Freedom of the Individual

Bruce Bassi
March 29, 2004

John Stuart Mill addresses criticism of his own theory on the freedom of the individual over society in chapter four of his book On Liberty and Utilitarianism. His theory is that the individual is entitled to unlimited rights as long as others are not harmed. The problem is balancing the maximum possible freedom with the least infringement on others. It is a right of every individual to exercise his or her interests to the fullest extent, granted it does not harm society. Mill first defines how individuals affect each other and the punishment that should accompany certain actions. Mill then proposes that one might object to this argument by saying that people who hurt no one but themselves are dragging down society, serve as bad examples to all and are acting like children. Mill’s response is that it is society’s fault for allowing these people to act that way in the first place, and in the second place it is society’s duty to deal with these problems by teaching future generations, not by prosecuting the individuals who hurt no one but themselves. One way of teaching the future generations is by negative reinforcement, where the children look down upon the bad examples, so it is actually good to have those examples around. If society is unable to teach children how to grow up into harmless adults, then it is society’s obligation to deal with these problems without compromising the freedom of others.

The difficulty of having nearly unlimited freedom is that it is impossible not to affect others. As part of living in a society, one owes a certain obligation back to society, be it an occupation or moral duty to certain family members. When one becomes unable to fulfill one’s original role, maybe through overindulgence in extravagance, then one is condemned and possibly punished for not fulfilling these duties, not because of the overindulgence. Whoever fails in considering others’ interests is subject to punishment for that failure, not for the cause of it or for the mischief done to himself. Therefore, whenever there is damage to others or to the public, the situation should be handled appropriately with the law. If an individual neither violates any duty nor hurts any other individuals except himself, then that individual should not be punished but instead considered a constructive injury to society.

Indeed it is inconvenient for society to allow people who harm themselves to continue doing so, but society can manage these inconveniences for long term improvement. If society decides to punish these people, it would be better if it were for their own good rather than for protecting the public from them, which it does not have the right to do. Society has no right to wait until its members act less rationally than the societal norm to legally punish them. Since society has authority over everyone since childhood, it is its duty to train them to act rationally from the beginning. The current generation of adults is always assumed to have flaws, but can still train the future generation of children. The next generation cannot be perfect either (because something that is flawed cannot adequately teach another how to be perfect) but they can be an improvement. Those persons who inflict harm on themselves may actually be helping society improve.

There would be no such idea of improvement if it were not for the existence of bad. The bad serve as a baseline for comparison and without them good behavior would just be behavior. Therefore having bad behavior around is necessary to identify and promote good behavior. Every bad action contributes to the credibility in which a moral truth is regarded as accepted. When a moral truth is accepted in an objective sense, the issue at hand should be always accepted as true regardless of what society may collectively think is correct. Teaching the future generations not to commit these follies requires the bad examples to be noted and avoided. Malevolent behavior, either inflicting self-harm or societal harm, in fact does serve as a bad example—and this should be stressed—it is a bad example and should not be repeated. It is society’s fault if children grow up to mimic the bad examples. If children want to repeat what has for generations ruined people’s lives, a society deserves to have the problem and having that problem will bring to everybody’s attention that something is wrong. Children need guidance from what is right and wrong because they might not know any better. Children should be treated like children while they are children, not while they are adults. Even though one might claim that adults who harm themselves are acting like children, the relationship does not hold.

Society is to blame for the consequences if its members are allowed to grow up like children—unable to fathom rational, long-term motives. Adults are, by definition, not children and cannot be treated as such. Adults who are consciously aware of two choices and decide to choose the self-inflicting path should not be reprimanded by society like an adult reprimands his or her child. Adults will not respond to punishment like children do; adults will rebel against society’s guiding hand because they feel they should have total control over their lives. Society is not meant to coercively change adult behavior, but only has the right to inform them that their behavior should be changed. As long as they are not harming anyone, the state has no right to control them. If adults need to be told what is right from wrong, then society did not do its job teaching its children. Having the bad examples is just one cost of liberty but society cannot by any means stifle individuality.

The complexity of modern society obscures superficial problems and the actual cause of the problem. Punishing a certain problem might not be fixing the cause, but might be just providing a temporary fix. Those people who seem to be dragging down society by setting bad examples could possibly be harming other people and should be punished for that. But the problem is deeper than that; it lies in how these people were raised and the lessons learned from the past bad examples. The current generation is indebted to teach the upcoming generation what is best and how to be better. Too many bad examples prove that society is not teaching its children well enough. Society needs to know its role in teaching children and the difference between teaching children and punishing adults. Punishing adults who committed an isolated crime, a crime only affecting themselves, is wrong and the adult will not learn from the punishment itself but rather from the realization that their mistake was a mistake. Ideally the future generations will get better, but then there will be nothing but the past to compare the good.