Mill on Individuality and the Limits of Social Authority

Democratic self-​rule, often cited as a companion to liberal freedom, can in fact pose a threat to individuality. While it identifies the rulers with the ruled—the supposed will of the people—this masks a “tyranny of the majority” not only through political coercion, but perhaps more powerfully through the “moral coercion” of dominant public opinion and custom. These opinions and customs are often not well-​grounded in good reasons but instead reflect unquestioned biases and practices that have survived the ages, not always because they were beneficial to society. (These are the kinds of norms that may call for legislative correction, according to F. A. Hayek in Law, Legislation, and Liberty.) While social norms and rules are needed to sustain an order by which people can live together, many such rules pose a danger of becoming cudgels that don’t serve the common good but rather allow some people to impose their dogmas or demand conformity from unwilling others.

Why is the social tyranny of “moral coercion” so insidious? Mill argues that if society issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things which it ought not to meddle, “it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.”² Free individuals need protection not just against political oppression but also protection “against the tyranny of prevailing opinion and feeling” that may leave them feeling guilty for even questioning the dominant narratives. Custom stifles doubt about the rules of conduct which men impose on one another: “the subject is one on which it is not generally considered necessary that reasons should be given, either by one person to others or by each to himself.”³ Not only do most people fail to resist social pressure, but they also feel no need to resist and so they internalize tacit “consent” to it. As we will see, this is one reason for Mill’s defense of individuality, because “even despotism does not produce its worst effects so long as individuality exists under it.”⁴

Sympathies and antipathies which had little to do with the interests of society “have made themselves felt in the establishment of moralities with quite as great force.”⁵ Thus, bad spontaneous orders are sustained in the form of counterproductive attitudes and social norms. F. A. Hayek observed that we follow many social rules without knowing why. This may be efficient since they don’t need constant justification. Maybe it’s not always necessary to know what function a rule serves, but problems emerge when rules don’t have a socially useful function and yet we feel compelled to follow them anyway just because they are socially authoritative.

The same reasons supporting liberty of thought and discussion also support the freedom of individuals to act on their opinions without physical or moral coercion.⁶ In things that do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself. The evil is that individual spontaneity is hardly recognized by the common modes of thinking as having any intrinsic worth or deserving any regard on its own account.⁷ At best, it’s seen as a mere means of cultivating other, loftier, values. But it is the privilege and proper condition of a human being, arrived at the maturity of his faculties, to use and interpret experience in his own way.⁸ The only alternative is to obey those who insist that experience should be interpreted in their way.

Mill is not claiming that we should do without customs altogether. But though it may be good and suitable for a given person, adhering to custom merely as custom does not educate or develop him in any of the qualities which are the distinctive endowment of a human being. The human faculties of perception, judgement, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom makes no meaningful choice.⁹ The most individualistic thing a person can do is judge for himself since he who chooses his plan for himself employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgement to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-​control to hold to his deliberative decision.¹⁰ People tend to conform to what those around them are doing, which creates a self-​fulfilling prophecy that is mutually reinforcing. “I do not mean that they choose what is customary in preference to what suits their own inclination. It does not occur to them to have any inclination except for what is customary.”¹¹

But can’t conformity be good by preserving social order and preventing temptations to dominate others? Mill responds that it is not because men’s desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.¹² Whoever thinks that individuality of desires and impulses should not be encouraged must maintain that society has no need of strong natures—is not the better for containing many persons who have much character—and that a high general average of energy is not desirable.¹³ “It may be better to be a John Knox than an Alcibiades, but it is better to be a Pericles than either; nor would a Pericles … be without anything good which belonged to John Knox.”¹⁴ Mill argues that self-​denial and tyrannical appetites are a false dichotomy. Knox was a self-​denying Calvinist who, unlike the impassioned and self-​interested Alcibiades, had little motivation to tyrannize others. Alcibiades was a nonconformist without conscience who pursued self-​serving ends, harming many along the way. Pericles was a nonconformist with conscience who put his energies toward ends beneficial to mankind.

