Mill’s Progressive Principles by David O. Brink (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mill’s Progressive Principles by David O. Brink Andrew J. Pyle David O. Brink. Mill’s Progressive Principles. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xx + 307. Cloth, $55.00. “I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.” This volume, described by the author as a “progress report” on his twenty five years of thinking about Mill’s moral and political philosophy, takes the form of an extended commentary on this famous passage from On Liberty, which Brink clearly—and rightly—regards as providing the key to much that is otherwise puzzling in Mill’s writings. The notion of men and women as “progressive beings” informs Mill’s moral and political philosophy in many respects, and provides him with at least the beginnings of defensible replies to the standard objections levelled against him. These objections concern his distinction between higher and lower pleasures, his putative proof of the principle of utility, and the compatibility of his liberal politics with his utilitarian ethics. Critics have argued that the higher/lower pleasures distinction is incompatible with hedonism; that the alleged proof of utilitarianism commits two first-year logic howlers in quick succession; and that utilitarian ethical principles can be used to support paternalist authoritarianism. Brink clearly regards these common objections as based on misunderstandings, and provides us with an account of how Mill could have responded to them. Regarding higher and lower pleasures, Mill can be read as departing from classical hedonism, which conceives pleasures as subjective states. In opposition to this we have the objective conception of pleasures as activities of certain kinds, notably exercises of our powers. If we align ourselves with Aristotle against Epicurus and Bentham, and think of pleasures as objective, we can think of the autonomous exercise of our rational natures as in part constitutive of our higher pleasures. This makes sense of “better Socrates dissatisfied,” and gives Mill a principled reply to the objection that utilitarian ethics can support authoritarian governments. Even if the authoritarian regime can amply provide the lower pleasures in the form of bread and circuses, it is only a liberal government that actively encourages its citizens to participate in public debate. As for the supposed howlers of the supposed proof of utilitarianism, Brink offers us an alternative reading which starts with the assumption that morality involves an impartial point of view, and then offers us the utilitarian formula as the best way of understanding this impartiality. The work is an admirable example of the analytical approach to the history of philosophy, but might have benefitted, philosophically, from a little closer attention to context. Chapter 2 discusses “Varieties of Motivation,” and the problems faced by utilitarians in reconciling their account of human motivation with their moral theory. Are humans narrowly egoistic? If so, politics reduces to social engineering. Or are we capable of a wider and more generous egoism, coming to take pleasure in the pleasures of others, in which case the problem is one of education and culture? Or are humans capable of fully altruistic action? Rousseau falls here into his notorious chicken-and-egg problem: only the right sort of individuals can establish the democratic state, but it takes a properly democratic state [End Page 853] to educate men and women in the virtues of citizenship. Bentham accepts the Hobbesian picture of individuals driven inevitably by their own pleasures and pains, and reduces politics to social engineering. Godwin argues that human perfectibility will lead us in the end to love everyone’s pleasure indifferently and impartially. Mill’s vacillation and uncertainty on this point is perfectly principled. He tells us clearly in Book 5 of the Logic that ethology, the science of the development of character, is as yet in its infancy. We simply do not know whether the best way of promoting the general good is by means of external sanctions, Rousseau-style emotional education in fraternity, or philosophical arguments in favor of an impersonal love of the good as such, without distinction of mine and thine. Another point at which closer attention to context might...