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Liberty and Education: John Stuart Mill's Dilemma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

E. G. West
E. G. West
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne..
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Extract

The Term ‘liberty’ invokes such universal respect that most modern political economists and moralists endeavour to find a conspicuous place for it somewhere in their systems or prescriptions. But in view of the innumerable senses of this term an insistence on some kind of definition prior to any discussion seems to be justified. For our present purposes attention to two particularly conflicting interpretations will be sufficient. These are sometimes called the ‘negative’ and the ‘positive’ notions of Liberty. According to the ‘negative’ notion, my own liberty implies the reduction to a minimum of the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I wish to act. Conversely the absence of liberty, or coercion, is regarded as undesirable because it amounts to the prevention by other persons of my doing what I want. On the other hand, the ‘positive’ sense of the word ‘liberty’ consists in the attainment of self-mastery, or, in other words, the release from the domination of ‘adverse’ influences. This ‘slavery’ from which men ‘liberate’ themselves is variously described to include slavery to ‘nature’, to ‘unbridled passions’, to ‘irrational impulses’, or simply slavery to one's ‘lower nature’. ‘Positive’ liberty is then identified with ‘self-realisation’ or an awakening into a conscious state of rationality. The fact that it is contended that such a state can often be attained only by the interference of other ‘rational’ persons who ‘liberate’ their fellow beings from their ‘irrationality’, brings this interpretation of liberty into open and striking conflict with liberty in the ‘negative’ sense.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 40 , Issue 152 , April 1965 , pp. 129 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1965

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References

page 129 note 1 Berlin, c.f.IIsaiah: The Two Concepts of Liberty (Oxford 1958), to which this analysis is much indebted.Google Scholar

page 131 note 1 Enquiry concerning Political Justice 1796, Ch. VIII,Google Scholar‘OfNational Education’, p.296.Google Scholar

page 131 note 2 ‘This just transfers the problem of limiting governmental or social interference from one plane to another.’ Jack, Lively: The Social and Political Thought of De Toqueville. 1962.Google Scholar

page 131 note 3 op. cit., p. 293.Google Scholar

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page 133 note 1 Mill, J. S., Autobiography (1944 New York), p. 136.Google Scholar

page 133 note 2 Hansard 1833, Vol. XX, cols. 139–166.Google Scholar

page 133 note 3 Ibid.

page 133 note 4 Ibid.

page 134 note 1 Ibid.

page 134 note 2 Ibid.

page 135 note 1 Mill's championship of this view has been recently demonstrated by Berlin, I., op. cit.Google ScholarSee also Hart, H. L. A., ‘Immorality and Treason’, Listener, Vol. 62, No.1583, pp. 162–3. This is a contribution to the debate which was provoked by the report of the Wolfenden Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution.Google Scholar

page 135 note 2 On Liberty. 1962 edition (Fontana), p. 135. This edition will be implied henceforth.Google Scholar

page 136 note 1 The analysis at this point owes much to McCloskey, H. J.: Mill's Liberalism in The Philosophical Quarterly, 04, 1963.Google Scholar

page 137 note 1 Principles of Political Economy, Ashley edition 1915, p. 958. All subsequent references will be to this edition.Google Scholar

page 137 note 2 Principles of Political Economy, p. 948.Google Scholar

page 138 note 1 Principles of Political Economy, p. 953. Notice that Mill's complaint concerns the quality, not the quantity, of education. From the evidence of the 1861 Commission on Popular Education, England, which was about the only remaining European country without a national system of education, was still abreast of its neighbours in quantity. The average working class parent was paying fees for his children's education and this covered one-third of the cost. The question was whether the state should subsidise this vast voluntary system, in which the parent's voice was respected, or supersede it with state schools.Google Scholar

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page 140 note 2 Ibid.

page 140 note 3 Ibid.

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page 142 note 1 Mill would make no compromise on this point. If the education was to include religion then he would have opposed any Bill for national education. Letter to C.Dilke, 1870. See also his Letter to Huxley, T. H., 1865, in: The Letters of John Stuart Mill edited by Elliott, H. S. R., 1910.Google Scholar

page 142 note 2 Mill, J. S. was educated entirely by his father, who thus shared Godwin's ardour for private initiative instruction. See Cummins, I.: A Manufactured Man. 1960.Google Scholar

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