Mill is not troubled by the moral education needed to train young people to respect the freedom of others, insofar as this serves the overall good. Any means of development which the individual loses by being prevented from gratifying his inclinations to the injury of others are more than compensated by thus protecting the development of other people from his injuring them. And even to himself such education provides “a full equivalent in the better development of the social part of his nature, rendered possible by the restraint put upon the selfish part.”¹⁵ Moral education is best when it motivates people with strong desires to be more like Pericles than Alcibiades.

Those who don’t desire liberty still benefit from allowing the freedom of those who do desire it. Most experiments of living won’t improve established practices, but even the ones that don’t are still learning experiences about what works for some and not others. Those with the most successful experiments are “the salt of the earth” and “without them, human life would become a stagnant pool.”¹⁶ Too much of society reproaches nonconformity, which suggests greater reason for more people to be eccentric in order to break through tyranny of opinion. A contemporary example consists of failed stand-​up comedians who try to lecture other comedians on what they’re not supposed to joke about, when the very purpose of the best and most transgressive standup comedy is to appropriate and subvert questionable or socially harmful attitudes through irony and ridicule. “That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.”¹⁷

The despotism of custom hinders human advancement, but some despotism is ironically in the name of advancement. The rub is that a spirit of improvement without liberty “may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people,” but that effort goes nowhere without their choice to adopt the reasons behind that spirit. Conversely, the spirit of liberty, insofar as it resists such attempts, may at times ally itself with the opponents of any improvement, which may be a recipe for defending freedom in the name of laziness or nihilistic rebellion. But liberty and improvement can go hand in hand. In fact, the only “unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty, since by it there are as many possible independent centres of improvement as there are individuals.”¹⁸

First, liberty provides a breadth of improvement across individuals via diverse experiments of living in a variety of situations. Since people differ in their temperaments and circumstances, we learn most from decentralized experiments rather than a one-​size-​fits-​all attempt at centralized and homogenous progress. However, the temptation has been to see improvement in a centralized and collective way that permits no individual uniqueness. “It is not progress that we object to; on the contrary, we flatter ourselves that we are the most progressive people who ever lived. It is individuality that we war against: we should think we had done wonders if we had made ourselves all alike.”¹⁹ Note that what Mill means by “progressive” is voluntary and experimental efforts to improve oneself and society, as contrasted with American political Progressivism, which advocates for widespread state intervention to “improve” society according to the opinion of experts, coercively if need be.

Second, liberty offers depth of improvement within individuals because a necessary condition of improvement is the agent’s own free efforts toward it. Coerced behavior modification is not “improvement” because the intrinsic value of individuality is suppressed. The aim is not to make passive states of affairs better, but for agents to actively improve themselves. Free choice and effort are necessary conditions for any improvement worth the name. “If a person possesses any tolerable amount of common sense and experience, his own mode of laying out his existence is the best, not because it is the best in itself, but because it is his own mode.”²⁰

Of course, no man is an island, so we must be careful to distinguish cultivation of individuality which is self-​regarding from that which risks harming others. Acts which wrong others warrant disapproval in lesser cases and moral reprobation, even punishment, in grave cases. These differ from acts involving self-​injury or character defects, for which disapproval but not reprobation may be appropriate.²¹ When a person violates a distinct and assignable obligation to any other person or persons, “the case is taken out of the self-​regarding class and becomes amenable to moral disapprobation.”²² But punishment is due to the violation of duty to another, not to the extravagance itself. Regarding any injury to society which violates no specific duty to the public or any assignable individual, “the inconvenience is one which society can afford to bear, for the sake of the greater good of human freedom.”²³

Except in cases of strong personal attachment, everyone has the greatest interest in his own well-​being. “[W]ith respect to his own feelings and circumstances the most ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed by anyone else.”²⁴ This of course doesn’t mean that the individual is omniscient about his own good, but his fallibility is much less extensive than the fallibility of others trying to run his life for him. All errors which he may commit against advice and warning “are far outweighed by the evil allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good.”²⁵

