Mill operations and industrial applications

Mill and the Individual

In what is perhaps his most famous work, the book-length essay on Liberty, nineteenth-century English philosopher John Stuart Mill attempts to define both the extent of human liberty and the ways in which society can ensure its survival. His basic premise, known as the harm principle, is that in a truly free society each individual would be able to think and act however they wished so long as it did not cause harm to any other individual. Establishing this rule, Mill maintains, is the only way to escape the "tyranny of the majority." This type of social oppression is especially insidious in the democratic age, which was still very much in its infancy when Mill was writing. Democratic governments were formed in response to tyranny by the few; for most of human history, it has been the aristocracy or other elite members of a society that made the choices -- safeguards against this type of despotism are by definition inherent to the most basic democratic theory. Safeguards against a tyranny of the majority are much more difficult to put into place, however. Even the harm principle dos not fully solve the problem of delineating the boundaries of individual liberty; one person's definition of harm might not be the same as someone else's. It is precisely this difference of opinion that Mill seizes on as evidence not only that his definition of liberty is correct, but that in fact this amount of individual liberty would create the most desirable society for humanity. His logic is nearly infallible, though it does rely on a few assertions that cannot be proven, and though it is imperfect, it is fair to say that the harm principle is the most concise and complete description of liberty and the way of life in a free society.

In the first two chapters of on Liberty, Mill establishes the harm principle and examines it in regard to people's thoughts and opinions. It is hard -- impossible for Mil -- to envision a scenario where the mere holding of an opinion or belief would cause someone else harm. Mill is not concerned with harm to the self, though, and the distinction is important -- liberty, according to Mill, includes the freedom to harm oneself, though there may be limits to this as well. In general, though, anything that does not appear externally -- such as an opinion or idea -- cannot possibly cause harm. This is not merely an assertion of Mill's but an observable fact; thoughts which are not acted upon or even voiced have no existence outside of the thinker, and therefore no external effects. Society is concerned with interactions; that is, with the external effects of an individual's thoughts and actions. If a thought or opinion has no external effects, they are of no concern to society, and therefore any regulation placed on opinion or though is counter to the purposes of liberty. Mill uses this logical reasoning in chapters one and two of his essay to define an individual's right to sovereignty over oneself, a basic tenet of democracy, and to prove, insofar as it is possible, that opinion and thought must be given free reign in a free society. These first two chapters, however, really just lay the groundwork for Mill's true aim regarding liberty in this essay.

In chapter three, Mill moves past thought and opinion and begins to examine the far more nebulous area of action in a free society. He is quick to point out that "No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions," and even admits that opinions -- or more accurately the expression of them -- must be limited at times when they might lead to "mischievous acts" (on Liberty, 1). According to the harm principle, any action which causes harm to another would not fall under the protective umbrella of allowance dubbed "liberty." This limitation on the individual's liberty frees the other members of a society from any infringement upon their individual rights -- thus, one's liberty ends where another's begins. or, as Mill reiterates, "The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people" (on Liberty, 1). But Mill is far more concerned with the amount and type of action that is allowed to the individual by his "harm principle" concept of liberty, rather than the limitations this liberty imposes; his careful acknowledgement of liberty's qualifications, rather than forming the bulk of his treatise or becoming the essential point, is instead evidence of the logical coherence of his argument.

When it comes to the liberties that the harm principle allows an individual, Mill is especially concerned with the ever-present danger of social oppression via a tyranny of the majority. There are two main problems that Mill sees with social oppression by majority opinion: "Where, not the person's own character, but the traditions of customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress" (on Liberty, 2). His first reason for wariness in regard to this perceived danger is for the individual; Mill believes that every human being has a right to be happy (borrowing a bit from Locke, or possibly even from Kant's examination of duty and happiness), and that stifling an individual's preferred mode of existence -- their actions -- simply because it is not the way the majority of people live is the very definition of tyranny, completely antithetical to the concept of liberty. Certainly one could not argue that a society which stifles preference also stifles happiness, almost by definition. The only part of this argument, the, which Mill does not prove -- because it cannot be proved -- is that happiness is an innate human right. Once this is established, the rest of Mill's argument flows logically forth.

The second reason Mill lists for avoiding pure majority rule -- that it would quash the individuality that is the "chief ingredient of individual and social progress" -- is of even greater consequence than ensuring the individual's happiness. Earlier in this work, Mill established that a difference of opinion is a good and necessary thing for the survival and betterment of a society. Without dissent and discussion -- a free exchange and reworking of ideas -- no progress would ever be made. Almost every great discovery has been made by those who dared to question or doubt accepted truths, and Mill contends that even when dissenting opinions turn out to be wrong, they serve to strengthen existing ideas by their reexamination. He applies this same logic to action, claiming that "As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living" (on Liberty, 2). His reasoning here is difficult to argue with. Few if any sane individuals would claim that humanity as a whole, or any of its singular constituents, have achieved perfection; if man is imperfect, it follows logically that mankind's ideas and actions are also imperfect. Any one idea or action might be correct, but taken as a whole there are bound to be flaws. The more differences, then -- the more disparate ideas or even conflicting actions -- that are allowed in a society, the more likely humanity is to stumble upon a more perfect way of thinking and/or acting. At its most basic level, this concept is nothing but an application of the most basic rules of probability -- the more chances one has, the more likely that they will hit the one right answer. Again, the logic of Mill's argument is built on an unprovable premise -- that mankind and each individual in it is imperfect -- and the rest follows as a result of pure logic.