Download Mill Fall 2005

Poli 64
Modern Political Thought
TURN YOUR PHONE OFF!
PARLIAMENT ENACTS THE STAMP ACT:
November 1, 1765
In the face of widespread opposition in the American colonies,
Parliament enacts the Stamp Act, a taxation measure designed to raise
revenue for British military operations in America.
Modern thought Jeopardy!
The answer: The “tendency of society to impose… its
own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those
who dissent from them”
The question?: What is
MAJORITY RULE or
FORCING PEOPLE TO BE FREE?
OR IS IT
THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY?
The Classical and the Modern Political Ideals
We can no longer enjoy the liberty of the ancients, which consisted in an
active and constant participation in collective power. Our freedom must consist of
peaceful enjoyment and private independence. The share which in antiquity
everyone held in national sovereignty was by no means an abstract presumption
as it is in our own day. The will of each individual had real influence: the
exercise of this will was a vivid and repeated pleasure. Consequently the ancients
were ready to make many a sacrifice to preserve their political rights and their
share in the administration of the state. Everybody, feeling with pride all that his
suffrage was worth, found in this awareness of his personal importance a great
compensation.
This compensation no longer exists for us today. Lost in the multitude, the
individual can almost never perceive the influence he exercises. Never does his
will impress itself upon the whole; nothing confirms in his eyes his own
cooperation. The exercise of political rights, therefore, offers us but a part of the
pleasures that the ancients found in it, while at the same time the progress of
civilization, the commercial tendency of the age, the communication amongst
peoples, have infinitely multiplied and varied the means of personal happiness.
It follows that we must be far more attached than the ancients to our individual
independence. For the ancients when they sacrificed that independence to their
political rights, sacrificed less to obtain more; while in making the same sacrifice
we would give more to obtain less. The aim of the ancients was the sharing of
social power among the citizens of the same fatherland: this is what they called
liberty. The aim of the moderns is the enjoyment of security in private pleasures;
and they call liberty the guarantees accorded by institutions to these pleasures.
Benjamin Constant, 1816
The eclipse of republicanism
and the “liberty of the ancients,”
and the triumph of LIBERALISM
*Revision of historiography: Stadial accounts of
development, critique of the classical ideal (e.g.
Athens over Sparta), emergence of “Whig history”
*Ascendancy of “rights” discourse
*Ascendancy of “political economy”
*Development of capitalist and socialist economic theory
*Popular government as means of individual satisficing
(and the decline of collective greatness)
“Classical liberty” becomes the purview of romantics and cranks,
a justification for a “Dictatorship of Virtue,” the basis of
“Totalitarian Democracy,” the original form of “Terrorism”
Benjamin Constant on Rousseau’s political philosophy:
I shall perhaps at some point examine the system of the most illustrious of these philosophers, of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and I shall show that, by transposing into our modern age an extent of
social power, of collective sovereignty, which belonged to other centuries, this sublime genius,
animated by the purest love of liberty, has nevertheless furnished deadly pretexts for more than
one kind of tyranny.
[Rousseau should be] regarded as the representative of the system which, according to the
maxims of ancient liberty, demands that the citizens should be entirely subjected in order for the
nation to be sovereign, and that the individual should be enslaved for the people to be free.
Sparta, which combined republican forms with the same enslavement of individuals, aroused in
the spirit of that philosopher an even more vivid enthusiasm. That vast monastic barracks to him
seemed the ideal of a perfect republic. He had a profound contempt for Athens, and would gladly
have said of this nation, the first of Greece, what an academician and great nobleman said of the
French Academy: What an appalling despotism! Everyone does what he likes there.
John Stuart Mill
b. 1806 d. 1873
1809-1820 Education begins at age 3, with Aesop and Xenophon
By age 14, has completed study of most of the Greek
and Latin classics – in their original languages
1821 Completes reading of Bentham; becomes advocate of
Utilitarianism
1823 Arrested for distributing birth control literature
1826 Mental breakdown; begins rethinking principles of Utilitarianism
1830 Meets Harriet Taylor
[1832 Bentham dies]
[1836 James Mill dies]
1851 Marries Harriet Taylor
1835 Reviews and endorses Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
1859 Publishes On Liberty
1861 Publishes Utilitarianism and Considerations on Representative Government
1869 Publishes (with Harriet Taylor) Subjection of Women
Liberalism as a political tradition
“Liberalism” is the dominant ideology in English speaking nations
“Liberty” is individual freedom to act without interference from others; a “modern”
form of liberty
-- Originally an argument against monarchical and aristocratic
privilege and authority
Some notable achievements of liberalism:
Freedom of religion
Political and civil rights (for propertied individuals)
Economic freedom (capitalism)
-- Today an argument for individual opportunity for self-realization
The problem for liberalism: What is required for individual self-realization?
Liberalism’s two schools
“Protective” liberalism
“Developmental” liberalism
John Locke
John Stuart Mill
“conservatives” in liberal polities
(economic liberals, moral conservatives)
“liberals” in liberal polities
(moral liberals, economic conservatives)
Libertarianism
Something of a child prodigy, he learned to read as a toddler and began the study of
Latin at age three. At 12 he was sent to Oxford, and was admitted to the bar at age 16.
