ABSTRACT
Chapter 14 treats Mill’s perceptions of ethical progress and personal liberty. Here I have in mind Bentham’s caution against ‘the chimerical’ in reform programs. As for Mill, I draw attention to his own profound cautiousness reflected in a warning given in 1849 against ‘overrat[ing] the ease of making people unselfish’ and in an observation as late as 1870 that ‘the feeling of security of possession and enjoyment … could not (in the state of advancement mankind have yet reached) be had without private ownership’. The perspectives of Mill and Bentham regarding prospects for ethical progress are thus not so easy to distinguish. Chapter 14 proceeds to elaborate Mill’s perception of ‘security’ encompassing the protection of personal liberty and individuality which (in Chapter Nine) we already found in Bentham. I also take account of the ‘border line’ between the self- and other-regarding categories established in On Liberty, finding Mill ambiguous in some of his formulations, and demonstrate that Mill would, under extreme conditions, have justified state intervention even in purely self-regarding acts.
