JOHN STUART MILL

The economic principles of utilitarianism were essentially provided through Adam Smith's classic work The Wealth of Nations published in 1776. The political principles of classical utilitarianism mainly appeared out of Bentham's application of rationalistic approach and his deep suspicion of "sinister interests of all those entrenched in power and as a counter check he advocated annual elections, secret ballot and recall. But the Benthamite presumption of a mechanical formula of quantifying all pleasures and all pains equally exemplified through his well-known uttering 'pushpin is as good as poetry" could not satisfy his mainly well-known pupil John Stuart Mill who himself admitted that he was "Peter who denied his master". In his writings the first great criticism of Benthamite Utilitarianism appeared and with considerable impact of Wordsworth and other romantic poets he tried to work out a synthesis of rationalism and romanticism. In the procedure he transformed the whole underpinning of Benthamite utilitarianism through claiming that pleasures have great differentiation and that all pleasures were not of equal value as a dissatisfaction of a Socrates is more valuable than the satisfaction of a fool.

J. S, Mill's importance lies not only in his criticism of utilitarianism but also in his rich contribution to liberalism through his memorable protection of freedom of speech and individuality and in his protection of a liberal society as a necessary precondition for a liberal state.

LIFE AND TIMES

John Stuart Mill was born in London on 20 May 1806. He had eight younger siblings. All his learning came from his father James Mill and lie read the books his father had been reading for writing the book on India, History of British India. (1818). At the age of eleven he began to help his father through reading the proofs of his father's books. Immediately after the publication of History of British India James Mill was appointed as an Assistant Examiner at the East India Home, It was an significant event in his life as this solved his financial troubles enabling him to devote his time and attention to write on regions of his prime interest, philosophical and political troubles. He could also conceive of a liberal profession for his eldest son, John Stuart. At the beginning he thought for him a career in law but when another vacancy arose for another Assistant Examiner in 1823, John Stuart got the post and served the British government till his retirement.

As James Mill decided to teach his son all through himself at house, the fatter was denied the usual experience of going to a regular school. His education did not contain any children‘s book or toys for he started to learn Greek at the age of four and Latin at eight. Through the time he was ten he had read several of Plato‘s dialogues, logic and history. He was familiar with the writings of Euripides, Homer, Polybius, Sophocles and Thucydides. He could solve troubles in algebra, geometry, differential calculus and higher mathematics. So dominant was his father's power that John Stuart could not recollect his mother's contributions to his formative years as a child. At the age of thirteen he was introduced to serious reading of English Classical Economists and published an introductory textbook in economics entitled Elements of Political Economy (1820) at the age of fourteen. From Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Isidore Auguste Comte (1798-1857), Goethe (1749-1832), and Wordsworth (1770-1850) he came to value poetry and art. He reviewed Alexis de Tocqueville's (1805-59) Democracy in America in two parts in 1835 and 1840, a book that left a thorough impact on him.

From the training that John Stuart received at house he was influenced that nurture more than nature played a crucial role in the formation of character. It also assured him of the importance education could play in transforming human nature. In his Autobiography, which he wrote in the 1850s he acknowledged his father's contribution in shaping his mental abilities and physical strength to the extent that he never had a normal boyhood.

Through the age of twenty Mill started to write for newspapers and periodicals. He contributed to every aspect of political theory. His System of Logic (1843) which he began writing in 1820s tried to elucidate a coherent philosophy of politics. The Logic combined the British empiricist custom of Locke and Hume of nssociational psychology with a conception of social sciences based on the paradigm of Newtonian physics. His essays On Liberty (1859) and The Subjection of Women (1869) were classic elaborations of liberal thought on significant issues like law, rights and liberty. His The Thoughts on Representative Government (1861) provided an outline of lzis ideal government based on proportional representation, protection of minorities and institutions of self government. His well-known pamphlet Utilitarianisn (1863) endorsed the Benthamite principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, yet made a important departure from the Benthamite assumption through arguing that this principle could only be defended if one distinguished happiness from pleasure. His essays on Bentham and Coleridge written flanked by 1838 and 1840 enabled him to critically dissect Benthamism.

In 1826 Mill experienced mental crisis' when he lost all his capability for joy in life. He recovered through discovering romantic poetry of Coleridge and Wordsworth. He also realised the incompleteness of lzis education, namely the lack of emotional face of life. In his re-examination of Benthamite philosophy he attributed its one-sidedness to Bentham‘s lack of experience, imagination and emotions. He made use of Coleridge‘s poems to broaden Benthamism and made room for emotional, aesthetic and spiritual dimensions. Though he never wavered from the fundamentals of Benthamism though the major variation flanked by them was that Bentham followed a more simplistic picturisation of human nature of the French utilitarians whereas Mill followed the more sophisticated utilitarianism of Hume.

