Rawls J. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

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siderations, such as the historical and social conditions of the modern

world and its tendencies for change, those principles identify the four per-

manent interests of human beings.

This leaves us with the problem of explaining how Mill’s frequent refer-

ences to perfectionist values are to be understood. This question I leave to

the end, when his whole view is before us.

§3. The First Two Permanent Interests of Humankind

1. So we now ask: how are we to understand the sense in which these

interests are permanent? In what way are they tied to the idea that a human

being is a progressive being? Mill does not discuss these questions so we

must ﬁgure them out.

I assume that the idea of humankind as a progressive being implies the

possibility of a more or less continual improvement in human civilization,

arriving ﬁnally at the normal and natural state of society as one of full

equality described in Utilitarianism, III: ¶¶10–11. In this state, society fully

answers to Mill’s principles of equal basic justice and liberty. So for Mill

progress is an advance over time to, or in the direction of, the practically

best, though normal and natural, state of society.

Now, for progress to be possible, certain necessary conditions must ob-

tain. So following Utilitarianism, Chapter V, let’s say that one of the perma-

nent interests is the interest in being guaranteed the basic moral rights of

equal justice. This means that the interest we have in society, through its

laws and institutions, and its common moral opinion, is an interest in its se-

curing for us “the essentials of our well-being” and “making safe for us the

very groundwork of our existence” (V: ¶32, ¶25).

Next consider the permanent interests that arise from the idea of man

as a progressive being. There seem to be two conditions any such interest

must meet:

(i) An interest in the social conditions that are necessary for the contin-

ual progress or advance of civilization until the practically best state of soci-

ety (morally speaking) is reached.

(ii) An interest in social conditions that themselves are conditions of the

best state itself and required for its operation. These conditions are neces-

sary if it is to remain the best state.

The permanent interests are, then, permanent in two ways. They are

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permanent as interests in the necessary conditions of continual progress to

the best and also natural state of society; they are also permanent as inter-

ests in the conditions required to remain in that best state, once it is

reached. Implicit in Mill’s idea of the best state of society is the idea that

such a society best realizes our nature as social beings. It most fully calls

forth and exercises our higher faculties and satisﬁes our most important

wants and aspirations, all this in ways consistent with the basic rights of

equal justice and the legitimate interests of others. On this last, see On Lib-

erty, III: ¶9.

To sum up: the ﬁrst permanent interest is that in the basic rights of

equal justice: it is an interest in conditions necessary for continual progress

to the best state of society as a state of equality, as well as necessary to re-

main that state once reached.

2. From On Liberty, II we can, I think, identify a second permanent inter-

est. Recall that this chapter discusses the liberties protecting the inward do-

main of consciousness, as Mill calls it. These liberties are liberty of con-

science, freedom of thought and feeling, and absolute freedom of opinion

and sentiment on all subjects, practical and speculative, scientiﬁc, moral,

and theological.

Mill is concerned here with belief and discussion concerning general

doctrines in religion and philosophy, morals and science, and all general po-

litical and social questions and matters of policy. He is not talking about

speech as incitement likely to disrupt the peace or to arouse a crowd to vio-

lence; or about speech revealing troop movements in time of war, and

many other such cases. He mentions this kind of case in On Liberty, III: ¶1,

and grants that such speech can be restricted (footnote to II: ¶1).

Thus the second permanent interest is one in the social conditions relat-

ing to law, institutions, and the public attitudes that guarantee freedom of

thought and liberty of conscience. Mill’s argument in On Liberty, II is that

these conditions are necessary for the discovery of truth on all subjects.

Moreover, he also supposes that we have a permanent interest in knowing

the truth. He doesn’t entertain the dark thought that one ﬁnds in Russian

novelists such as Dostoyevsky: witness Ivan’s tale of the Grand Inquisitor in

the Brothers Karamazov, that knowing the truth would be horrible, making

us disconsolate and ready to support a dictatorial regime to preserve our

comforting and necessary illusions. St. Augustine and Dostoyevsky are the

two dark minds in Western thought, and the former has shaped it pro-

foundly.

