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John Stuart Mill, Children's Liberty, and the Unraveling of Autonomy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2017

Sharon Stanley
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Abstract

In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill famously excluded children and so-called barbarians from his otherwise broad grant of liberty to human beings. While many scholars have analyzed and criticized the barbarian exclusion, little attention has been focused on the denial of liberty to children. This article argues that Mill's theory of liberty rests on an untenable dividing line between childhood dependence and adult autonomy. The processes of discipline and socialization to which children are subject render them incapable as adults of achieving the kind of autonomy that Mill prescribes. Using relational autonomy as an alternative to Mill's model of autonomy, I propose that we should neither flatly deny liberty to children nor present absolute independence as a normative ideal for adults.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 79 , Issue 1 , Winter 2017 , pp. 49 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2017 

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References

1 Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. Robson, J. M. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963–1991), 18:224Google Scholar. Hereinafter cited parenthetically as OL.

2 See, for example, Bell, Duncan, “John Stuart Mill on Colonies,” Political Theory 38, no. 1 (2010): 34–64 Google Scholar; Jahn, Beate, “Barbarian Thoughts: Imperialism in the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill,” Review of International Studies 31 (2005): 599–618 Google Scholar; Mehta, Uday, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Parekh, Bhikhu, “Liberalism and Colonialism: A Critique of Locke and Mill,” in The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power, ed. Pieterse, Jan and Parekh, Bhikhu (London: Zed Books, 1995), 81–98 Google Scholar; Pitts, Jennifer, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Tunick, Mark, “Tolerant Imperialism: John Stuart Mill's Defense of British Rule in India,” Review of Politics 68 (2006): 586–611 Google Scholar.

3 Rare exceptions include Kleinig, John, “Mill, Children, and Rights,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 8, no. 1 (1976): 1–16 Google Scholar and Habibi, Don, John Stuart Mill and the Ethic of Human Growth (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), chap. 5Google Scholar.

4 For examples of radical defenses of children's liberty, see Firestone, Shulamith, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970)Google Scholar, chap. 4, and Holt, John, Escape from Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children (Boston: Dutton, 1974)Google Scholar.

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11 Mill, The Subjection of Women, in Collected Works, 21:271.

12 Mill, Autobiography, in Collected Works, 1:155.

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16 Mill, The Subjection of Women, 305.

17 Nedelsky, Jennifer, “Reconceiving Autonomy: Sources, Thoughts and Possibilities,” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 1, no. 7 (1989): 8Google Scholar. As the title indicates, Nedelsky does not simply abandon the concept of autonomy, but rather reconceives it in a less individualistic manner. Many feminists have followed suit, developing a concept of “relational autonomy.” This concept will become crucial in my own account of the relationship between children and liberty in Mill.

18 Mahmood, Saba, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)Google Scholar, 32. Of course, Mahmood is speaking of women in a specific social, religious, and cultural context: participants in the women's mosque movement in Egypt. However, her account of the bounded agency of the women effectively captures the threat that even the existence of noncoercive norms may pose to the idea of pure individual autonomy.

19 Mill, The Subjection of Women, 305, 309.

20 Smits, Katherine, “John Stuart Mill and the Social Construction of Identity,” History of Political Thought 25, no. 2 (2004): 302–3Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., 308.

22 Mill, A System of Logic, 840.

23 Mill, Autobiography, 143.

24 Baum, “J. S. Mill on Freedom and Power,” 203.

25 Ibid., 205.

26 Kleinig, “Mill, Children, and Rights,” 3.

27 Ibid.

28 Gutmann, “Children, Paternalism, and Education,” 341.

29 Donner, Wendy, The Liberal Self: John Stuart Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 168Google Scholar. For Feinberg's original argument, see Feinberg, Joel, “The Child's Right to an Open Future,” in Ethical Principles for Social Policy, ed. Howie, John (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 97–122 Google Scholar.

30 Habibi, John Stuart Mill and the Ethic of Human Growth, 165.

31 Galston, “Parents, Government, and Children,” 299.

32 Ibid., 287.

33 Mill, letter to Charles Friend, Oct. 29, 1868, in Collected Works, 16:1469.

34 Baum, “J.S. Mill on Freedom and Power,” 208.

35 Ibid., 210.

36 See Stephen, James Fitzjames, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, ed. Warner, Stuart D. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1993)Google Scholar.

37 Mackenzie, Catriona and Stoljar, Natalie, “Introduction: Autonomy Refigured,” in Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self, ed. Mackenzie, Catriona and Stoljar, Natalie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 4Google Scholar.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid., 17.

40 Nedelsky, “Reconceiving Autonomy,” 12.

41 Ibid., 25.

42 Baumann, Holger, “Reconsidering Relational Autonomy: Personal Autonomy for Socially Embedded and Temporally Extended Selves,” Analyze & Kritik 30 (2008): 448Google Scholar.

43 Habibi, John Stuart Mill and the Ethic of Human Growth, 171.

44 Linda Barclay, “Autonomy and the Social Self,” in Relational Autonomy, ed. Mackenzie and Stoljar, 58.

45 Nedelsky, “Reconceiving Autonomy,” 7.

46 Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, in Collected Works, 19:412.