John Stuart Mill on Justice and Self-Development Gustavo

John Stuart Mill on justice and self-development Gustavo Hessmann Dalaqua – UFPR [email protected] Proofread by Malcolm Clark (ESL teacher, Curitiba). [email protected] ABSTRACT: This paper deals with John Stuart Mill’s account of justice, which posits a strong relationship between justice, morality and self-development. According to Mill, law and morality can be seen in two different ways: (i) as something that never changes; (ii) as something that can be put into question and improved. Endorsing the latter, Mill is going to advance a creative morality that attaches justice to debate. Justice requires public discussion and constant critical examination of law. Sometimes it requires even breaking up with the law; civil disobedience is an example of that. For Mill, justice cannot do without individual critical thinking, conscience and self-development. Indeed, self-development is the sine qua non of justice. One can only care for others if one has cared for one’s self. Key words: John Stuart Mill; justice; self-development; civil disobedience. RESUMO: Este artigo trata da questão da justiça no pensamento de John Stuart Mill, segundo o qual há uma relação forte entre justiça, moralidade e desenvolvimento de si. De acordo com o autor, lei e moralidade podem ser vistas de duas maneiras distintas: (i) como algo que nunca muda; (ii) como algo passível de ser questionado e aperfeiçoado. Endossando a segunda visão, Mill irá postular uma moral criativa que liga justiça e debate. A justiça requer discussão pública e um constante exame crítico da lei. Por vezes, requer inclusive uma ruptura com a lei; a desobediência civil é um exemplo disto. Para Mill, não há justiça sem pensamento crítico individual, consciência e desenvolvimento do eu. Com efeito, o desenvolvimento de si é condição sine qua non da justiça. Somente quem cuida de si é capaz de se importar com outrem. Palavras-chave: John Stuart Mill; justiça; desenvolvimento de si; desobediência civil. 1 I would like to talk about John Stuart Mill’s thinking on justice, and to do it in a thirty-minute presentation is only acceptable because my speaking a whole afternoon on the subject would be nearly as incomplete. “What is justice?” – Philosophy has puzzled itself with this question from time immemorial, and I assume no one here is expecting to get back home with an answer that could work once and for all. That would be against the very nature of our colloquia. For if we are expected to meet year after year to discuss justice, then something must have changed. It would be simply a waste of time to meet again if nothing new came up. Time and again we gather and endeavor to pose the question anew: “What is justice?”. This proves, if it needs proving, how provisional our consensus on the issue is. Now and then people assemble not only to debate but also to demand justice (we shall return to this issue when talking about civil disobedience). Justice has been out and about, on people’s lips, on the streets; indeed one can scarcely think of a political revolution or a public turmoil in which it has not been of prime concern. And here lies the chief difficulty in studying justice nowadays. Since it is so stored with past echoes and conflicting associations, justice cannot be captured by a single and indisputable definition. That is why I shall concentrate mainly on Mill and see what he has to say about justice. Initially the question of justice seems to be confined only to Utilitarianism, and when scholars want to discuss Mill’s thinking on justice, that work is usually where they turn to. In Utilitarianism’s final chapter, we read: “justice is a name for certain moral requirements” that belong to “social utility” (MILL, 1861: 200). Justice, Mill believes, is grounded not on an absolute, transcendental standard but rather on social utility, that is to say, on human happiness and well-being. Far from being immutable, social utility is a historical phenomenon which changes over time; what is considered useful for one age may not be so for the next. That which one generation regarded as conducive to human well-being can become burdensome or even contrary to happiness for the next generation. The way we look at utility is established and improved through public debate and social intercourse (cf. MILL, 1859: 41). Justice and utility, in short, are open to discussion and a fortiori can only be sustained through debate, in the broad sense of the word. Justice, I shall argue, 2 requires public debate as well as inner debate, an activity which one exercises through self-development. Justice is anchored in self-development and is conducive to human happiness. Happiness should not be mistaken for contentment. It is not merely a succession of pleasant mental states; when Mill speaks of happiness, as Rawls has noticed, he