Alison Jaggar treats liberalism in her 1983 book Feminist Politics and Human Nature as, at worst, “an enemy of women’s progress” (Nussbaum 56) and at best as something that in its present state is incompatible with feminist ideals. But liberalism is a large philosophical tent, and what may be an entirely valid criticism of one branch of liberalism is not necessarily applicable to another branch, with this being doubly true from author to author. In particular, Jaggar’s criticisms when applied to the text of On Liberty by John Stuart Mill range wildly in their accuracy, with some not even applying to Mill’s ideas and others legitimately challenging them, with at least one making his idea seem infeasible.
Jaggar’s various disagreements with liberal theory begin at its foundation. Social contract theories, which are often the basis for broader liberal theories like those of Rousseau and Locke, generally involve many initially autonomous individuals coming together to form a society through a mutual agreement. All of these people, it is assumed, were rational enough to create and then agree to this arrangement. Jaggar here, as she does several times, disagrees on the grounds of biology. “The assumption of individual self-sufficiency is impossible” (Jaggar 41), she notes, when one considers infancy and other times in human life which necessitate interdependence. Even what we would consider to be healthy adults today are not entirely independent, in that they still rely on others for some aspects of their livelihood. This all runs counter to the idea of the egoistic, self-interested, self-sufficient individual, which is generally how social contract theories describe the progenitors of society. Jaggar instead proposes a model of humans in which we all fall naturally into communities. This more optimistic model does not regard behaviors such as familial compassion and caring as irrational, instead putting conflict out as an irrational behavior. Her criticisms here are similar to those she levels at the liberal concept of rationality: liberals believe that the “efficient maximization of individual utility” (Jaggar 45) is the rational course of action, which, to Jaggar, is something often inconsistent with the behavior of a great number of women over the course of human history.
This critique is not an entirely valid one in regard to the ideas of John Stuart Mill. Early in the text of On Liberty, Mill defines liberty by breaking it into three main categories. The third of these is the liberty to unify with like-minded people – that is, that the liberties enjoyed by one person “follows the liberty, within the same limits, of combination among individuals” (Mill 12). This does, roughly, imply that Mill saw some value in communal liberty, and not just liberty as an individual trait. In fact, some of Mill’s most important points are completely incompatible with the idea of self-sufficiency. Consider how highly he values the exchange of ideas: to him, man “is capable of rectifying his mistakes by discussion and experience. Not by experience alone. There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted” (Mill 19). Discussion in any real sense is something effectively impossible without others. Alone, this point itself does not make his ideas entirely incompatible with the idea of self-sufficiency, as self-sufficiency can be achieved with other people around, so long as one has no reliance on them. In such an arrangement, which is likely non-communal, discussion would probably occur sporadically. There is the implication, however, that Mill wants there to be constant discussion of ideas. This is shown through in one passage where he responds to the arguments of a so-called enemy of free discussion, one who would advocate that so long as people exist who are able to refute wrong ideas fully it is alright if most are satisfied with the result of the discourse. Mill disagrees whole-heartedly with this, instead insisting that in such a case “not only the grounds of the opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the meaning of the opinion itself” (Mill 37). How else can there be a full, constant stream of discourse, though, without there being community? Realistically self-sufficient individuals, if there is such a thing, would not all keep returning to the same spot to debate each other. Either Mill is not an advocate of full self-sufficiency for all, then, or his stance on discussion is inherently impractical. Giving Mill the benefit of the doubt and believing the former would mean that he agrees with Jaggar’s stance regarding the impossibility of self-sufficiency.
Jaggar goes on to enumerate several criticisms of what she believes to be particular ideas of liberalism. The first of these is liberalism’s disregard of the physical body as factor in, among other things, political theory. They do this through a belief in what she terms as normative dualism. This states, briefly, that each individual is not a single entity, but instead both a body and mind which exist separately. To liberals, only the mind, and more specifically the mind’s capacity to reason, matters in a political or moral argument. This leads to liberal theory more or less completely ignoring all physical qualities, meaning, as Jaggar puts it, that “liberals view human beings as essentially rational agents and deny that the physical basis of the capacity to reason, if there is one, is part of the human essence” (Jaggar 37). Jaggar claims that this sort of thinking encourages two problematic modes of thought: political solipsism, and political skepticism. The former is problematic because it implies that individuals “are separate from if not in opposition to” others (Jaggar 40), and leads to the style of thinking detailed above wherein conflict is rational. The latter, a familiar tenet of liberalism which claims that the state should not endorse any particular lifestyle or life choice, is problematic because there are, in fact, biological methods for determining the “best” lifestyle in several cases.
