Table Of ContentMill on Liberty: A Defence
Mill on Liberty: A Defence
Second Edition
John Gray
London and New York
First published 1983
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Second edition 1996
© 1983, 1996 John Gray
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known
or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-43247-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-74071-8 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-12474-3 (Print Edition)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements and Bibliographical Note vii
Preface ix
Preface to the second edition xi
I Mill’s Problem in On Liberty
1 A Traditional Interpretation 1
2 A Revisionary View 9
3 The Argument of this Book 14
II Mill’s Utilitarianism
1 The Art of Life and Utility as an Axiological Principle 19
2 Acts, Rules and the Art of Life 28
3 Utility, Pleasure and Happiness 42
III The Principle of Liberty
1 The Self-Regarding Area, Harm to Others and the
Theory of Vital Interests 48
2 The Principle of Liberty in the Doctrine of Liberty 57
3 Utility, Justice and the Terms of Social Co-operation in
the Doctrine of Liberty 63
IV Mill’s Conception of Happiness and the Theory of
Individuality
1 Individuality, Happiness and the Higher Pleasures 70
2 Autonomy, Authenticity and Choice-Making 73
3 Wants and Ideals in the Doctrine of Liberty 86
v
Contents
V Applications
1 Paternalism 90
2 Moralism 97
3 Freedom of Expression 103
VI Mill’s Doctrine of Liberty: A Reappraisal
1 The Doctrine of Liberty and Mill’s General Philosophy 111
2 The Doctrine of Liberty and the Science of Society 116
3 The Doctrine of Liberty and Mill’s Liberalism 119
4 The Utility of the Doctrine of Liberty 125
Postscript 130
Notes 159
Index 173
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
A good many people have helped me in writing this short book. It
was conceived during the years in which my doctoral research on
liberalism was supervised by the late John Plamenatz. Without the
kindly interest John Plamenatz showed in my earliest work, and the
encouragement and support I was given by my subsequent
supervisors, Alan Ryan and Steven Lukes, it is doubtful that I could
have ever brought the book to birth. Christopher Kirwan, my Tutor
in Philosophy when I was an undergraduate at Exeter College,
Oxford, has from an early stage and throughout the project’s
development given me valuable comment and advice on a series of
drafts. The late John Rees was generous in giving me his written
and spoken comments on early drafts of the book. Graeme Duncan
read an early draft and was very helpful in enabling me to express
myself more clearly. Sir Isaiah Berlin, who gave me extraordinarily
probing and very detailed comments on a late draft, and H.L.A.Hart,
whose criticisms stirred my thoughts at several stages in the book’s
composition, are to be thanked for their important contributions to
the book’s development. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Ted
Honderich, who has commented on several drafts and whose criticism
and encouragement have been of great value to me throughout the
book’s gestation. I wish to thank the Principal and Fellows of my
College for granting me a period of sabbatical leave in which I was
able to make considerable headway with the book.
Several people have been kind enough to read and comment on the
book in its later stages. Among them I would like to thank particularly
Brian Barry, Fred Berger, J.P.Day, David Gordon, D.N. MacCormick,
J.Raz, D.A.Rees, A.K.Sen, C.L.Ten and W.L. Weinstein. Since no one
who has read the book agrees with all of it, and since I have sometimes
vii
Acknowledgements
stuck to my views against the criticisms of those who have commented
on it, it is important to underline the usual disclaimer that I alone bear
responsibility for the arguments advanced here.
An early version of my argument about J.S.Mill appeared as a paper
entitled ‘J.S.Mill on liberty, utility and rights’. Portions of that paper
are reprinted by permission of New York University Press from Human
Rights (Nomos XXIII), edited by J.Roland Pennock and John
W.Chapman. Copyright © 1981 by New York University. I am most
grateful to Professor Roland Pennock and to the New York University
Press for granting me permission to make use of my contribution to
Nomos XXIII: Human Rights.
J.N.Gray
Jesus College, Oxford
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The definitive edition of Mill’s writings is The Collected Works of John
Stuart Mill, Toronto University Press, 1963. I have tried, however, always
to cite the most easily available and widely used editions, e.g. the
Everyman edition of Utilitarianism, On Liberty and Representative
Government, London, Dent 1972, and in some cases, where there are
very many editions of the work, I have given references to its chapter
and section. A list of the sources for recent interpretations of J.S.Mill
on liberty and utility is found in note 17 to chapter 1 of this book.
viii
PREFACE
In this book a received view is contested as to the character of John
Stuart Mill’s writings about liberty. It has become a commonplace
of the intellectual history of nineteenth-century England that the
younger Mill is at best a transitional thinker whose writings on social
and political questions disclose no coherent doctrine or pattern of
argument, but only the efforts at synthesis of an ultimately
unsuccessful eclecticism. As for On Liberty, it has long been the
conventional view that there Mill sets out to square the circle—to
give a utilitarian defence of the priority of liberty over other values.
What intellectual enterprise could be more misconceived, or more
clearly doomed to failure?
My aim in this study is to show by textual analysis and the
reconstruction of Mill’s argument that On Liberty is not the folly that
over a century of unsympathetic critics and interpreters have represented
it as being, but rather the most important passage in a train of argument
about liberty, utility and rights which Mill sustained over a number of
his most weighty moral and political writings. Far from being the
monument to Mill’s inconsistency that his critics have caricatured, On
Liberty is consistent almost to a fault, both in its own terms and in
terms of a patter of reasoning developed in Mill’s other writings in
which a utilitarian theory of conduct is applied to many questions in
moral and political life. On Liberty contains a fragment of what I call
Mill’s Doctrine of Liberty, in which a defence is given in utilitarian
terms of the institution of a system of moral rights within which the
right to liberty is accorded priority.
It is in his presentation of a utilitarian theory of justice and of moral
rights, and his defence of the paramount importance of the right to liberty,
that Mill’s greatest originality still lies. The conception of a utilitarian
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