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The ‘Negative Argument’ in J. S. Mill's Utilitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Louis B. Zimmer
Louis B. Zimmer*
Affiliation:
Montclair State College
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Extract

In her recent book On Liberty and Liberalism — The Case of John Stuart Mill, Gertrude Himmelfarb is temporarily annoyed at Mill's use of the “negative argument” in the opening pages of his Subjection of Women. “It is astonishing, at first reading,” Himmelfarb writes, “to find Mill devoting so much space to what is essentially a negative argument.” What Mill does in his introductory chapter to prove that “the legal subordination of one sex to the other — is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement,” which “ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other,” is attack as strongly as he can the prejudicial nature of that subordination which had hardened into rigid and implacable legal barriers vastly inimical to that perfect equality Mill wanted to achieve. Here is a portion of Mill's summation of that legal subordination against which married women, in particular, had to contend:

The wife is the actual bond-servant of her husband: no less so, as far as legal obligation goes, than slaves commonly so called. She vows a lifelong obedience to him at the altar, and is held to it all through her life by law …. She can do no act whatever but by his permission, at least tacit. She can acquire no property but for him; the instant it becomes hers, even if by inheritance, it becomes, ipso facto his … in regard to the children … they are by law his children. He alone has any legal rights over them. Not one act can she do towards or in relation to them, except by delegation from him. Even after he is dead she is not their legal guardian, unless he by will has made her so. . . . If she leaves her husband, she can take nothing with her, neither her children nor anything which is rightfully her own. If he chooses, he can compel her to return, by law, or by physical force; or he may content himself with seizing for his own use anything which she may earn, or which may be given to her by her relations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , Fall 1977 , pp. 119 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1977

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References

1. Himmelfarb, Gertrude, On Liberty and Liberalism — The Case of John Stuart Mill (New York, 1974), p. 175Google Scholar.

2. Mill, John Stuart, The Subjection of Women (2nd ed., London, 1869), p. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Ibid., pp. 55-58.

4. Ibid., p. 8.

5. Ibid., pp. 2-5.

6. Ibid., pp. 8-9.

7. Himmelfarb, , Liberty and Liberalism, p. 175Google Scholar.

8. Ibid.

9. Mill, John Stuart, Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical (American ed.; New York, 1874), I, 355–417Google Scholar; (hereafter, Dissertations).

10. Ibid., I, 362-67.

11. Ibid., I, 367-69. In a much shortened form from Jeremy Bentham, A Fragment on Government and An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. with an Introduction by Harrison, Wilfrid (Oxford, 1948), pp. 140–141nGoogle Scholar, the quotation is as follows:

1. One man says, he has a thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and what is wrong; and that it is called a moral sense: and then he goes to work at his ease, and says, such a thing is right, and such a thing is wrong — why? ‘because my moral sense tells me it is.’

2. Another man comes and alters the phrase: leaving out moral, and putting in common … He then tells you, that his common sense teaches him what is right and wrong, as surely as the other's moral sense did: meaning by common sense, a sense of some kind or other, which, he says, is possessed by all mankind.

3. Another man comes, and says, that as to a moral sense indeed, he cannot find that he has any such thing: that however he has an understanding, which will do quite as well …. All good and wise men understand as he does: if other men's understandings differ in any point from his … it is a sure sign they are either defective or corrupt.

4. Another man says, that there is an eternal and immutable Rule of Right ….

5. Another man … says, that there are certain practices conformable … to the Fitness of Things ….

6. A great multitude of people are continually talking of the Law of Nature ….

7. Instead of the phrase, Law of Nature, you have sometimes, Law of Reason, Right Reason, Natural Justice, Natural Equity, Good Order.

9. The fairest and openest of them all is that sort of man who speaks out, and says, I am of the number of the Elect; now God himself takes care to inform the Elect of what is right ….

12. Dumont, Pierre Etienne Louis, Traités de Législation Civile et Pénale (Paris, 1802)Google Scholar.

13. Mill, John Stuart, Autobiography, World's Classics (Oxford, 1924), p. 54Google Scholar.

14. Ibid.

15. Mill, John Stuart, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (8th ed.; New York, n.d.)Google Scholar; (hereafter Logic).

