Mills arguments and philosophical perspectives

Mills Arguements

Intrinsic Value of Liberty

There can be very few doubts as to the importance of liberty to the philosophical espousing of John Stuart Mill, who even authored a treatise entitled On Liberty to underscore the amount of emphasis he placed on this particular concept. What is most interesting about the many different notions the author has in relation to freedom is the circumscriptions that are routinely placed upon it in what is the age-old conflict between the individual and the group -- the latter of which routinely takes the form of government or some other determining mechanism of society. Not surprisingly, Mill presents a number of viewpoints that contradict the notion that the morality of the state should influence the personal opinions and actions of the individual, especially when the effects of those actions only resonate within the individual himself. The two most eminent of these arguments, of course, revolve around the concept that there are both intrinsic and instrumental values of personal liberty that are forsaken, wrongfully, in instances in which the aforementioned condition occurs. However, a close examination of both of these arguments reveals that in this aspect of liberty -- which is of a personal nature that does not directly influence that of anyone else -- it is due to the intrinsic value of freedom that society should not attempt to dictate the personal freedom of the individual.

One of the most influential doctrines that Mill ever composed that addresses these two ideas and qualities of liberty is On Liberty, in which the author delineates the fact that there are actually both instrumental and intrinsic facets of personal liberty. Moreover, Mill also details how these different aspects of liberty directly relate to his position that governmental entities or society in general should have no authority over the personal choices of an individual. The author's central premise, however, is that neither "one person, nor any number of persons, is warranted" in dictating what someone else "chooses to do with" his or her life (Mill 140). In order to elucidate the two central arguments that Mill utilizes to dissuade society or the state from infringing on the personal liberty of others, it becomes necessary to analyze the structure of one of the most critical components of On Liberty, Chapter IV "Of the Limits to the Authority of Society Over the Individual." After asserting his central premise in the preceding quotation, Mill goes on to explain that one of the most crucial usages of personal liberty is to warn others when they are utilizing their own freedom to alienate themselves from their fellow man, due to any number of forms of anti-social behavior. The author indicates that the right to do so is one of the most instrumental aspects of personal liberty, since the state has no involvement in such individual forms of expression unless "they involve a breach of duty to others" (Mill 142). However, matters of personal preference, such as an individual's own behavior which Mill terms "duties to ourselves" are "not socially obligatory" (Mill 142) since they do not involve the welfare of others.

The type of personal preference which Mill refers to that do not involve the state and instead require an instrumental exercise of liberty are simple facets of one's character that may be detrimental to himself, such as if he is "deficient in those qualities" (Mill 142) that are for his own good, such as prudence, discipline, and other virtues which are not directly related to the moral welfare of others. In cases such as these, it is up to either that individual, or other individuals who observe these flaws or faults in that individual to exercise their own free will to deal with the circumstances of the defects of that individual's character. One means of dealing with those flaws which is to "act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours" (Mill 141). Such action is an exercise of personal liberty that is decidedly instrumental in the fact that it can either take the form of trying to help another overcome his defects, or take the form of avoiding such a person so as not to be influenced by his negligible personality traits. In either example, however, Mill is arguing that society or the state should not be involved with an individual's behavior that is at variance with its conception of good, and that people should utilize their own right to freedom instrumentally, for the purpose of helping or alienating that person. These applications of freedom lead to an end, one which either ameliorates and individual or ameliorates others from the effects of that individual, which provides tangible, instrumental uses of the value of freedom that society should not constrain.

However, Mill contrasts this notion of the instrumental value of personal liberty with the intrinsic value of freedom later on in this chapter, and actually spends the vast duration of it substantiating his viewpoint that society should not enforce its notions of good on people because of the intrinsic qualities of freedom. Mill makes it quite clear that when issues of an individual's behavior go beyond him or herself and affect other members of society -- no matter how close they may be to that person, such as a family member -- that society is then responsible for intervening and imposing its conceptions of good to keep an individual from harming another (Mill somewhere). Yet when other persons are not harmed from one's negligent behavior, the author views such behavior as mere inconveniences or blights that should be upheld for the sake of maintaining liberty for its own sake -- which is of course highly intrinsic. If someone is only harming himself by his own free will, such an "inconvenience is one which society can afford to bear, for the sake of the greater good of human freedom" (Mill 145). Mill directly alludes to the intrinsic value of freedom with this quotation by placing it in a universal, "human" context, and by implying that an individual's harm to him or herself is a small sacrifice for the all-embracing concept of liberty in general, for its own sake.