Mill acknowledged that both On Liberty and The Subjection of Women was a joint endeavour with Harriet Hardy Taylor whom he met in 1830. Though Harriet was married Mill fell in love with her. The two maintained an intimate but chaste friendship for the after that nineteen years. Harriet's husband John Taylor died in 1849. In 1851 Mill married Harriet and described her the honour and chief blessing of lzis subsistence, a source of a great inspiration for his attempts to bring in relation to the human improvement. He was confident that had Harriet existed at a time when women had greater opportunities she would have been 'eminent in the middle of the rulers of mankind‘ Mill died in 1873 at Avignon, England.

EQUAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN

The Subjection of Women (1869) begins with the revolutionary statement, "the principle which regulates the existing social dealings flanked by the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and... it ought to be replaced through a principle of perfect equality," Mill's referent for the legal subordination of women was the mid 19th Century English law of the marriage contract. Through this law, married Englishwomen could hold no property in their own name, and even if their parents gifted them any property that too belonged to their husbands. Unless a woman was legally separated from her husband, (a hard and expensive procedure) even if she existed absent from him, her earnings belonged officially to him. Through law, only the father and not the mother was the guardian of a couple's children. Mill also cited the absence of laws on marital rape to prove the inequality suffered through the Englishwomen of that time.

What Mill establish paradoxical was that in the contemporary age, when in other regions the principles of liberty and equality were being asserted, they were yet not applied to the condition of women. No one whispered in slavery any more, yet women were sometimes treated worse than slaves and this was accepted as beyond questioning. Mill wanted to explain this resistance to women's equality in the contest of a common acceptance of the principles of equality and liberty. We did so through first presenting and then defeating the arguments for women's subordination, and then providing his own arguments for women‘s equality.

The first argument for women's inequality which Mill refuted was that since historically it has been a universal practice, so there necessity be some justification for it. Contra this, Mill showed that other so described universal social practices like slavery, for instance, had been rejected, so perhaps given time women‘s inequality would also become unacceptable. Mill also said that from the subsistence of something, one could argue for the rightness of that thing, only if the alternative has been tried, and in the case of women, livelihood with them on equal conditions had never been done. The cause why women's inequality had survived slavery and political absolutism was not because it, was justifiable, but because whereas only slave holders and despots had an interest in holding on to slavery and despotism, all men, Mill argued, had an interest in women‘s subordination.

A second argument for women‘s inequality was based on women‘s nature— women were said to be naturally inferior to men. Mill's response was that one could not create arguments in relation to the women's inequality based on natural differences because these differences were a result of socialisation. Mill was usually against by human nature as a ground for any claim, since he whispered that human nature changed just as to the social environment. At the similar time, Mill also pointed out that in spite of being treated so differently from men, several women throughout history had shown an extraordinary aptitude for political leadership —here Mill cited examples of European queens and Hindu princesses.

The third argument refuted through Mill was that there is nothing wrong with women‘s subordination because women accept it voluntarily. Mill pointed out that this claim was empirically wrong— several women had written tracts against women's inequality and hundreds of women were already demonstrating in the streets of London for women's suffrage. Further, since women had 110 choice but to live with their husbands, they were afraid that their complaints in relation to the their location would only lead to worse treatment from them. Lastly, Mill also claimed that since all women were brought up from childhood to consider—―that their ideal of character is the extremely opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government through self-manage, but submission, and yielding to the manage of others,"—what was not to be remarked was that some women accepted this subordination willingly but that so several women resisted it.

The last point against which Mill argued was that for a family to function well, one decision maker is needed, and the husband is best suited to be this decision maker.

Mill scoffed at this argument—the husband and wife being both adults, there was no cause why the husband should take all the decisions.

Having refuted all of these four arguments for women's inequality, Mill wrote: ―There are several persons for whom it is not enough that the inequality has no presently or legitimate defence; they require to be told what express advantage would be obtained through abolishing it." The question was, would society benefit if women were granted equal rights. Answering in the affirmative, Mill detailed four social benefits of women‘s equality.

