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TSR Wiki > Revision Notes > Revision Notes By Subject > Interpretations Revision Notes > Mill's Conception of Happiness and the Theory of Individuality - by John Gray

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• Doctrine of Liberty supported by a view of human happiness which in turn depends on his conception of human nature: evident in both Utilitarianism & On Lib that the forms of happiness which are most distinctively human are unachievable except against a background of autonomy & security.

• Argues that there’s an imp & neglected link between the theory of higher pleasures in Utilitarianism & the account of individuality given in chap 3 On Lib. The link is found in the idea of autonomous choice which is a nec ingredient of any higher pleasure & any form of life or activity expressive of individuality.

• Claims that the doctrine of higher pleasures a component of the Doctrine of Liberty. According to JSM’s theory of qualitative hedonism, the higher pleasures are found in forms of life & activity whose content distinctive in each particular case, but which necessarily involve the direction of generically human power of autonomous thought and action. It is these forms of life, distinctly human but peculiar in each case, that Mill sees as expressing individuality & as being open to all only in a society in which P of L is respected & enforced.

• (Mill’s departures from Benthamite utilitatianism were in part motivated by an awareness of the inadequacies of its moral psychology.

• JSM’s conception of happiness hierarchical & pluralistic in that it decomposes happiness into the projects, attachments & ideals expressed in an indefinitely large set of happy human lives.

• Though he isn’t supposing that higher pleasures same for all men, he does think that they have the common feature of being available only to men who have developed their distinctively human capacity for autonomous thought action: autonomous thought & action is a necessary feature of the life of a man who enjoys the higher pleasures. So part of rationale of adopting P of L is that an open space in which the higher pleasures may flourish is thereby guaranteed. JSM seeks to promote a society of free or autonomous men, & argues that this is imposs to achieve if liberty curtailed beyond the domain circumscribed by his principle. Autonomy – something which must be achieved (& which can never be achieved completely) rather than as a natural human endowment or original inheritance. (rational self-direction, and must have distanced himself to an extent from conditions/influences of social environment & people close to him). (for instance – exclusion of kids/mentally unbalanced/backward people.)

• Much of evidence for Mill holding to an ideal of personal autonomy in Chap 3 On Lib: ‘The human faculties of perception, judgement…mental activity, and even moral preference are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom makes no choice… the mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used.

• (makes point that an individual may possess negative freedom and yet lack the freedom of rational self-direction, & vice-versa)

• (admittedly no use of word ‘autonomous’ by JSM – but ‘on firm ground’ to include an idea of personal autonomy among JSM’s most fundamental commitments.

• Man only displays individuality if his desires and projects are his own

• So not a free man if subject to force/coercion in self regarding area, or if public opinion pressure in that area. Humans not autonomous if lack the opportunity to develop wills of their own & act on them. (e.g. women in traditional marriage arrangements)

• In chap 3 On Lib, language JSM uses suggests that there’s a natural tendency in men to self-realisation, which social arrangements my nurture or thwart, and that the realisation of these potentialities is indispensable for any man’s greatest well-being – this thesis one of the hinges on which the argument in On Lib turns. One part of a person’s happiness, in JSM’s view, will be that he’s fulfilled the peculiar demands of his own nature. Moreover, he insists that the nature that awaits actualisation has unique features: a claim which some writers have ridiculed as The Sanctity of Idiosyncrasy.

• JSM thus insists that choice-making a nec ingredient of the good life for any man.

• A Problem with JSM’s autonomy/qualitative hedonism: Certain kinds of self-knowledge connected with autonomy might actually obstruct the flowering of a man’s unique capacities and gifts. (e.g. a creative artist whose work withers after psychoanalysis) – a ‘significant are of difficulty for JSM’s conception of happiness and the place of individuality in it. (No treatment of this problem to be found in JSM)

• The Relationship Between JSM’s theory of individuality, his philosophical psychology, and his argument for liberty. JSM rejected view of the mind as purely receptive of external impressions. Happiness to be found in activity, the form of life expressing each man’s own nature. Argued that to suppose that men can be happy without exercise of faculties is to confuse the 2 ideas of happiness & contentment

• What authority does JSM claim for his view of Human Nature?: In System of Logic, advanced project of an empirical science of ethology, which would uncover the laws of development of human character (an earlier version of social psychology) – it was to be on the basis of the laws of ethology that the various precepts of the Art of Life were to be grounded – unfortunately, didn’t come up with any – so, A of L & Doctrine of Liberty lacked the empirical foundations that Mill (as an empiricist) wanted to give them.

• The theory of human nature presupposed in On Lib: human nature susceptible to almost unlimited variation and modification, which is explained by the power, rooted in reflexive thought, which men have to make experiments on themselves.

• Explains why JSM saw progress as the promotion of the growth of the powers & capacities of autonomous thought & action, which allow the cultivation of diverse forms of self-dev, elevate the character of human wants, & foster cultural & social dev in ‘innumerable divergent directions’ by facilitating ‘experiments of living’.

• As Gray reconstructs it, the argument of On Lib is that social freedom (legal & immunity from the pressures of public opinion) ranked over other goods cos the promotion of a diversity of styles of life & modes of thought partly constitutive of a man’s dev as an autonomous agent. In On Lib, then, social progress can’t be conceived of apart from the promotion of liberty. As JSM put it (Chap 3):

‘The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing liberty on an unwilling people (liberty resists this)… but the only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty’

• A criticism of JSM: many of critics have accused him of bolstering doctrine of liberty with an aprioristic moral psychology for which there’s little indep justification. (A measure of circularity would enter his doctrine if it could be shown that his conception of happiness merely encapsulates his moral ideals in other terms. But little doubt that JSM believed that, given an appropriate range of relevant experience, men would in fact prefer activities of their best powers of discrimination over those that don’t. (does not believe that this will always be the case, but will be mostly so for experienced judges). – so not circular.

• Haksar’s argued that JSM cleaves to a high-minded conception of the good dependent on a certain ideal of the person. Haksar submits that JSM’s underlying moral theory is perfectionist – i.e. concerned primarily with the promotion of a certain type of human excellence, and only secondly with want satisfaction. (Gray feels that this doesn’t has force but doesn’t refute convincingly). Gray argues that JSM isn’t holding to a perfectionist ethic in which the promotion of an ideal of human excellence is to be taken even if it competes with want-satisfaction.

• Is Mill’s conviction of the diversity of human nature in conflict with his account of the higher pleasures? – OK provided it’s not an a priori proposition, i.e. empirical and reversible by experience (?)…

• JSM’s doctrine avowedly vulnerable to the test of human experience – not unreasonable wager, criticisable by the experience of life – (due to potential problems of circularity and conflict between diversity of human nature & pref for higher pleasures, best if link empirical claim…)

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