John Stuart Mill and character development

Written by me, here is a passage from GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of All Time, and Why Should We Care?

Mill’s central contribution was having produced a tripartite defense of a free society, based on the ideas of character development and also consilience, the latter meaning that alternative perspectives brought together may point in a broadly similar normative direction and thus legitimize that direction. Mill was a believer in liberty, as outlined in his classic On Liberty; Mill was a believer in utilitarianism, as outlined in his Utilitarianism; finally, Mill was what I call a “civilizationist,” as reflected in his corpus of writings generally but presented most specifically in his 1836 essay “Civilization.” A civilizationist, quite simply, is one who believes that the carrying on and extension of civilization is a fundamental value.

Mill understood well that the perspectives of liberty, utility, and civilization do not always coincide, and there is a large academic “cottage industry” finding supposed contradictions and tensions in Mill’s work. For instance, why are there so many exceptions to the liberty principle in On Liberty? How should we proceed when liberty and utility clash? The tensions are real, but Mill had a means of resolving them. Insofar as individuals engage in sufficiently sophisticated character development, these differing perspectives all would tend to converge. Character development would make the case for liberty stronger as progress continued, and it would make utilitarian standards more coincident with the general elevation of mankind, as what people wanted, and what made them happy, would coincide more directly with beneficial and virtuous outcomes. Finally, character development would make civilization more sustainable and also more beneficial.

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