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3. Mill’s much-criticized argument from infallibility in II: ¶¶3–11 makes

these points, and it can be set out roughly as follows: When society,

through its laws and institutions, forbids the discussion of certain general

doctrines, it implicitly assumes that the truth about those matters is already

known with certainty. Put another way: it supposes that there is no possibil-

ity that accepted doctrines are not true and fully correct, that is, infallible.

Why does Mill say this?

I surmise his argument rests on these premises:

(a) Knowing the truth about general doctrines is always beneﬁcial: it is a

great good, at least when the general doctrines are signiﬁcant.

(b) Free discussion of these doctrines is a necessary condition for the

correction of errors.

tional assurance that the general doctrines we believe are correct. Beyond

this,

(d) Free discussion is a necessary condition for a full and proper under-

standing and appreciation of our own beliefs, and in that way making them

our own. See On Liberty, III: ¶¶2–8.

(e) Existing society is in a state that allows it to learn from and to ad-

vance by free discussion of general doctrines.

With all these assumptions, Mill holds that for society to silence general

discussion is irrational, unless it views itself as infallible: that is, unless soci-

ety sees itself as already possessing the truth and supposes there is no possi-

bility that it is mistaken. His argument assumes this conclusion to be a re-

ductio: all reject it. For if society thinks it may not already possess the truth,

or that there is indeed some real possibility that it is mistaken, or may fail to

appreciate some aspect of the truth, then it jeopardizes without reason one

of the permanent interests of human beings as progressive. This is our in-

terest in knowing the truth and also in maintaining the necessary condi-

tions of discovering and appreciating it on all signiﬁcant matters.

§4. Two Other Permanent Interests

1. We now take up two further permanent interests. The ﬁrst of these

we can connect with the liberties Mill discusses in On Liberty, Chapter III,

which are:

Liberty of tastes and pursuits; and the liberty of framing our mode of

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life to suit our character without restraint, so long as we do not injure the

legitimate interests of others protected by the equal rights of justice and

the precepts of right and wrong. In those ways we are at liberty even

though others may ﬁnd our mode of life foolish and imprudent, in no way

admirable and even contemptible. Along with these liberties goes that of

freedom of association to make them effective.

Let’s call the interest in a ﬁrm guarantee of these liberties the perma-

nent interest in the conditions of individuality, understanding that this in-

cludes individuality in association with other like-minded people. Now in

III: ¶¶10–19 Mill argues that these liberties are an essential condition for the

progress of civilization. In III: ¶17 he says that “the only unfailing and per-

manent source of improvement is liberty itself.” So this permanent interest,

along with the permanent interest in freedom of thought and liberty of

conscience, is an interest we have as progressive beings.

Of course these liberties are essential not only now, but also in the best

state of society once reached. They are fundamental for Mill in a less obvi-

ous way, which can be put thus: only where these liberties are fully re-

spected can the decided preference criterion be properly applied. The sig-

niﬁcance of this is hard to exaggerate: it amounts to saying that only under

conditions of free institutions can people acquire sufﬁcient self-understand-

ing to know, or make reasonable decisions about, what mode of life offers

them the best chance of happiness (in Mill’s sense). I shall come back to this

basic point in a moment.

2. Finally, we come to a fourth and last permanent interest. This perma-

nent interest I connect with Mill’s belief (stated in Utilitarianism, III: ¶¶8–

11) that the normal state of society, the state fully adapted to our deepest

nature, is a society in which the equal rights of justice and liberty (surveyed

above) are ﬁrmly guaranteed.

In this normal (and natural) state of society it is impossible to associate

with others except on the condition that the interests of all are to be consid-

ered equally. This state in turn gives rise to the desire, which Mill views as

natural to us, to live in unity with others. This offhand unclear phrase he

explains as meaning the desire not to beneﬁt from any social condition un-

less others are also included in its beneﬁts. We have a principle of reciproc-

ity. Utilitarianism, III: ¶10: “In an improving state of the human mind, the

inﬂuences are constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in each in-

dividual a feeling of unity with all the rest; which feeling, if perfect, would

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make him never think of, or desire, any beneﬁcial condition for himself, in

the beneﬁts of which they are not included.”