16. Ibid., p. 520.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., p. 521.

19. Ibid., pp. 523-24.

20. Ibid., p. 524.

21. Ibid., p. 527.

22. Ibid., p. 528.

23. Ibid., pp. 529-30.

24. Ibid., pp. 532-33.

25. Bentham, , Principles of Morals, p. 140Google Scholar.

26. Logic, p. 538.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid., pp. 538-41, 545.

29. Ibid., pp. 541-42.

30. Mill, , Autobiography, p. 53Google Scholar.

31. Dissertations, I, 120–85Google Scholar.

32. Ibid., III, 132-92.

33. Ibid., 149-52.

34. Bentham, , Principles of Morals, p. 140Google Scholar. As Bentham put it, “The phrases different, but the principle the same.”

35. Ibid., p. 142n.

36. Dissertations, I, 131–32Google Scholar.

37. Ibid., III, 172, 191, I63n, 173n.

38. Ibid., 133.

39. Ibid., 134.

40. Ibid., 136.

41. Ibid., I, 159.

42. Ibid., 172.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid., III, 180.

45. Ibid., 181.

46. Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty (Everyman, ed.; London, 1910), p. 68Google Scholar.

47. Ibid., p. 75.

48. Ibid., pp. 69-71.

49. Ibid., p. 69.

50. 3 Hansard 187:819 (20 May 1867)Google Scholar.

51. Ibid.

52. Mill, John Stuart, Considerations on Representative Government (New York, 1862), p. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53. Ibid., p. 12.

54. The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill, 1849-1873, eds. Mineka, Francis E. and Lindley, Dwight N., Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto, 1972), XV, 752Google Scholar, Mill to Alexander Bain, Dec., 1861, where Mill writes: “The great recommendation of this project is that it will enable me to supply what was prudently left deficient in the Logic.”

55. Ibid., XV, 927, Mill to Alexander Bain, March 18, 1864.

56. Ibid., 763, Mill to George Grote, January 10, 1862.

57. Ibid., XIV, 239, Mill to Theodor Gomperz, August 19, 1854.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid., XVI, 1324, Mill to Alexander Bain, November 4, 1867. The book referred to is Stirling, James Hutchison, The Secret of Hegel: Being the Hegelian System in Origin, Principle, Form and Matter (London, 1865)Google Scholar.

60. Ibid., XV, 901, Mill to Alexander Bain, November 22, 1863.

61. Mill, John Stuart, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (New York, 1874), I, 13-14, 25, 28, 31, 41, 44-45, 76–77Google Scholar; (hereafter, Examination).

62. Ibid., 76-77.

63. Ibid., 79.

64. Ibid., 198-200.

65. Ibid., 208.

66. Ibid., 209.

67. Ibid., 244.

68. Ibid., 243-50. Mill writes: “The reliance of mankind on the real existence of visible and tangible objects, means reliance on the reality and permanence of Possibilities of visual and tactual sensations, when no such sensations are actually experienced … that to believe in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation is believing in matter … There is thus no psychological obstacle to our forming the notion of a something which is neither a sensation nor a possibility of a sensation, even if our consciousness does not testify to it; and nothing is more likely than that the Permanent Possibilities of sensation, to which our consciousness does testify, should be confounded in our minds with this imaginary conception. All experience attests the strength of the tendency to mistake mental abstractions, even negative ones, for substantive realities; and the Permanent Possibilities of sensation which experience guarantees, are so extremely unlike in many of their properties to actual sensations, that since we are capable of imagining something which transcends sensation, there is a great natural probability that we should suppose these to be it.” There is more to Mill's doctrine, but this should be sufficient to form some idea of the positive argument which he put forward after disposing of the negative one.

69. Mill, , Examination, I, 114Google Scholar.

70. Ibid., 119.

71. Ibid., 115, 127.

72. Ibid., 127.

73. Ibid., 115.

74. Ibid., 128-33.

75. Mill, , Autobiography, p. 233Google Scholar.

76. Mill, , On Liberty, p. 84Google Scholar.

77. See note 44, supra.

78. Mill, , On Liberty, p. 96Google Scholar.