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The Justification of Liberalism1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
There are a number of grounds for criticizing what the state requires of one, and for thinking that one no longer has an obligation to obey it. I will begin by attempting to locate liberalism amongst such grounds. It is useful for this purpose to contrast two headings under which these grounds may fall. Firstly, there are criticisms concerning the content of the requirements of the state. In this case exception is taken to what it is that the law requires quite apart from the process by which it was arrived at. If Jews are legally prevented from practising certain professions, and objection is taken because no state should make laws debarring persons from certain professions on religious grounds, the objection is one of content. Secondly, there are grounds concerning the procedure by which a decision was reached. If it is thought that the British Government ought not to have signed the Treaty of Rome because no referendum was taken on whether the electorate wanted Britain to join, exception is taken to the procedure by which this decision was made. The objection could be made by one who thought that British entry was the best policy. liberalism lays down principles concerning the permissible content of what is required by the state.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Authors 1972
Footnotes
1
My thanks for very helpful criticism of former drafts of this paper are due to Professor Kal Nielsen; my colleagues at a meeting of the London University Philosophy Croup, especially Dr. Ted Honderich; those present at a Philosophy Department Colloquium at the University of North Carolina; and my students at Bedford College, especially Mr. David Kidd.
References
2 For a fuller account of this distinction, see my “Political Decision Procedures”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. LXX, 1969-70.
3 J. S. Mill, On Liberty, p. 72. (Everyman Edition, Utilitarianism, Liberty, and Representative Government, with an introduction by A. D. Lindsay.)
4 The idea behind this formulation of the liberal principle comes from ). Rees, C. “A Re-reading of Mill on Liberty”, Political Studies, 1960.CrossRefGoogle Scholar {Reprinted in Radcliff, P. (Ed.), Limits of Liberty (Wandsworth, California, 1966Google Scholar). Page references are to Radcliff.) On p. 100 Rees offers this interpretation of Mill’s principle: “Social control of individual actions ought to be exercised only in cases where the interests of others are either threatened or actually affected.” It was Rees’s intention to offer a correct account of Mill’s position: mine is only to formulate a viable version of the liberal principle.
5 C.f. Rees, op. cit., p. 102, referring to noisy drunkards in an hotel adjoining one’s house: “If the noise became such a nuisance as to lower the value of the property it could not be denied that interests had been affected.”
6 Rees, op. cit., p. 94.
7 In “John Stuart Mill and the Limits of State Action”. A shortened version of this paper was published in Man and Society, No. 6,1963, but these points appear only in the unpublished version.
8 Rees, op. cit., p. 103.
9 Honderich, T. Punishment: The Supposed Justifications (Hutchinson, London, 1969), p. 182.Google Scholar Honderich’s own reasons for rejecting this formulation are discussed below.
10 Mill, op. cit., p. 74.
11 Ibid, p. 115.
12 A good example of this method of argument against the liberal principle (or rather, against what has been generally understood to be Mill’s version of it) is to be found in “Mill’s Liberalism” by McCloskey, H. I. (Philosophical Quarterly, 1963, p. 143)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 This point is noted by McCloskey, H. J. in “A Critique of the Ideals of Liberty”, Mind, 1965, p. 488 and p. 493.Google Scholar
14 Honderich, op. cit., p. 195.
15 Mill, op. cit., p. 150.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., p. 151.