3.6 Thinking for Yourself: J.S. Mill's On Liberty

Why Thinking for Yourself is Critical for Happiness and Progress

Discussion Questions

• What does it mean to ‘think for yourself’?
• Why might someone think it’s important to ‘think for yourself’?
• What, if anything, does thinking for yourself have to do with critical thinking?
• People often care about freedom. What makes freedom valuable? Why is it important?
• What, if anything, does freedom have to do w/ thinking for yourself/thinking critically?

Today's focus: Answering these questions via J.S. Mill’s On Liberty.

Preliminary Answers

• Think for yourself = make up your own mind, versus believing something due to peer pressure or authority.
• Not thinking for yourself: selling yourself short and being deprived of your true self.
• Uncritical thinking = accepting what you’re told without making up your own mind.
• Freedom requires the freedom to think for yourself and to be yourself. If you can’t be yourself, you – and society – lose out on what you could have been.
• Why are we even talking about this? Not everyone believes you should think for yourself; propagandists, for example.

Thought Experiment

• Would the world be a better place if everyone were exactly the same? (e.g., 8 billion clones?)
• Contrast two maxims: “Be yourself” vs. “Be like everyone else”.
• Which is the better ‘philosophy to live by’?
• Which maxim leads to better lives, progress, and creativity?
• If the world wouldn’t be better if everyone were exactly the same, what does this tell us about the value of being yourself?

Identity vs. Individuality

• ‘Identity’ and ‘individuality’ are both used to mean ‘who I am’… But are these synonymous?

Leading Question:

• What’s the difference (if any) between identity and individuality?

Answers:

• Identity invokes sameness (often to a group).
  • e.g., duplicates/clones are identical; if one identifies with someone one sees things as they do; one’s identity as a member of group F (so like other Fs).
• Individuality invokes division, difference.
  • e.g., cell division, ‘to individuate’ is to divide from/distinguish…
• Although identity is good/important, too much sameness to others, with not enough individuality (difference from others) can certainly be a bad thing as well.

Syllabus Question:

• What’s the name of Ch. 3 in Mill’s On Liberty?

Answer:

• “Of individuality as one of the elements of well-being”
• Would it mean the same thing if it said ‘of identity…’ instead?

J.S. Mill: On Liberty, Ch. 3

Mill: Individuality/being yourself is an essential part of human flourishing and what it means to be human.

• “human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.” (p. 55)
• “the human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular, powers are improved only by being used.” (p. 55)
• “He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.” (p. 55)
• In other words: you’re selling yourself short as a human if you don’t choose for yourself…

J.S. Mill: On Liberty, Ch. 3

Yet many don’t see the value in individuality/creativity.

• The majority can’t “comprehend” why the way they live shouldn’t be good enough for everybody (p. 53).
• The more in need of originality one is, the less conscious one is of that want (p. 61).

Thus, many seek to conform… (to be like others).

J.S. Mill: On Liberty, Ch. 3

Conformity = anti-liberty: conformity is obedience to majority/custom/power.

• Obedience to authority requires conformity, and many insist on obedience (p. 57-8).
• Calvinism example: the great offense of man is self-will, the great good obedience, whatever is not a duty is a sin, human nature is corrupt (p. 58).
• Mill’s reply to Calvinism: a good God gave us human faculties so they’d be developed, not suppressed (p. 58).

J.S. Mill Quote