The Enigmatic Nature of J. S. Mill’s Classical Liberalism and Utilitarianism

Abstract

John Stuart Mill, a British political philosopher of the 19^th century, got extremely rigorous upbringing with his education greatly influenced by Jeremy Bentham, the English utilitarian. His father wanted to build a brilliant intellect that would support the cause of utilitarianism. Mill established the character of English liberalism and in so doing established himself as England’s greatest classical liberal. Mill is honored as the father of liberalism, and his writings are consulted as indispensable for the understanding of moral and political issues surrounding the defense of individual liberty. He justifies individual freedom against the unlimited state control and is the supporter of utilitarianism, but his concept of it is very different from Bentham's utilitarianism. Mill is mainly concerned with the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual and supports each individual’s right to act as he wants, so long as the action does not harm others. This paper attempts to describe and evaluated the concept of liberty as enunciated by J. S. Mill. It also looks in to his views on utilitarianism and how he has modified the Benthamite utilitarianism into his own model. The paper also shows Mill’s enigmatic nature of supporting sometimes one type of liberty (negative liberty) while sometimes other type (positive liberty), and similarly proposes one kind of liberty for one class and another kind for another class. The paper is mainly a qualitative study of Mill’s philosophy with descriptive framework and is based on secondary data.