The first advantage would be that the family would no longer be "a school of despotism‖. Just as to Mill, the patriarchal family teaches all its members how to live in hierarchical relationships, since all power is concentrated in the hands of the husband/father/master whom the wife/children/servants have to obey. For Mill such families are an anachronism in modem democratic polities based on the principle of equality. Individuals who live in such families cannot be good democratic citizens because they do not know how to treat another citizen as an equal: ―Any sentiment of freedom which can exist in a man whose adjacent and dearest intimacies are with those of whom he is absolute master, is not the genuine love of freedom, but, what the love of freedom usually was in the ancients and in the middle ages—an intense feeling of the dignity and importance of his own personality; creation him disdain a yoke for himself,...but which he is abundantly ready to impose on others for his own interest or glorification." In the interests of democratic citizenship then, it was necessary to obtain equality for women in the family.

Another advantage, Mill pointed out, would be the "doubling of the mass of mental faculties" accessible to society. Not only would society benefit because there would be more doctors, engineers, teachers, and scientists (all women); ail additional advantage would be that men in the professions would perform better because of competition from their female colleagues.

Third, women enjoying equality will have a better power on mankind, Under dealings of subordination, women assert their wills only in all sorts of perverse methods; with equality, they will no longer require to do this.

Finally, through giving women equal rights, their happiness would be increased manifold, and this would satish-Mill argued, the utilitarian principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Note some of Mill's conceptual moves—for instance, the link he recognized flanked by the private and the public. Unlike other liberals, who not only saw the extant family as the realm of freedom, but since this freedom was mostly defined as arbitrariness, disassociated the family as irrelevant to superior public concerns of liberal democracy, Mill argued that without the reform of the patriarchal family, it would be impossible to firmly ground democracy. Note that he was not merely saying that without equal rights to women, 'the democratic project is partial, but that democracy in the political/public sphere will remain shaky unless we bring up or make democratic citizens in egalitarian families.

What still creates some feminists uncomfortable is that Mill insisted that patriarchal families are an anachronism in modem society: ―[t]he social subordination of women therefore stands out as an in accessibled information in modem social institutions...a single relic of an old world of thought and practice... Several feminists now talk in relation to the capitalist patriarchy—the reinforcing of patriarchal institutions through contemporary capitalism.

THE IMPORTANCE OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY

On Liberty (1859) begins with a paradox—civil liberties are under greater threat in democratic than in despotic regimes, wrote Mill. In the absolutist states of earlier times, the ruler‘s interest was seen as opposed to that of the subjects, who were specially vigilant against any encroachment on their existing freedoms. In contemporary democracies based on the principle of self government, the people feel less under threat from their own government. Mill berated this laxity and said that individuals needed to be more vigilant in relation to the the danger to their liberty not only from the government, but also from social morality and custom.

Why is it significant to protect individual liberty? When individuals create their own choices, they use several of their faculties—―The human faculties of perception, judgement, discriminative feeling, mental action, and even moral preference, are exercised only in creation a choice...The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only through being used...He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He necessity use observation to see, reasoning and judgement to foresee, action to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-manage to hold to his deliberate decision." Individuals who act in a sure fashion only because they have been told to do so, do not develop any of these faculties.

Emphasising that what is significant is "not only what men do, but also what maimer of men they are that do it", Mill said that we might be able to 'guide' individuals in 'some good path‘-without allowing them to create any choices, but the worth‘ of such human beings would be doubtful.

Mill clarified and detailed his location on liberty through defending three specific liberties, the liberty of thought and expression including the liberty of speaking and publishing, the liberty of action and that of association. We will follow Mill's argument in each of these cases.

Liberty of thought and expression: ―If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind." Mill provided four reasons for this freedom of expression. For Mill, since the dominant thoughts of a society usually emanate from the class interests of that society's ascendant class, the majority opinion may be quite distant from the truth or from the social interest. It's more than likely that the suppressed minority opinion is true, and those suppressing it will only prevent or at least delay mankind from knowing the truth. Human beings are fallible creatures—and their certainty that the opinion they hold is true is justified only when their opinion is constantly opposed to contrary opinions. Mill wanted us to provide up the assumption of infallibility—when our certainty in relation to the our beliefs creates us crush all contrary points of view so that our opinion is not subject to criticism.

What if the minority opinion were false? Mill gave three reasons for why it should still be allowed freedom of expression. It‘s only through constantly being able to refute wrong opinions, that we hold our correct opinions as livelihood truths. If we accept an opinion, even if correct, on the foundation of power alone, that opinion becomes a dead dogma. Neither do we understand its grounds, and nor does it mould our character or move us to action. Finally Mill argued that truth is a multifaceted thing and usually contrary opinions both contain a part of the truth. Suppressing one opinion then, leads to the suppression of one part of the truth.