To Mill, the only limitations on the freedom to choose one’s own lifestyle, and thus the only thing that the state should have an active role in stopping anyone from doing, is causing harm to others. This, by the way, could serve as a weak argument in favor of Mill valuing more than just the mind: because the harm principle presumably applies to bodily harm, it stands to reason that Mill thought the body mattered in some way. In any case, this particular belief of Mill makes Jaggar’s accusation of political skepticism more or less spot-on here. Mill is not only against the enforcement of a “correct” idea, but also against the censorship of known incorrect ones out of a fear that censoring false opinions kills debate on a subject. To him, that leads to the diminishment of its truth: “Instead of a vivid conception and a living belief, there remain only a few phrases retained by rote; or, if any part, the shell and husk only of the meaning is retained, the finer essence being lost” (Mill 38). But while it is absolutely correct to label Mill as a political skeptic, this is by no means something that proves a flaw in his theory. It is merely a debatable point: Jaggar would be in favor of the government forbidding the drinking of bleach, while Mill would be vehemently opposed to that on the grounds that there needs to an understanding of why not to drink bleach instead of just dogmatic acceptance.
Returning to Jaggar, the second of her enumerated criticisms is based around the idea of abstract individualism. Liberals, she says, believe it is best not to determine what is best for any particular individual, but instead to think of what is good for the person “in abstract” – one where the individual’s race, time period, gender, and similar qualities are unknown. The problem with this sort of thinking, contends Jaggar, is that no such person could ever exist that is so undefined, that a person undefined by this traits would in fact have no wants or desires at all, and thus that “the principles of good social organization cannot be timeless or universal” (Jaggar 44). A better mode of thinking would be a much closer one, one that does indeed consider the social context of the individuals so as to best fulfill the interests of each. This again is probably not something that applies to Mill, who advocates no such blanketing policies. With that said, Mill does believe that everyone should decide for themselves their path in life. If one wishes, he or she could interpret that as Mill thinking abstractly though the belief that choosing one’s own path is best for the abstract individual. This would run counter to Jaggar’s theories if it turned out that in some way choosing one’s own path is not best for someone or some particular subset of people.
Next Jaggar critiques the liberal notion of rationality. Some of the criticisms of this were covered earlier in the discussion of her thoughts on the foundations of liberalism; however, there is a bit more to cover. Jaggar says that to liberals, autonomy is an important component of freedom. Ideally, everyone makes his or her own decisions with the freedom to decide what is best for his or herself unpressured by society. Mill, while not believing in a self-sufficient individual, does very much believe in this. So here, Jaggar’s concepts of liberal beliefs do match Mill’s stated ones. Because of this, the two major critiques of this mode of thinking apply to Mill. The first, as partially covered earlier, is that this assumes that every individual is born with innate qualities that determine what is “best” for the person regardless of what is available from society. If this was true, though, why does society always seem to produce the types of people it needs? Should not the proportions of lawyers to farmers to sailors remain constant throughout time, if it is a born quality and there has been no great shift in the gene pool? One possible rebuke to this criticism is that there has in fact been no change, and that society coerces people into positions that are not their natural ones in order to fill its current needs.
Jagger anticipates this response, and it leads into the other of the two major critiques. Socially constructed roles will mean that people who think they are happy are in fact relatively unhappy compared to what they could be, and thus what one thinks as a want cannot be taken at face value as something autonomously derived. The problem with this is that there is no way of knowing whether a desire is a natural one that was always present in the person or one societally imposed. Jaggar says this in so many words by noting that all attempts to distinguish between the two “are not easily reconciled with with the instrumentalist strand within the liberal concept of rationality” (Jaggar 44), thus presumably making them unusable in liberal theory. That would mean that there is no way of knowing whether one is truly satisfied or just fooled into satisfaction by societal coercion. Further, it makes it impossible to know whether one is actually following one’s own desires or those imposed by society. That makes Mill’s theory of choosing one’s own path infeasible, and makes this the most legitimate of Jaggar’s critiques.
Jaggar is off the mark regarding Mill when it comes to a few points, namely that liberals believe in a self-sufficient individual while Mill clearly does not. Other points of hers, namely her accusation of Mill as a political skeptic, are entirely valid, but do not expose a flaw in his theory so much as provide another perspective. However, if it is true that imposed wants cannot be easily distinguished from autonomous wants, it would mean that no one can ever be sure that what he or she is doing is truly maximizing happiness. This, as the very least, makes the component of Mill’s philosophy which attempts to promote choosing one’s own path infeasible.
Work Cited
Jaggar, Alison. Feminist Politics and Human Nature. Harvester Press: Sussex, 1983. Print.
Mill, J.S. On Liberty. Ed. Elizabeth Rapaport. Hackett: Indianapolis, 1978. Print.
Nussbaum, Martha Craven. Sex & Social Justice. Oxford University Press: New York, 1999. Print.