This article was originally written for an Ethics class.
The work of John Stuart Mill is interesting to me, as it seems to be one of the early works arguing for
individualism. He emphasizes the liberty of the individual, constrained only very lightly by society. In the introduction, he writes about historical development in this sense. He argues that the only time
individual sovereignty should be constrained is when an individual is of harm to others, emphasizing
very loose governmental control. He defines the will of the people as the will of the majority or those
who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority. It immediately brings a thought to the US
presidential election, in which the president does not need a majority of votes to win. In the second
chapter, Mill argues further in favor of individual liberty. He directly links the right to silence someone
with the perception of one’s infallibility. Many of his points come from the discussion of Christianity and
heresy, where he attempts to prove the need to challenge one’s own opinions, no matter how sure we
are. He also criticizes dogmas, and Christianity in general, for being negative in its rules rather than
positive.
I very much liked the definition of the will of the people in the sense that it nicely shows what it is. In
terms of what it ought to be, I would argue against it as the mathematical majority is, to me, the only
valid metric. I also liked the statement that silencing one person is just as unjustified as silencing
everyone else. Even though I am not such a strong supporter of individual freedom, Mill puts down his
arguments well. A certainly strong argument is the statement that all silencing of the discussion assumes one’s infallibility. I agree with this. However, I would say that in some instances, one can be entirely correct, thus allowing one to silence a discussion. Lastly, his critique of Christianity and arguments for challenging the status quo were sound. Especially the statement that every truth that is not fearlessly, fully, and frequently discussed becomes a dogma was great food for thought.
All in all, however, I could not entirely agree with most of Mill’s points. For one, I do not believe that the
harm principle is the only thing needed for a whole justice system in a society. As seen in our time,
individuals are not always sovereign concerning their own behavior through numerous chemical
substances or artificially intelligent systems that influence users’ behavior. But one sentence, in
particular, struck me the most. Mill argued that despotism is legitimate in dealing with barbarians if the
goal is their improvement, essentially saying that ends justify the means when it comes to barbarians. I
understand this as an apologetic approach to slavery, putting the liberty of a white European above the
liberty of a “barbarian.” I would not be too surprised to find out this was his stance, but the contrast to
what he calls for in the rest of the work is staggering. Another strong disagreement was with the claim
that it is always beneficial to have one’s truths challenged. In the age of a rising number of
disinformation campaigns, it is clear that conscious lying does not benefit society. Mill claimed that
defending one’s truth makes one wiser, as it introduces one to other opinions. That no longer holds
when one faces the same constructed falsehood repeatedly. In the best case, this results in eating up
time that they could spend on better, more important things. And others cannot discern right from
wrong by being overloaded with contradicting information. His statement, “Wrong opinions and
practices gradually yield to fact and argument,” is no longer valid in our era. Like the Babylonians with
differing languages, everyone’s truth is now different, and we seem unable to understand one another.
Overall, this work was pretty fine to read. Mill makes some good points about Christianity and its issues. He explains the importance of a quest for truth and is very optimistic about the power of discussion. This power has not turned out to be as great as he likely envisioned. However, individualism played an integral role in the advancement in the years that separate John Stuart Mill and me, to give credit where credit is due. After all, from a historical perspective, this work is undoubtedly valuable and interesting to read.