When it comes to the liberty of action, Mill asserted a extremely easy principle: "the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection...the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised in excess of any member of a civilised society, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a enough warrant." Mill acknowledged that it was hard to draw a row flanked by self-concerning and other concerning action, and he provided some hypothetical examples as proof of this difficulty. If a man destroys his own property, this is a case of other concerning action because others dependent on that man will be affected. Even if this person has no dependants, his action can be said to affect others, who, influenced through his instance, might behave in a similar manner.

Against this, Mill said that only when one has specific obligations to another person, can one be said to affect his or her interests; so the case of an individual affecting others through his instance will not stand. On his own ground, Mill cited all lcinds of restrictions on not eating pork or beef, or priests being required not to marry, as examples of unnecessary restrictions on self-concerning action. Other examples are Sabbatarian legislation which prevents individuals from working or even singing and dancing on Sundays.

Mill wrote that sometimes even in the case of other concerning action, no restrictions can be placed on one—for instance, if one wins a job through competition, this action can be said to affect others' interests through ensuring that they do not get the job, but no restrictions are applicable here. Likewise, trade has social consequences, but believing in the principle of free trade, Mill argued that lack of restrictions on trade actually leads to better pricing and better excellence of products. And when it comes to self-concerning action, as we already showed, the principle of liberty requires the absence of all restrictions.

Mill defended freedom of association on three grounds. First, ―when the thing to be done is likely to be done better through individuals than through government. Speaking usually, there is no one fit to conduct any business, or to determine how or through whom it shall be mannered, as those who are personally interested in it." Second, allowing individuals to get jointly to do something, even if they do not do it as well as the government might have done it, is better for the mental education of these individuals. The right of association becomes, for Mill, a "practical part of the political education of a free people, taking them out of the narrow circle of personal and family selfishness, and accustoming them to the comprehension of joint concerns—habituating them to act from public or semi-public motives, and guide their conduct through aims which unite instead of isolating them from one another." Further, government operations tend to be everywhere alike; with individuals arid voluntary associations, on the contrary, there are varied experiments, and endless diversity of experience. Third, if we let the government do everything, there is the evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.

Mill's ideal was improvement — he wanted individuals to constantly better themselves morally, mentally and materially. It was to this ideal that he saw individual liberty as instrumental: ―The only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty, since through it there are as several possible self-governing centres of improvement as there are individuals." Individuals improving themselves would naturally lead to a better and improved society.

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

Mill began his Representative Government through stating that we can only decide which is the best form of government, through examining which form of government fulfils mainly adequately the purposes of government. For Mill, the point of having a government was that it perform two main functions: it necessity use the existing qualities and skills of the citizens to best serve their interests, and it necessity improve the moral, intellectual and active qualities of these citizens. A despotic government may be able to fulfil the first purpose, but will fail in the second. Only a representative government is able to fulfil these two functions. It is a representative government that combines judiciously the two principles of participation and competence which is able to fulfil the two functions of protecting and educating the citizens.

Let us seem more cautiously at what Mill had to say in relation to the the first function of government. Mill began his discussion of this subject through introducing Bentham‘s concept of sinister interests. How does representative government ensure that the general interest of society is being furthered instead of the partial and sinister interest of some group or class? Even though Mill distinguished flanked by short term and extensive term interests, he was sure that every individual and every class is the best judge of its own interests. He scoffed at the thought that some human beings may not be aware of their 'real' interests, retorting that given these persons' current habits and dispositions, what they choose are their real interests. It follows then that participation in the political procedure necessity be as extensive as possible, so that every individual has a say in controlling the government and therefore protecting his interests. It is on this foundation that Mill demanded the right to vote for women. He advocated the extension of the suffrage to cover everyone except those who could not read and write, did not pay taxes or were on parish relief.

It was this similar impetus for wanting everyone to be represented that made Mill support Hare's system of proportional representation for electing deputies to Parliament. Under the current system, Mill pointed out, minorities went unrepresented, and since they too needed to protect their interests, another' electoral mechanism should be establish to ensure their representation.

Whereas his belief in participation led him to advocate a widening of the franchise, his belief in competence led him to recommend plural voting. In information, lie said that the franchise should not be widened without plural voting being introduced. Plural voting meant that with everyone having at least one vote, some individuals would have more than one vote because they were, for instance, more educated. It assumed 'a graduated level of educational attainments, awarding at the bottom, one additional vote to a skilled labourer and two to a foreman, and at the top, as several as five to professional men, writers and artists, public functionaries, university graduates and members of learned societies. Plural voting would ensure that a better calibre of deputies would be elected, and so the common interest would not be hampered through the poor excellence of members of Parliament.

