[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

so, in what form (i.e., law or stigma). The answers to those questions, he makes
clear, depend on further utilitarian calculations, which he seems content to
leave to informed majority opinion in any given social context, about rules of
reasonable other-regarding behaviour. But, clearly, it may sometimes be generally
expedient for society to forego coercion and adopt a policy of laissez-faire.
Thus, necessary and sufficient conditions for utilitarian coercion are that the
act to be prohibited must harm others in the relevant sense, and that the social
benefits of interfering with the act (including the harms prevented) outweigh
the costs of interference (including the harms created by it, as well as the
191
GENERAL I SSUES
resources consumed in drafting and implementing the relevant rules). In short,
it must be generally expedient to establish and enforce social rules to govern
when (if ever) the harmful other-regarding act may be performed, and under
what conditions (if any) the perceptible injuries which it causes to others
against their wishes will be permitted.
Nobody has demonstrated that Mill is wrong about any of this. I have
argued as well, when interpreting his text, that he does not abandon his self
other distinction in his practical illustrations of his liberty principle (see above,
Chapter 6). But what of the influential charge, levelled by such eminent
philosophers as Hart (1963), Ten (1980) and Feinberg (1984 8), that Mill s
doctrine, inaptly renamed the harm principle (i.e., the principle that liberty
ought to be interfered with to prevent harm to others), is simplistic, even if it
can be saved in some form, and requires to be supplemented by other principles?1
Not simplistic but radical
It is incumbent on those who object that Mill s doctrine is naive or crude to
explain clearly why their negative conclusion is inescapable, given his idea of
harm (rather than some revisionist notion of their own). Part of the problem
with the objection is that it seems to be tied up with a fatally flawed revisionist
reading of the doctrine. In general, the revisionists apparently labour under the
misimpression that his purpose is to give us a complete picture of where the
individual ought to be free from coercion by law or stigma. The answer to that
question for Mill must be: wherever coercion is not generally expedient. But we
know that he thinks coercion is not always expedient even within the other-
regarding realm, the sole realm where it can be legitimately employed for the
prevention of harm to others.
A liberal utilitarian society may choose to distribute and enforce many
sorts of legal or customary rights other than a right to complete liberty of self-
regarding conduct, including property rights, voting rights, rights to due process
and so on. In that case, the social rules of other-regarding conduct identify and
protect some (subsets or pockets of) other-regarding acts, among which the
right-holder can choose without fear of coercion.
192
THE LI BERTY DOCTRI NE I N PRACTI CE
In addition, society may prudently choose not to regulate by law or
custom many acts conducted without force or fraud, including those in a
reasonably competitive market, after judging that the social benefits of laissez-
faire outweigh the harms which successful competitors cause to others. Thus,
some people will properly enjoy some freedom to choose as they wish, outside
the self-regarding realm.
But Mill s aim in his essay is not to delineate for us everywhere the
individual ought to be free from coercion. He is not trying to give a complete
statement of the necessary and sufficient conditions for justified coercion.
Rather, his aim is to focus our attention on the self-regarding realm where the
individual ought to have a right to absolute liberty. That an act is self-regarding,
in the sense that it directly causes no perceptible damage to other people
against their wishes, is said to be sufficient  but not necessary  to render
coercion illegitimate. The individual has a moral right to choose among self-
regarding acts as he pleases. Coercion is never justified against him. Thus, an
irreducible core of liberty ought to be recognized and protected by every civil
society, he insists, to promote the cultivation of individuality.
Even if it can be separated from the flawed revisionist reading of Mill s
purpose, the charge of oversimplification generally seems to be conflated with
a different charge, namely, the liberty principle is radical and  extreme .2 It is [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]