Roy Hattersley has a provocative peice in the Guardian today, in which he argues that J.S. Mill’s version of liberalism is out of date. His two key points are:

The first principle asserts that "all errors which (a man) is likely to commit against advice and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good". Only cranks believe that now. If it were a generally held view, we would not prohibit the use of recreational drugs or require passengers in the back seats of motor cars to wear safety belts.

'And Mill's second precept makes a distinction between "the part of a person's life which concerns only himself and that which concerns others". In short, we are free to damage ourselves but are not at liberty to behave in a way that harms other people. The distinction was easier to make in Victorian Britain than it is today - though even in 1859, when On Liberty was written, subscribers to the cult of the individual grossly underestimated how much one human is dependent on another.'

For me, this is really interesting territory. So interesting, that we’re running a project on it in fact.

I’m not sure i agree with all the conclusions in the article though. I’d argue that the interdependence that Hattersley describes doesn’t mean the end of Mill. Rather, it suggests that the private vs public boundaries that emerge from Mill’s principles are shifting, as new evidence emerges about the effects our actions on one another. For example, the smoking ban is not a nanny state law – it’s a way of protecting people from the harmful effects of other people’s actions. As the evidence on passive smoking became clear, it also became clear that the law as it stood was not, in fact, justifiable on liberal grounds.

Can’t laws change whilst still being consistent with the very same philosophical principles that the previous set of laws were founded upon?

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