means “a way of life” (RAWLS, 2007: 259). One is happy insofar as one leads a critical way of life and cares for one’s self. Those who passively conform to society’s mandates and do not develop an intelligent relationship with them cannot be called happy, and are not properly speaking individuals. According to Mill, being an individual presupposes the ability to develop and care for his or her self, which in turn allows the individual to gain some distance from his or her background, whereupon critique becomes feasible. Self-development and the critical thinking thereby produced are essential for justice. In what follows, my aim will be simply to underscore the relationship between justice and self-development, a theme scholars often neglect when talking about Mill’s thinking on justice. When Mill asks himself, “What is justice?”, he notices people have different answers for it. Mill writes from a background of assumed conflict and knows that he cannot rely on a shared opinion, for there is none. People began to conceive justice in different ways in the nineteenth century and that is why an all-embracing definition will not do. In genealogical fashion, Mill then attempts to trace the genesis of the concept “justice” and turns back to the Greeks and Romans. I quote him: Among so many diverse applications of the term Justice . it is a matter of some difficulty to seize the link which holds them together. Perhaps, in this embarrassment, some help may be derived from the history of the word, as indicated by its etymology. In most, if not in all, languages, the etymology of the word which corresponds to Just, points to an origin connected either with positive law, or with that which was in most cases the primitive form of law — authoritative custom. Justum is a form of jussum, that which has been ordered. Jus is of the same origin Δίκαιον comes from δίκη, of which the principal meaning, at least in the historical ages of Greece, was a suit at law. Originally, indeed, it meant only the mode or manner of doing things, but it early came to mean the prescribed manner; that which the recognized authorities, patriarchal, judicial, or political, would enforce (MILL, 1861: 181-2). 3 The concept of “justice” was connected with “law” and “custom” both in Rome and Greece. It meant conformity to a set of prescriptions which were imposed upon the individual by an external authority, which was not necessarily judicial. Usually the source of authority was what determined whether the prescription was a “law” or “custom”. Such distinction, according to Mill, remained valid in nineteenth century and still makes sense in our time (cf. MILL, 1859: 23ff). For one thing, it seems safe to say that laws and customs are not the same. Laws are prescriptions issued by a judicial authority. When one disrespects them, the punishment one faces is exercised mainly by juridical institutions, such as the police. Customs, by contrast, are not necessarily regulated by judicial power. Usually they are imposed upon us by non-juridical power mechanisms and the punishment we get when we disobey them is of a different nature. Mill offers an interesting analysis of how such extra juridical power shapes individual conduct, but to explain it here would lead us too far afield. So far what the etymology of the word has revealed is that the concept of justice is not exclusively juridical. Justice is much more than a legal matter; it signifies acting in conformity not only to law but also to custom. Thus we are led to the questions: what is law and what is custom? According to Mill, both can be seen in two ways: (i) something man-made that can be changed; (ii) something sacred and immutable that emanates directly “from the Supreme Being” (MILL, 1861: 182). To each one there is a corresponding morality: (i) a morality of creation, that is to say, a creative morality; (ii) a morality of passive obedience, where one is not expected to question but only to conform to the never changing law and custom. It is Mill’s view that since the birth of Christianity morality (ii) has been superseded by (i) and, not surprisingly, his proposal will be to favor the latter and reverse or relieve, so to speak, the harmful effects of institutionalized Christianity. Ancient ethics functions as a model for modern morality. As those who are familiar with the etymology of the word may probably know, ethics derives from the Greek word êthos. The concept, according to Mill, has a twofold meaning (MILL, 1843: 54). On its collective aspect, êthos means the guiding principles and beliefs of a community. 4 On the individual level, it means an attitude opposed to blind obedience, a way of life, as it were, in which individuals breed an active relationship with their community precepts and “fashion themselves” (MILL, 1859: 26).

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