Author: Lee M.

As a tangential follow-up to this post, the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a petty exhaustive discussion of J.S. Mill’s moral and political philosophy here.

Specifically, here’s a discussion of the relationship between Mill’s utilitarianism and his liberalism; here’s a comparison between Mill’s liberalism and other variants, such as Rawls’s.

The emphasis here on on Mill’s “moral perfectionism” and how it relates to his liberalism is striking. Mill thought the point of human life was to develop those capacities for rational thought and moral autonomy–capacities essential to human nature. But unlike classical “perfectionist” theories of morality, Mill thought that a liberal society was necessary to foster human flourishing, because no one can exercise those capacities for us.

Mill’s perfectionist liberalism is part of classical liberal tradition that grounds liberal essentials in a conception of the good that prizes the exercise of a person’s rational capacities. In Mill’s version, the good consists in forms of self-government that exercise the very deliberative capacities that make one a moral agent. He concludes that the state cannot foster this kind of good by regular use of paternalistic or moralistic intervention. Liberties of thought and action are central to the exercise of these deliberative powers. But equally essential are certain positive conditions, such as health, education, a decent minimum standard of living, and fair opportunities for self-realization. Even paternalistic intervention can sometimes be justified when, without it, people’s deliberative powers will be severely compromised. If liberal essentials can be justified by the right sort of perfectionist account of the good, then the perfectionist need not be illiberal. And this sort of classical perfectionism explains ways in which many liberals do think that the state can and should help its citizens lead better lives. In these ways, Millian liberalism articulates a tradition of classical liberalism that has enduring significance.

What makes Mill’s perfectionism liberal is that these are precisely the sort of capacaties that no one else, particularly the state, can exercise for us. The state can, however, provide certain goods (a guaranteed decent standard of living, education, other public goods) that are necessary conditions for exercising these capacities.This is an interesting contrast to Rawlsian liberalism, in which the liberal state is supposed to be neutral between competing conceptions of the good.

One thing that interests me about all this is whether it opens the possibility of rapprochement between a Millian liberalism and a religious perspective. Many religious views identify the good of human life as developing and exercising capacities–capacities for knowledge and love, of God, neighbor, and creation. And like the capacities whose exercise Mill identifies as necessary for human flourishing, the development and exercise of these capacities can’t be coerced. No one can make me love God and neighbor, and no one can do it for me. The exercise of these capacities can, however, be facilitated by the provision of certain essential goods and freedoms–freedom of worship and conscience, for instance, as well as the other sorts of goods Mill identifies.

Keith Ward seems to identify with such a “religious liberalism”; in his book Religion and Human Fulfillment where he advocates what he calls “transcendental personalism”:

[H]umanism or personalism–the belief that the realization of distinctive personal capacities is the highest moral ideal–is a moral advance on views of morality as obedience to allegedly authoritative rule that need have no relevance to human fulfillment. But humanism is not intrinsically anti-religious. It developed from a Judeo-Christian stress on the value of every human life as made in the image of a God of freedom, creative power, and self-giving goodness. It posits a moral goal for human life, and so it remains strongly suggestive of an objective moral purpose in the universe, and of a being (presumably intelligent and good) who could conceive such a purpose. (p. 6)

Later, in discussing various interpretations of Jewish law, Ward writes:

[O]bedience to the laws of justice is rooted in love of the creator who desires that all creatures should find fulfillment, who gives every human being a unique value and unique potentialities to realize, who helps those who seek such realization, and who will ultimately bring creation to fulfillment and final liberation from all that impedes fulfillment–that is, from evil. There is implicit here an ideal of justice, but it is not one that is in conflict with a humane secular ideal. It is rooted in the belief that all individuals are of worth, and that human society should enable all to realize something of that worth in their lives. (p. 180)

I think it’s pretty clear here that, like Mill, Ward would agree that “moralistic or paternalistic” intervention is not generally conducive to enabling people to realize worth in their lives but, similarly, that there is much the state can do to foster that realization by providing certain essential goods. This might be a more fruitful religious justification for liberalism than the usual quasi-Rawlsian state neutrality arguments. Worth thinking more about.