James Fitzjames Stephen is not a well-known name these days.
He was a 19th century English judge and author of a decent sized body of work. Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity was his magnum opus, and chapter 4 of that remarkably little known book has much to say about the state of political discussion in the early 21st century.
In a recent discussion of Mill’s On Liberty, I had occasion to note the mixed effects Mill’s argument is having on college campuses these days. On the one hand, there is that bracing call to freedom of thought and speech. On the other hand, the “harm principle” has been stretched beyond recognition to include all sorts of mental and emotional harm.
Stephen noted the problems of Mill’s arguments when Mill was making the argument. In the chapter “The Doctrine of Liberty in its Application to Morals,” Stephen argues that Mill’s argument is going to have extremely pernicious effects.
He begins by noting that this principle of Liberty can be used to defend all manner of things which most people find abhorrent and would happily ban from the society. Stephen’s particular example is quaint:
A number of persons form themselves into an association for the purpose of countenancing each other in the practice of seducing women, and giving the widest possible extension to the theory that adultery is a good thing. They carry out these objects by organizing a system for the publication and circulation of lascivious novels and pamphlets calculated to inflame the passions of the young and inexperienced.
Stephen thinks that would be a very bad thing. Stephen would be aghast at the combination of modern college fraternities and the internet.
But, we don’t have to think about that example. Consider necrophilia. Would you like to live in a society which had no prohibitions on that practice? It harms no other person, so Mill’s argument would seem to allow it. I trust that you, dear Reader, are not so inclined to permit it.
As a result, Stephen argues, Mill’s absolutist position on tolerance has a giant problem. We don’t necessarily want to tolerate everything:
Complete moral tolerance is possible only when men have become completely indifferent to each other—that is to say, when society is at an end. If, on the other hand, every struggle is treated as a war of extermination, society will come to an end in a shorter and more exciting manner, but not more decisively.
A healthy state of things will be a compromise between the two.
Ah, compromise. That is a lost art.
What happened to compromise? Why on a modern college campus does everyone seem to be at war all the time? Why does everyone treat every issue as a war of extermination? How did we go from the Academy being the center of disintegrated debate to ground zero in the spread of intolerance to All Who Dare to Disagree?
According to Stephen, it is Mill again. What happens when you raise up generation after generation who are indoctrinated with gospel of liberty?
Practically, the effect of the popularity of the commonplaces about liberty has been to raise in the minds of ordinary people a strong presumption against obeying anybody, and by a natural rebound to induce minds of another class to obey the first person who claims their obedience with sufficient emphasis and self-confidence. It has shattered to pieces most of the old forms in which discipline was a recognized and admitted good, and certainly it has not produced many new ones.
That could have been written today. First, we preach the doctrine of liberty, teaching every kid to “Just Do It,” to shake off the shackles of tradition, and to live your own life in your own way. Nothing is certain; there are no fixed points, things which we should do simply because that is the way things are done.
Then, people who have been raised to reject authority reach college and meet The Woke, that endlessly self-confident group who demand obedience to the Higher Cause. Many people looking for some fixed point in a rootless life are naturally attracted.
If Stephen is right here, then it raises a rather fascinating question. Is it possible to extol Liberty too much?
Until now, I have always thought of Liberty as one of those inherently good things, one of those things you teach your children to love. But, what if talking about Liberty in this way produces harm? What if talking about Liberty induces a rejection not just of totalitarian oppression, but also tradition? What if talking about Liberty as an abstract good leads directly to an embrace of second-rate totalitarians who promise even more freedom from oppression by joining in the war of extermination against all opponents.
The practical inference from this is that people who have the gift of using pathetic language ought not to glorify the word “liberty” as they do, but ought, as far as possible, to ask themselves before going into ecstasies over any particular case of it, Who is left at liberty to do what, and what is the restraint from which he is liberated? By forcing themselves to answer this question distinctly, they will give their poetry upon the subject a much more definite and useful turn than it has at present.
Part of me want to reject Stephen outright. Surely preaching Liberty does not lead directly to the guillotine, right?
Ok, obviously sometimes preaching liberty does lead to a reign of terror.
The question for the day: is it possible that Stephen is right that the Committee on Public Safety arises not because of a deficiency of support for liberty but because of an excess in belief in liberty? I have never thought of the question framed precisely this way. I am suddenly afraid the answer might be yes.
