Liberalism, Autonomy and Stability
307
these truths for themselves, for only under these circumstances will these truths
retain their ‘vital effect on character and conduct’.68 It is reasonable to conclude
that Mill’s claim concerning the capacity to identify and evaluate truth is
independent of his claim that there may be objective truths to be discovered, and
that the former is of greater importance than the latter since it is this capacity
that defends the individual, and hence society at large, against the unwarranted
imposition of possibly erroneous truths. Despotic paternalism in the name of
objective truth would therefore be ruled out by this argument.
Secondly, Mill himself argues that in respect to society, politics, religion and
morals (those fields which Berlin refers to as ‘ideological’) ‘truth depends on
a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons’.69 ‘Truth’, on this
account, is always in question for it is always possible that a stronger argument
will overturn what we at present take to be truth. Recognizing this should
properly breed a suspicion towards the claims of any one person or group to
know once and for all what is ‘truly’ in the interests of everyone else. The
consequence of Mill’s position here, as Berlin himself recognises, is that in the
ideological fields there can be ‘no single, universally visible, truth’ applicable
to all human beings.70
Berlin also recognizes the role that personal experience plays in Mill’s
argument.71 This is important in defending Mill because it shows that he does
not place us under the despotism of reason at the expense of the affections. Mill
himself exemplifies this. In his response to his mental crisis and against the
excessive rationality of the Benthamite creed, ‘the cultivation of the feelings
became one of the cardinal points’ of his work.72 Reason is important, but it is
not everything and a life of reason alone would be one-sided.73 Thus Mill rejects
the Kantian notion of autonomy as duty in accordance with an abstract and
putatively rational moral law and does not, as Kant did, equate autonomy with
rationality. Raz, like Mill, is also careful to point out that persons who have
personal autonomy ‘are not merely rational agents’, nor does the autonomous
life ‘necessitate any high degree of self-awareness or rationality’.74
Johnston sees in personal autonomy a requirement that individuals constantly
subject their lives to critical appraisal, and quite rightly objects to this on the
68
Mill, ‘On Liberty’, p. 112.
Mill, ‘On Liberty’, p. 96.
Isaiah Berlin, ‘John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life’ (1959), reprinted in Berlin, Four Essays
69
70
on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 173–206, at p. 188.
71
Berlin, ‘John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life’, p. 188.
John Stuart Mill, ‘Autobiography’ (1873), in John M. Robson and Jack Stillinger, eds, The
72
Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Vol.1 (Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press and
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 1–290, at p. 147.
73
Mill implies this in ‘Utilitarianism’ (1862), where judging between higher and lower pleasures
requires that one has experienced both kinds (Acton, ed., Utilitarianism, On Liberty, and
Considerations on Representative Government, pp. 1–61, at pp. 8–9).
74
Raz, The Morality of Freedom, pp. 154, 381; see also Raz’s ‘The Duties of Well-Being’,
in Joseph Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 3–28, at
p. 5.