So our fourth permanent interest is our interest in the social conditions

and institutions that specify the natural state of society as a state of equal-

ity, and make this state one of possible steady equilibrium.

3. To sum up: the four permanent interests are these:

(a) First, the permanent interest in the institutions that guarantee the

basic rights of equal justice (as these are discussed in Utilitarianism, V).

These rights protect the “essentials of our well-being” and “make safe for

us the very groundwork of our existence,” and they are necessary for prog-

ress. This interest we have in all stages of civilization.

(b) Second, the permanent interest in the free institutions and in public

attitudes of moral opinion that afﬁrm freedom of thought and liberty of

conscience. These institutions and attitudes are necessary for progress to

the natural state of society as one of equality, as well as necessary to main-

tain that state.

tudes that allow for individuality, and so protect and encourage the liberty

of tastes and our choice of a mode of life suitable to our character, all of

which enables us to make our mode of life our own. And paired with this,

freedom of association to give individuality effect.

(d) Fourth, the permanent interest in just and free institutions and the

attitudes required to realize the natural and normal state of society as a

state of equality.

§5. Relation to the Decided Preference Criterion

1. This completes our survey of four permanent interests of man as a

progressive being. I don’t claim that the survey is complete; there may be

other permanent interests in Mill’s view, and admittedly the distinctions

drawn are somewhat artiﬁcial. But they are useful, I think, in setting out

how his doctrine ﬁts together.

Mill wants to hold, as I have said, that once we adopt his conception of

utility (Utilitarianism, II: 3–10), then his principles of justice and of liberty,

complemented by common moral opinion that endorses those principles,

specify the political and social order most effective in fulﬁlling our perma-

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nent interests. Given the conditions of the modern world and the principles

of human psychology, there is no better way to arrange political and social

institutions. But why, on Mill’s assumptions, should this be true? How does

he see the details?

2. Crucial to Mill’s entire doctrine is the idea that only under just and

free social arrangements can the decided preference criterion be properly

applied. Keep in mind that this criterion involves making a judgment that

one pleasure, or activity, is higher than another in terms of quality and

more appropriate (and in this sense better) for a being with the higher fac-

ulties. This latter makes the connection with the principle of dignity. This

has the striking consequence that in the absence of just and free arrange-

ments, there is simply no way for society to acquire the speciﬁc knowledge

and information it would need to maximize utility in Mill’s sense. And this

for two reasons:

(i) First, it is only under those institutions that individuals, either singly

or together with others, can educate and develop their faculties in ways that

best suit their character and inclination. Thus those institutions are needed

for us to know which activities would be endorsed by people’s decided pref-

erences. And:

(ii) Second, there is no central agency in society—no central informa-

tion ofﬁce or planning board—that could possess the information required

to maximize utility and therefore could know what more speciﬁc and de-

tailed laws and regulations might advance the four permanent interests.

3. Consider an analogy: Mill assumes, let’s say, that each person is

somewhat like a ﬁrm in a perfectly competitive market. In such a market

the ﬁrm decides what to produce given the prices of its inputs and outputs.

There is no central planning agency that tells it what to do. Under certain

conditions, which economic theory lays out, when each ﬁrm maximizes its

proﬁts, the total social product is efﬁciently produced (in the sense of

Pareto).

The analogy is this: it is only under the conditions of a competitive

market that ﬁrms are assumed to know best what to produce and how. The

prices set on competitive markets contain the needed information for a

ﬁrm’s decisions to be efﬁcient. Hence, they are left free to make their pro-

duction decisions independently of one another.

In Mill’s view, it is only when properly educated and given the opportu-

nity to develop their faculties under conditions of equal justice and free in-

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stitutions, that individuals can know which higher activities best answer to

their nature and character.

