Mill, and: John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 155 Professor Goldsmith is well read in the neo-Machiavellian and neo-Harringtonian literature of this Pocockian underworld; he is also an accurate guide through the tangled web of tract and pamphlet literature. The Tatlerscome into their own; Whig politics are redefined in a broader ideological context and the emergence of English commercial society is well traced. But at the end of this we are left with a doubt. Elsewhere Professor Goldsmith has said that Mandeville's views only relate elliptically to events of the period whilst in this work, he puzzles on the lack of applicability of much of Mandeville's thought to the issues of the day. Why then dwell on them so elaborately? No doubt the debate between those who treat the philosophy of history as a search for historical context and those who are more concerned with the intellectual status of a text will continue. A balance between these differing but not necessarily conflicting portraits of any particular writer must be found. But Professor Goldsmith's Mandeville would make a disappointingly parochial dinner guest: one would expect a more cosmopolitan wit than a man who merely engaged in tilting Bickerstaffian windmills. MALCOLMJACK London William Thomas. Mill. Past Masters. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Pp. 134. $13.95. John C. Rees. John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty." New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1985. Pp. xi + ~lo. $19.5o. In what is a most interesting and provocative book, William Thomas presents John Stuart Mill as the complete product of the famous system of education imposed on him by his father. Central to this system was a body of ideas (derived from Bentham and Ricardo, Locke and Hartley) welded into "a coherent social and political philosophy" by James Mill himself. It was this system of ideas that defined John's youthful beliefs and, according to Thomas, continued to determine his mature views. If he diverged from his inherited beliefs, it was only to make them "less dogmatic" and more palatable . Thomas remarks that when Mill corrected what he took to be inadequacies of the Utili~rian theory of ethics, he singled out Bentham for attack and not his father; and when he refused to follow Bentham in equating poetry with pushpin, it was to his father's version of the theory that he appealed. John Mill, then, is made out to be largely a (very good and efficient) developer and communicator of other people's ideas but not much of an original thinker. Thomas admits that occasionally Mill differed "from his father's views, in general terms and without naming him, but the overall theme is the same in the writings of father and son: that the ideal government would be one of philosophers earnestly engaged in educating and improving their fellow citizens" (1~4). However, this is not enough to support the claim that John's views changed only in detail and not in substance. For that to be the case one needs to show, for instance, that the central arguments deployed and positions canvassed in both Libertyand Utilitarianism,are still 156 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ~6:1 JANUARY 1988 faithful to the tenets of his father's philosophy. Thomas' attempt to do this is not always convincing. For example, he takes Mill's objection to censorship (in Liberty) on the grounds that it involves an assumption of infallibility to be a utilitarian argument: "... suppressing the [minority opinion] involves an assumption of infallibility which is harmful" (99-lOO, my italics). Presumably, this is meant to preserve the essential conformity with his father's beliefs. But in this argument Mill is not drawing our attention to the harmful effects of any actual assumption of infallibility. Rather he is making the logical point that we cannot claim to have any rational or good grounds for holding a belief to be true or false unless it is open to critical examination and passes the test of such scrutiny. With regard to Liberty again, Thomas takes Mill's celebrated plea for "the free development of individuality" to constitute a plea for the development of exceptionally qualified individuals, "those who had broken free of convention, the...