognition has of course been hugely influential theoretically.5 His Autobiography therefore laid down in some detail his own reasons for this conclusion, claiming his own ultimate ends involved seeking happiness indirectly, finding meaning in working for the benefit of others, and relating ‘human well being, to the internal culture of the individual’.6 This focus on internal culture is evident in Mill’s sense of self. A moving letter to his friend John Sterling in 1832 found Mill asking for personal information about Sterling, instead of the wider intellectual gossip that could be found elsewhere, because such ‘knowledge is the most proper object of letters, between friends’.

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