The upshot is that to maximize utility in Mill’s sense, it is necessary to

set up just and free institutions, and to educate people’s abilities. This estab-

lishes the background conditions under which the decided preference crite-

rion can work. If society uses institutions other than these, hoping to maxi-

mize utility, it simply operates in the dark. Only persons raised and

educated under the social conditions of free institutions can have, each in

that person’s own case, the necessary information.

4. Here let me make a few remarks in comment. First, I believe, as we

noted already, that Mill does not make a ﬁne-grained distinction within the

class of higher pleasures or within the class of lower pleasures. Baseball is a

higher activity, and why not? He is in part concerned to rebut Carlyle’s doc-

trine that utilitarianism is a “doctrine worthy only of swine” (Utilitarianism,

II: ¶3) and to stress that the distinction between the higher and the lower

pleasures, and the higher and lower faculties, can be made—this by the de-

cided preference criterion. For his purposes a rough distinction sufﬁces.

A second remark is that this lack of ﬁne-grained distinctions means that

Mill holds all normal persons to be equally capable of enjoying and exercis-

ing their higher faculties, even granting that some are more talented than

others. We might put this more precisely by saying: for each normal person

(properly educated, and the rest) there is a range of higher activities they

would want to make central to their life. He holds also that given decent

opportunities, they will actually do so, barring special explanations. (Of

course, these ranges of activities differ from person to person.) All this is

borne out by the kind of explanations Mill mentions in Utilitarianism, II: ¶7,

when he explains the apparent deviations from the principle of dignity, the

basic psychological principle supporting the decided preference criterion.

The idea that the higher activities and faculties are exclusively intellectual,

aesthetic, and academic is just rubbish.

A third remark is that the higher pleasures of the more talented (grant-

ing there are such people) are not greater in value than the higher pleasures

of the less talented. All activities decidedly preferred by normal people,

properly educated and living under just and free institutions, count the

same. Indeed, I think it will turn out that there is no occasion when as a

matter of practice they need to be compared in value at all. But this would

need to be shown. Offhand it seems the differences in quality of pleasures

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may, and indeed should, affect social policies. Can we admit this without

the necessity of making a ﬁne-grained distinction? Here we come to cases.

Finally, a fourth remark: for Mill there is no general psychological the-

ory of human nature that can be used by society, or by a central planning

agency, to tell us, say by the use of certain psychological tests, which partic-

ular mode of life is best for this or that particular individual. The best infor-

mation we can obtain is to look at the decisions of free individuals: we let

them decide on their mode of life for themselves under the requisite free

conditions. They are to determine which family of higher activities it is best

to make the focus of their life. There exists no general psychological theory

that could give us this information in advance.

5. To conclude: the equal rights of justice and the three kinds of liber-

ties specify the institutional conditions necessary for equal citizens in a

democratic society of the present age to be in the best position for each of

them to ﬁnd the mode of life that is most suitable. This helps to explain

why Mill thinks—as it seems he does—that these just and free institutions

are necessary to maximize utility understood in terms of our permanent in-

terest as a progressive beings.

§6. Relation to Individuality

1. We have seen that the principle of individuality is connected with the

decided preference criterion. So we need to consider the meaning of this

principle as a basic psychological principle. In On Liberty, III: ¶1, Mill says

the following: “It is desirable...that in things which do not primarily con-

cern others, individuality should assert itself. Where, not a person’s own

character, but the traditions or customs of other people are the rule of con-

duct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of happiness, and

quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress.” That this is a

psychological principle is shown by individuality being one of the ingredi-

ents of happiness. (All of On Liberty, III: ¶¶1–9 is important on this.)

Mill thinks of individuality as having two components:

(a) One is the Greek ideal of self-development of our various natural

powers, including the development and exercise of our higher faculties (III: ¶8).

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2. This question was pressed by Jeffrey Cohen of Columbia.

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(b) The second is the Christian ideal of self-government, and this in-

cludes, among other things (as I read Mill), the recognition of the limits on

our conduct imposed by the basic rights of justice (III: ¶¶8–9).