One might find this sensible as far as it goes, but why can’t certain obvious types of self-​regarding misconduct or vice still be subject to legal prohibition or at least moral condemnation? Mill considers prohibition of misconduct where there is no question about restricting individuality or impeding the trial of new and original experiments in living. Take excessive alcohol consumption, which dulls a person’s judgments and energies without any clear compensating benefit. How does this activity contribute to individuality or provide a worthwhile variety of situations? Mill wonders whether it’s proper to restrict or condemn things “which experience has shown not to be useful or suitable to any person’s individuality.”²⁶

Even here, his response is that the drunkard should be left free because there is nothing “which tends more to discredit and frustrate the better means of influencing conduct than a resort to the worse.” That is, using force or coercion to prevent an activity debases the worth of mere advice or warnings against that activity. A vigorous and independent character will rebel against the yoke of coercion into prudence or temperance. No such person “will ever feel that others have a right to control him in his concerns.”²⁷ A vigorous character motivated to reduce or avoid vice can do so by his own efforts, through guidance as needed but without coercion. By contrast, no amount of coercion will help a weaker character unmotivated to improve himself. If anything, coercion that intercepts his own responsibility will make him weaker still. Regardless, even those who persist in vice can be socially beneficial through their cautionary example. Conduct which only harms the agent himself is more salutary than hurtful to society if it displays the painful and degrading consequences of that conduct.²⁸

For Mill, however, the strongest argument against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct is that, when it does interfere, “the odds are that it interferes wrongly and in the wrong place.” Public opinion on questions of social morality and duty to others is more likely than not to be correct, since on such questions people are only required to evaluate their own interests and the way some mode of conduct would affect themselves if allowed. But the opinion of a similar majority imposed as law on questions of self-​regarding conduct “is quite as likely to be wrong as right, for in these cases public opinion means, at the best, some people’s opinion of what is good or bad for other people.”²⁹ Imposition here is unsuitable even if the majority opinion happens to be correct. While it may be lamentable that some choose to act in ways lacking evident value, that is their business. The best way to encourage individuality as an intrinsic value is to grant adults the freedom to squander it. Society long had the power to educate children. If now as adults they had never availed themselves of repeated opportunities to mature within the safety net of supervision, it is no longer society’s prerogative to continue treating them as children.³⁰

Still, what is to be gained from allowing expression or action offensive to society or God? Mill contends there is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion and the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it.³¹ A “right” not to be offended is a non-​starter because, in principle, any opinion can be offensive to some portion of society. Nor can the mere assertion of moral authority to quell opinion work in a world of diverse and fallible people: “[U]nless we are willing to adopt the logic of persecutors, and to say that we may persecute others because we are right, and that they must not persecute us because they are wrong, we must beware of admitting a principle of which we should resent as a gross injustice the application to ourselves.”³² Some alleged authorities claim they are merely upholding God’s will, but Mill sees no proof that “society or any of its officers holds a commission from on high to avenge any supposed offence to Omnipotence which is not also a wrong to our fellow creatures.” Offenses to the gods are the concern of the gods. Even if God condemns the act of the misbeliever, it doesn’t follow that He holds us guilty for not punishing him in the earthly realm.³³

What about rights to a healthy society? The United Kingdom Alliance sought to ban alcohol, given its harmful effects on societal morality and progress. Alliance supporters argued that alcohol consumption created a dangerous and vicious environment that impeded one’s right to free moral and intellectual development. For Mill, however, this alleged “social right” is authoritarian in demanding that every individual act in every respect exactly as he ought. The doctrine “ascribes to all mankind a vested interest in each other’s moral, intellectual, and even physical perfection, to be defined by each claimant according to his own standard.”³⁴ As with so-​called rights not to be offended, positive rights to a morally virtuous society are non-​starters because any action can be deemed immoral in some circumstances by some portions of society.

One might be tempted to think that Mill’s utilitarian defense of mankind as progressive beings should call for coercion in those cases where people’s freedom lets them stray from the cultivation of progress. But he means something very specific by the term “progressive.” Mill opposes coercion precisely because a major ingredient of the good to be maximized is itself the free activity of choosing agents. Coercion undermines the ineliminable value of the free choice that partly constitutes the overall good of human progress, just as Humboldt had argued.