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When Experiments in Living Go Awry
Swan, Kyle
Swan, Kyle
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What reactions are legitimate when someone is pursuing an experiment in living that has, in your considered view, gone awry? Most people believe that not every opinion or mode of living is as good or valuable as any other. This includes J.S. Mill: There is a degree of folly, and a degree of what may be called (though the phrase is not unobjectionable) lowness or deprivation of taste, which, though it cannot justify doing harm to the person who manifests it, renders him necessarily and properly a subject of distaste, or, in extreme cases, even of contempt: a person could not have the opposite qualities in due strength without entertaining these feelings.[1] Mill thought that such judgments can be legitimate, even in cases where the action is purely self-regarding, but he nonetheless demanded toleration in these instances. He opposed interfering except when necessary to prevent harm to others. This is very familiar. But a generally less remarked feature of On Liberty is its thoroughgoing opposition to socially-imposed conformism of all sorts. Mill never mentioned "autonomy" in the book, but his paeans to individuality foreshadow much of the current concern with individual autonomy.[2] The liberty Mill recommended certainly includes the noninterference of classical liberalism, but also at least hints at what lies beyond it. It seems to implicate a good deal of what becomes known later in nineteenth century philosophy as "positive liberty" or "self- realization."[3] This essay discusses how the way Mill expressed his concern over the cultivation of individuality places some stress on the harm principle and on the permissibility of making the sort of judgments about another person that seem fairly natural to make when someone is pursuing an experiment in living that has gone considerably awry. It is surprisingly difficult to provide a representation of Mill's view about such cases in a way that accommodates everything that Mill seems to commit himself to: the harm principle; antipathy towards conformism; and the permissibility of making some very negative appraisals of certain modes of living.
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2007
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With permission of the license/copyright holder