A prolific linguist, he eventually became fluent in 7 different languages: English,
French, Spanish, German, Russian, Latin, and Greek, and was familiar with a half
dozen more.
He became disillusioned with the law, and when he was made financially independent
after the death of his father, he dedicated himself to progressive political movements,
including prison reform, poor relief, the codification of international law, the
decriminalization of homosexuality, and animal welfare. One of the most influential
founders of University College in London, which was one of the first colleges open to
all races, sexes, and classes.
A bit of an eccentric, for ten years before his death he carried around the glass eyes
he planned to have inserted in his body after death. He fancied himself an amateur
scientist, and when he died, he was embalmed with a fluid of his own invention. He
gave all of his estate to UCL, on the condition that his body be kept on display at the
College, and was present at all meetings of the College governing board.
Unfortunately, his scientific skills left something to be desired. In a short time, the
body shriveled up, and the head fell off.
A wax effigy replaced the decomposed body, and the head was placed at the foot of
the effigy. Undergraduates being what they are, the head frequently went missing.
Once it was found in a storage locker at Aberdeen Station, and it occasional served
as a ball for impromptu soccer matches on the college lawn. Eventually the head
was boxed and stored away from the scheming plans of pranksters.
The effigy, called the "auto-icon" can still be viewed at UCL. The minutes of the
College governing board most often read "Mister X present but not voting," although
it is said he does occasionally vote, always for the motion on the floor, whenever
there is a tie.
HINTS:
(3) Designer of the innovative prison called the Panopticon
(2) He coined a number of neologisms that have become part of common idiom.
"Maximize" and "Minimize" being the most familiar
(1) Founder of the movement known as Utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham and Utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham and Utilitarianism
The goals of society and government:
“The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number”
The question for reformers:
How can society and government be fitted to human nature?
Human nature
Maximize pleasure, minimize pain
The problem for reformers:
Variety of preferences and standards
“Quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry”
Solution: Measurement of pleasure and pain:
“The felicific calculus”
Preferences measured by market mechanisms.
“Money is the instrument of measuring the
quantity of pain and pleasure”
“Each portion of wealth has a corresponding
portion of happiness”
Government
goals
1. Provide subsistence
2. Produce abundance
3. Favor equality
4. Maintain security
Do nothing; fear of starvation will work
Do nothing; individuals will always want more
Equality must yield, or incentives disappear
John Stuart Mill and the Problem of Human Felicity
The Goal of human life: individual happiness
The Means of individual happiness: individual liberty
The Political Principle of liberty: individual self-sovereignty
The Questions We Must Ask
What constitutes Individual Happiness?
Are there limits to Liberty?
What is required for Self-sovereignty?
The only useful answers to these questions must be given in terms that
bear on the problems of self-development in social relations
Utilitarianism is the social theory
of human felicity
Utilitarianism
(the social theory of human felicity)
The purpose of social theory: What is useful for human happiness
The goal of society and government (the principle of utilitarianism):
The Greatest Happiness for the Greatest Number of Individuals
The first and fundamental question: What is happiness?
Definitional
basis
Hedonism
vs.
Excellence
Conditions
“Internal” (intellectual)
“External” (material)
Low
High
High
High
Considerations:
What is the relationship of internal and external conditions?
What are the individual and social implications of these ideals of happiness?
Mill’s conclusion: Utility (the greatest happiness) requires progress, and progress requires
Competence
On Liberty
Utility requires progress, and progress requires competence
Liberty is the means of self-development for happiness; liberty both protects and
develops competence
Obstacles to competence
Internal
External
Developing
Ignorance
Deprivation
Protecting
Infirmity
Tyranny
Historical limits of competence: Intellectual and material wealth
Greatest danger to competence and individuality in appropriate conditions:
Tyranny of the Majority
The principle of liberty: freedom in all “self-regarding acts”; social/governmental
regulation of “other-regarding acts” ONLY
Liberty protects competence by preventing majority tyranny; liberty develops
competence by encouraging individual self-development
Spheres of liberty:
Thought and expression (for truth)
Tastes and pursuits (for individuality and diversity)
Association (institutional forms for thought, expression, tastes and pursuits)
Further considerations on development (or, why government should be limited):
Overactive government is inefficient and undermines self-reliance
Governments have limited capacity; individuals know their own interests
Paternalism stunts development; individual initiative encourages self-development
Monopolization stunts innovation; individual independence encourages creativity
Mill on Representative Government
Review: The prerequisites of progress
Intellectual
Material
Capacity
requires
Development
and
requires
Protection
Productive societies
requires
requires
requires
Democracy
Meritocracy
Bureaucracy w/ expertise
REPRESENTATIVE
GOVERNMENT
Limitations: insubordination, passivity, localism
Conditions of success: Acceptance, action, and capacity
Underdevelopment
Particularity
Threats to success
Negative
Positive
Insufficient power
Incompetence
Remedies:
Political participation and effective bureaucracy
Means: education by example, experience, and public schooling
Further considerations: enfranchisement and electoral influence