Plato's theory of censorship versus Mill's defense of liberty

Neoclassical Philosophy

Plato, Censorship, Mill

In Book Four of Plato's Republic, the philosopher argued that the ideal city will have a tripartite structure in it - linked to Plato's argument that the ideal human soul is divided into three parts. Plato believed that the individual is connected to city and to community through the soul, and the most efficacious way to ensure that the individual will be connected to the city most effectively if the soul and the city have the same basic structure.

For the city, this tripartite structure consists primarily of three different classes. Each person belongs to the class to which his or her particular skills best suit: Those best suited to intellectual labor to one class, those best suited to manual labor another. (Not, one hopes at least, our current understanding of the nature of the democratic state.) Likewise is the soul divided into three - an "appetitive" or irrational part, a rational part and a "spirited" part.

Plato's world is an inherently orderly one, one in which it is far more important that things be in their proper place than that liberty be untrammeled. Plato believed very firmly in a distinction between the masses and their leaders, and believed that censorship was one of the necessary tools that the leaders had at their disposal to ensure that the masses were kept in line.

Mill believed in no such essential or inherent distinction between classes of people and so denied the legitimacy of any such paternalistic tool. Censorship implies a legitimacy of inequality that is simply not compatible with democracy, Mill would argue.

Part One: Socrates and Happiness

Socrates anticipates Thoreau in arguing that the "unexamined life is not worth living." For Socrates this meant that happiness and moral living were linked to each other. He argued that each one of us as humans seeks happiness; that (as the framers of the Constitution would in turn argue) that this is part of the universal make-up of human nature. We all desire to be happy and we all pursue those things that we believe might make us happy.

But, Socrates argued, this pursuit of happiness is not merely the idle pursuit of pleasure (or at least not necessarily so). It can also be and indeed many times is the pursuit of the virtuous as well. For, as we find Socrates arguing in The Republic, the goal of human life that is most worthy of desire is in fact virtue, which will also bring us happiness. Therefore it is that w may pursue both happiness and virtue at the same time because while we are pursuing virtue we are in fact pursuing happiness, since to be virtuous is also to be happy. (Certainly, other philosophers have disagreed with this assessment of the relationship between human virtue and human happiness, but Socrates makes it seem both very appealing and quite possible.) For Socrates happiness is truly possible only when the soul has been perfected, and so all but the most virtuous are denied happiness, and therefore we shall all strive to be virtuous that we might also be happy.

Part Two: Descartes's Meditations

One of Descartes's guiding principles for his own life was never to accept as true anything that he had not himself determined to be true. An adherence to this high standard of intellectual activity may be seen to be the central concern and purpose of his Meditations. He begins Meditations in doubt, which seems to be the most and indeed the only appropriate position from which he might write. Mediations then becomes an investigation into the nature of knowledge and (which are certainly related questions) into the ways in which knowledge and doubt are bound to each other and the ways in which the opposite of Truth can be seen in many cases to be not falsity but doubt.

Descartes argues that one cannot be certain of anything until one has doubted it; this might seem to be a contradictory stance but is so only for a moment. We ourselves have each experienced this phenomenon, of doubting something, then determining that it is in fact true, and then believing afterwards in its truth far more profoundly than we would have if we had not had to work out the proof for ourselves.

It is imperative to note that Descartes's doubt was not simply that of the cynic but rather what the philosopher termed "methodic doubt," which was for Descartes a method or way of searching for the certainty of any proposition by beginning with a systematic doubting of every element and aspect of that proposition and then proving or disproving each one of these elements until the proposition as a whole was proven or disproved.

Part Two: Descartes and the Doubtmaker

In the First Meditation, Descartes introduces what is to prove to be a very important concept, which is the demon (as he terms) it that is the cause for all doubt. In introducing this concept, Descartes is arguing that we might well be living in a world that is entirely different from the way that we imagine it to be. The entire physical fabric of the universe, as we perceive it empirically, may not in fact be the way we have experienced. It could all be the creation of some demon being who has implanted in us thoughts and beliefs and ideas about the nature of the world that we believe to be true but that are in fact false.

If such a diabolic force could exist in the world, Descartes argues, that it might well have the ability to control everything: That what we take to be accurate sensory impressions of the world around us could be no more than the hallucinations, chimera, illusions with no connections to the reality or truth. Any being so much more powerful than we are could well not only create such false images of the world but then use its powers to convince us that these were legitimate.

In other words, as Descartes argues at the end of the First Meditation, everything that we have ever or that we now believe in could be false. And - which is perhaps an even more disturbing message - we would not even know that they were false for the same power that implanted these false images within our consciousness also has the same ability to make us believe that they are real.

Part Three: Hume and the Design Element

Hume's design element argument is one that we have heard before posed by other philosophers: Perhaps its most famous rendition is that there can be no clock without a clockmaker.

The essentials of Hume's design argument can be boiled down to the following series of propositions:

Any design requires a designer.

There is design in the universe.

Therefore, someone designed the universe.

This seems quite clear, although of course it is arguable that this is not in fact true: We do not, of course, have to accept the argument that there is in fact the need for there to be a designer for there to be a design. This design argument is a tautological one, and for this reason alone is rejected out of hand by many - even those who are thesists.

Even if we do accept this proposition, it is still limited in its applicability, as Hume himself acknowledges. One of the most important of these limitations is that simply because there was once a designer does not mean that there is one any longer. Moreover, while many people might be inclined to link the idea of a designer to the idea of benevolent design, in fact if there were a designer to the universe such an entity might be part or purely evil and have constructed this world for the purpose of tormenting us.

Part Four: The Tyranny of the Majority

It is tempting to wonder what exactly Mill would have made of the current situation in the United States, for he wisely warned that one of the greatest perils in any democracy is the suppression of the minority by the majority. This is certainly always a peril, and we have seen countless examples of this very situation in our own country, from the genocide practiced against our native peoples to the suppression of free speech during the Red Scare.

In the current situation we have the case in which a president was elected by a minority of the country (one might well argue that he was elected by Clarence Thomas, who forms a very small minority indeed), and has since used his powers to reduce the rights of a number of different minority groups.

The tyranny of the majority, Mill argues, does not usually take such virulent forms as other types of tyrannies (being less bloody, less often lethal) but it is harder to escape because it permeates every aspect of society. However, he argues (although many might well disagree) such a tyranny can be effectively held in check by a written constitution, which will serve both to dampen and to filter out the most extreme of (short-term) passions as well as provide enduring and practical ways to resolve differences of opinion.

Part Four: Non-Inference by the State

Mill initially argues, in chapter four of Liberty, that the state does not have any right whatsoever to interfere with a person's actions so long as those actions do not harm anyone else. This is true when a person acts in her or his best interest, or when those actions have a neutral effect on that person or when those actions bring home or even destruction to that person. The state, under such a doctrine, would for example not pass laws criminalizing suicide.

Mill was arguing that the individual is in fact not accountable to any concept like society or the public weal or the greater good but only to himself or to herself (and to those other individuals such as friends or family members that he or she chooses to make himself or herself obligated to). And yet, as soon as Mill argues this he adds a coda, which is that an individual is in fact not free if he or she is contractually obligated (by law or even custom) to society and to others. This obligation allows societies to coerce individuals to act in ways that they do not want to do.

Thus, Mill argues that it is in fact acceptable and not any violation of any essential liberty for states to forbid suicide or sodomy or for schools to require children to be vaccinated or for people to be drafted into an army to be killed. While we recognize the pragmatics of public health programs and the military draft, Mill's arguments that these are not essentially violations of personal freedoms are attenuated. We might well say that he protests too much to be believed in these cases.