John Stuart Mill's limits on the notion of liberty

¶ … Mill place any limits on his notion of liberty?

In his foundational treatise on the notion of liberty, John Stuart Mill opened Pandora's box for debate about the nature and limitations On Liberty. His defense of the fundamental democratic ideal forces scholars into two camps: the first heralds the writer as the true defender of freedom and civil liberty, the others arguing that his service was as no great defender, but instead as the consistent utilitarian. Steadily the political son of de Tocqueville, Mill's 1859 disquisition was immediately noted for its justification of the freedom of the individual in the face of a state imposition of control, from its inception a classic libertarian premise. However, Mill's idea of liberty was not boundless; while the first danger to liberty, he argued, is the threat of state control, its second danger is that to which most democracies are known, the "tyranny of the majority."

The political scientist microscopically examines the social system in which liberty might thrive best by posturing that in which it might be least threatened. In the face of pointed disagreement over the validity of his position, Mill is attributed a "a position which may be designated, for lack of a better term, as a doctrinaire liberalism." Mill's limits upon that numinous political ideal is limned by a conversation of elementary boundaries, but is otherwise a doctrine of complete freedom of thought and speech as an absolute and universal rule for society, shaped around the "Art of Life" expounded in System of Logic.

In System of Logic, Mill defines the three departments of the Art of life as morality, prudence, and aesthetics, in each case distinguishing the beautiful and noble aspects of judgment. Utilitarianism followed, surmounting a thesis of utilitarianism in which moral obligations are unable to be judged in any direct manner; Gray elaborates.

The plausibility of the substantive doctrines defended in these two essays thus depends in part upon the cogency of the conceptual analysis of Mill's Logic... Indeed, the subject matter of utility is not the moral rightness or wrongness of actions at all. Rather as an axiological princple specifying happiness as the only desirable end, quite distinct from any substantive moral disciple, Mill's utility principle is conceived as 'the test of all conduct.'"

This split level of morality and moral obligation defines the version of liberty Mill invasions; dubiously, some scholars, Gray among them, see this sanctity of obligation as proof that Mill believes firmly in the Enforcement of Morality. This "critical morality" extends directly to the Harm Principle, the source of inherent limitation witnessed in On Liberty.

Mill's conviction to moral wrongs are necessarily distinguished from what Gray calls "inexpedient actions," and that the punishment of that which is morally wrong is, ultimately, maximally expedient. On Liberty develops this correlation between wrong and recompense through the relationship of liberty and morality via the principle of self-protection. In On Liberty, liberty should be viewed as that "sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty or action of any other number."

Brown argues that Mill concludes through this phrase that unless "harm to others" can be prevented, there is no reason for any limitation upon liberty. "By giving this necessary condition for the existence of restriction, it rules out as irrelevant absolutely everything but the protection of harm to others." He continues, "This sharp and unequivocal denial is the cutting edge of Mill's essay." Brown correctly argues that liberty should be extend freely, but Mill further allows that limitations should be placed upon the extension of this liberty when it induces harm to others.

As such, the categorization of "harm to others" has been the source of repeated scholarly and political treatment, searching for the lines and ramifications by which this harm to others might be either acknowledged or prevented. The revisionists have supposed an action of self-protection and a distinction of self-regarding characteristics. Stephens argues this is inherently impossible, fallacious, and unfounded.

Every act happens at some time and in some place, and in like manner every act that we do either does or may affect both ourselves and others."

Still others try to rebuff these objections, clarifying self-regarding acts and other-regarding acts.

J.C. Rees is at the helm of the counter-movement of interpretations, arguing that there is a distinguishable difference between actions that affect others and those that affect others' interests; he purports that it is the protection of other's interests to which Mill meant for liberty's limitation. Rees constructs a relativistic, conservative interpretation of liberty, in which the emphasis is placed on distinguishing interests from 'arbitrary wishes, fleeting fancies, and capricious demands." In his protection of the "permanent interests of man as a progressive being," Mill demands that the limitations of liberty extend to the interference of the protection of another citizen's own right to liberty.

The freedom of choice extended by Mill is aimed to protect the "permanent interests of a man as a progressive being," as expressed in both Utilitarianism and On Liberty. While Redhead and Monk contend differently as to the physical boundaries placed on liberty in practice, they both agree that Mill sacredly regards the security of man the individual man as the least dispensable of all interests. Viewing man as a progressive being, he speaks of the role of society to engulf the man not through an unalterable natural environment, but instead as the manifestation of choices and experiments inflicted upon the individual self and the group. This choice-environment protected higher pleasure as an indispensable condition of the happiness afforded by individual liberty. Nevertheless, his libertarian approach extended only as far as his utilitarianism protected the right to happiness preserved by others.

While largely criticizing them, laissez-fair capitalism and economic systems played an important role in the construction of further limits presented in On Liberty. With the nature of a classical economist, he accepted a world in which natural resources were not limitless and, Gray argues, posed harm in their manipulation to the larger social values of the group as well as the characters of the individual. A source of harm, economies must be limited, as the tyranny of the state and the abduction of the mass. While Mill's followers and scholars unanimously agree that the political scientist allowed for a vision of liberty largely untouched, he provided several limitations with one conclusive foundation: Liberty of one may only be limited when the liberty of others is threatened.