Mill sought to combine his two principles in other institutions of representative democracy as well. Take the representative assembly, for instance. Mill said that this body necessity be 'a committee of grievances and 'a congress of opinions'. Every opinion existing in the nation should discover a voice here; that is how every group's interests have a better chance of being protected. At the similar time Mill argued that this body was suited neither for the business of legislation nor of administration. Legislation was to be framed through a Codification Commission made up of a few competent legal experts. Administration should be in the hands of the bureaucracy, an institution characterised through instrumental competence, that is, the skill to discover the mainly efficient means to fulfil given goals. Mill's arguments employed two types of competence—instrumental and moral. Instrumental competence is the skill to discover the best means to sure ends and the skill to identify ends that satisfy individuals' interests as they perceive them. Moral competence is the skill to discern ends that are intrinsically superior for individuals and society. Morally competent leaders are able to recognise the common interest and resist the sinister interests that dwell not only in the government but also in the democratic majority. The purpose of plural voting is to ensure that morally competent leaders get elected to the legislature.

What in relation to the the other goal of government, that of creation the citizens intellectually and morally better? Again it is a representative government that is based on a combination of participation and competence which is able to improve the excellence of its citizens in the mental, moral and practical characteristics. Let us again seem at some of the specific institutional changes recommended through Mill. He wanted to replace the secret ballot with open voting, that is, everyone necessity know how one has voted. For Mill, the franchise was not one's right in the sense of, for instance, the right to property, which implies that one can dispose of one's property in any arbitrary manner. The franchise is a. trust, or a public duty, and one necessity cast one's vote for that candidate whose policies appear to best further the general interest. It is the require to justify one's vote to others that creates the vote an instrument of one's intellectual and moral growth. Otherwise one would use one's vote power voting for instance, for someone because of the colour of his eyes. Everyone necessity have the franchise, but it necessity be open— this is how Mill combined the principle of participation and competence in the suffrage, to ensure the improvement of the voting citizens.

We discover here the motif of improvement again. Representative government scores in excess of despotism not because it better protects the given interests of the citizens, but because it is able to improve these citizens. The citizens develop their capabilities through being able to participate in government, minimally through casting their vote, and also through actually taking decisions in local government. At the similar time, this participation is leavened through the principle of competence to ensure that the political experience does have an educational effect;

BEYOND UTILITARIANISM

Having looked separately at three tests, let us bring out some common themes in Mill's writings. Mill never gave up his self-characterisation as a utilitarian, no matter how distant his principles seemed to have moved absent from that creed. When he spoke in relation to the rights, for instance, he subsumed rights under the concept of utility, defining rights as nothing else but some very significant utilities. As we all know, Mill's father, Janies Mill, was the closest associate of Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism. J.S. Mill grew up in the shadow of utilitarianism, and even after his emotional crisis in his early twenties, he supervised to write a defence of utilitarianism.

Throughout his work we have seen him applying the standard of utility. One consideration for giving equality to women was that it would augment their happiness. The principle of liberty was defended on the grounds of its social utility—social progress depended on individual freedom. A customized liberal democracy was characterised as the best form of government because of its usefulness.

Utilitarianism (1862) is the slim tract which Mill put jointly to answer all the objections that had been raised against this philosophy. The work begins through Mill pointing out that there has been, in excess of the centuries, little agreement on the criteria of differentiating right from wrong. Rejecting the thought of human beings having a moral sense like our sense of sight or smell, which can sense what is right in concrete cases, Mill put fonvard the criteria of Utility or the Greatest Happiness principle as the foundation of morality, That action is moral which increases pleasure and' diminishes pain. In defending utilitarianism here, Mill made a important change from Bentliam‘s location. Pleasure is to be counted not only in conditions of quantity but also in tenns of excellence. A qualitatively higher pleasure is to count for more than lower pleasures. ―It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the information, that some types of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others...It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied."

Having responded to the criticism that utilitarianism assumes an animal like human nature, Mill moved to the after that serious problem. Why would individuals be interested in the happiness of others? Mill answered in tenns of the "social feelings of mankind; the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures: a powerful principle of human nature." Because ―the social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man," Mill whispered that our taking an interest in other's happiness was not questionable at all.

Finally, the only objection that Mill took seriously was that justice instead of utility is the base of morality. Mill's response was first to link justice with rights—an injustice is done when someone's rights are violated—and then to assert that rights are to be defended because of their utility. "To have a right, then, is, to have something which society ought to defend me in the possession of. If the objector goes on to inquire, why it ought'? I can provide him no other cause than common utility". A society in which individuals are sure of enjoying their rights is the one, which just as to Mill is able to progress. Therefore rights do not replace the concept of utility; for Mill utility was the justification for rights.