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Liberty and Harm to Others1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David Lyons
David Lyons*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

This paper is part of an extended program of research with two aims: to understand Mill's moral and political philosophy, and to develop a utilitarian doctrine in its most plausible or least vulnerable form, in order to identify what, if anything, may reasonably be said for or against utilitarianism as a general type of doctrine. These aims fit together because I have found when trying to interpret Mill that he suggests lines of development somewhat different and in some ways more promising than the usual versions of utilitarianism.

The Principle of liberty is not a simple corollary of utilitarianism, and Mill argues for it. I am not concerned with his arguments for it, however, so much as I am with his applications of it, since they tell us how it is to be understood.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 5: New Essays on John Stuart Mill and Utilitarianism , 1979 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1979

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Footnotes

1

Work on this paper was supported by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which I am happy to acknowledge. Earlier versions were read at the University of Calgary, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Washington, where I received many helpful comments. I am especially grateful to Jonathan Bennett, D. G. Brown, David Copp, Samuel Scheffler, and Barry Smith for criticisms.

References

2 All references in brackets are to chapters and paragraphs of John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (first published 1859).

3 Brown, D. G., “Mill on Liberty and Morality,” Philosophical Review, 81 (1972), 133–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 All page references within parentheses are to the article by Brown, ibid.

5 Or at least dangerous; cf. ibid., p. 135, n. 2.

6 The relevant passage is Utilitarianism, Chapter V, paragraph 14. For my interpretation, see “Mill's Theory of Morality,” Nous, 10 (1976), 101-120.

7 Since the Principle of Liberty purports to tell us the sole valid ground for coercive intervention, the Principle of Enforcing Morality must be understood to say, not that immorality is itself a Justification for interference, but rather that there is some such Justification whenever conduct is wrong. It is therefore somewhat misleading for Brown to say (p. 146) that “Mill believes in the enforcement of morality.“

8 Cf. Brown, pp. 137-139.

9 Utilitarianism, Chapter V, paragraph 32.

10 I discuss this further in “Human Rights and the General Welfare,“ Philosophy & Public Affairs, 6 (1977), 113-129, and also in “Mill's Theory of Justice,” in Values and Morals: Essays in Honor of William Frankena, Charles Stevenson, and Richard Brandt, ed. A. I. Goldman and). Kim, (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978), 1-20.