2. Mill says in III: ¶8 that if it is any part of religion to think we were

created by a good being, it is consistent with religion to believe that we

have higher faculties in order that these faculties may be cultivated and un-

folded, and not rooted out and consumed. It is also consistent with religion

that God delights in our approaching the realization of the ideal conception

embodied in our faculties. Mill rejects here what he calls the “Calvinistic

conception of humanity,” in which “all the good of which humanity is ca-

pable, is comprised in obedience” and the human faculties, capacities, and

susceptibilities are to be crushed out (III: ¶7).

Mill’s view seems presented as a perfectionist ideal. Later we consider

how far it is to be read it as a psychological doctrine. For now I merely com-

ment that Mill talks about ideals here because he views them as characteriz-

ing ways of life that would be adopted and followed by people under the

conditions required for the decided preference criterion to work with the

principle of dignity. These ideals characterize ways of life that most accord

with our free and fully developed nature.

3. One feature of Mill’s idea of individuality comes out when we com-

pare it to an older view. When Locke discusses toleration in his “Letter on

Toleration” (1689), he is concerned in large part with the problem of how

to overcome the wars of religion. He proposes the solution of the church

as a voluntary association within the state, while the state is to respect lib-

erty of conscience within certain limits. During the wars of religion it was

taken for granted that the content of belief was above all important. One

must believe the truth, the true doctrine, otherwise one put one’s salvation

in jeopardy. Religious error was feared as a terrible thing; and those who

spread error aroused dread.

By Mill’s time, however, the view of the question has obviously

changed. The struggle over the principle of toleration has long since been

settled. And while the content of belief is not, of course, unimportant, it is

also important how we believe. It now matters to what extent we have

made our beliefs our own; how far we have tried to understand them,

sought to ascertain their deeper meaning; and to give our beliefs a central

role in our lives, and not, as it were, simply to mouth them.

This attitude is modern, though it arose in the course of the wars of re-

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ligion. It is not, of course, original with Mill, who explicitly acknowledges it

in William Humboldt (1792); and Milton had already said in Areopagitica,

§49: “...ifamanbelieves things only because his pastor says so, or the

assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief

be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes heresy.” Rousseau was a ma-

jor inﬂuence on this way of thought as well, with his emphasis on the self

and the intrinsic value of one’s interior life cultivated by self-observation.

Whatever its origins, Mill gives an important statement of it in On Liberty,

III: ¶¶1–9.

Part of this modern attitude is that belief in error is no longer feared in

the same way. Feared certainly, because error can do great harm; but not

feared as leading inevitably to damnation. Sincerity and conscientiousness

are also signiﬁcant. Clearly Mill doesn’t entertain the possibility that those

who have mistaken religious beliefs will thereby, for that reason, be

damned. He takes for granted that error will not have that consequence.

This belief is required, I surmise, for the value of individuality to become a

central one, as it does in Mill. The idea of the signiﬁcance of making our

beliefs and aspirations our own would seem simply irrational if error, as

such, might well mean damnation.

4. I have noted that part of Mill’s idea of individuality is the idea

of making what we believe our own beliefs. This is an aspect of free self-

development. But other aspects which Mill emphasizes are: making our

plan of life our own; making our desires our own; and bringing our desires

and impulses into balance and setting an order of priorities that is also our

own.

I don’t think Mill means that we are to make ourselves different from

other people for the sake of being different. Rather, he means that however

similar or different our plan of life may be from the plans of others, we

should have made our plan our own: that is, we understand its meaning

and have appropriated it in our thought and character. We need not choose

our life at all, as a so-called chooser of ends. We may rather afﬁrm our way

of life after due reﬂection, and do not follow it simply as custom. We have

come to see the point of it, penetrated to its deeper meaning by the full and

free use of our powers of thought, imagination, and feeling. In that way we

have made our way of life our own, even if that way of life itself is of long

standing, and in that sense traditional.

I mention this matter because Mill is sometimes said to put emphasis

on eccentricity, on doing one’s own thing. This I think a misreading. Cer-

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