Mill's _On Liberty_ was an interesting read for me because as I was working through it, I continually came across passages that reminded me of other philosophical texts I've been reading over the last year. I would like to take a look at a few of those and situate Mill in the philosophical conversation, though I use that phrase in the very broadest historical sense. What Mill proposes is essentially continual dialectic in order to arrive at some form of Truth, while at the same time, he describes an Aristotelian rhetoric based on contingent truth and anticipates a conception of truth that does not rest on a central foundation, but rather is based upon multiple centers. Mill may have been of the opinion that Truth could be discovered eventually, as we've discussed in class; however, his essay suggests contradictions.
The dialectic method, founded by Socrates, is essentially a dialogue by which a thesis is proposed, then refuted by an antithesis, and finally the two are sythesized into a new thesis. If this new thesis is not satisfactory, the process is repeated. It can take the form of a series of questions and answers, what we today call the Socratic Method or Socratic Seminar, but I believe what Mill suggests can also function as a dialectic, though he does not use that term explicitly. At the outset of the essay, Mill gives a demonstrative scenario: "If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind" (252); thus calling for the perpetual need for dialectic. If mankind is required to continually hear the opinions of one, this suggests the possibility of no certain truth because there is the possibility that that one dissenting opinion could eventually convince others. Mill goes so far as to call "silencing the expression of an opinion" a " peculiar evil" (252).
What is important in Mill's project of arriving at truth is his constant admission that whatever that Truth is, it cannot remain authoritative. He tells us, "the opinion which it is attempted to suppress to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible" (252). Later, Mill points out the importance of a forensic rhetoric that is able "to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion" (261). Such preparation suggests the possibility that the opposite side could be true. While Socrates and Plato believed in an aboslute Truth, Aristotle argues in _Rhetoric_ for a contingent Truth. Rhetoric, for Aristotle, operates in the realm of the probable and possible. Nothing needs to be proved absolutely to garner belief. Mill, again, essentially makes the same assertion: "There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life" (254). Mill's words are not only situated in the Aristotelian realm of the possible, but they anticipate the accepted uncertainty of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Another way in which Mill anticipates the post-modern attitude is in his brief discussion of worldviews. He begins by pointing out that few people care to recognize the specific ways in which they are fallible whil being willing to admit that they, with everyone else, have faults (253). Jacques Derrida, over one hundred years later, points out in _Of Grammatology_, that one's conception of truth is based on the textuality of one's society--that the world has multiple centers of truth grounded in the grand narratives of individual societies. Mill says essentially the same thing. He points out that for anyone, "the same causes which make him a Churchman in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin" (253). Those "causes," in Derridean terms, are the grand narratives to which an individual's society adheres.
There is no doubt that Mill was a "true Victorian," which I believe can be seen more clearly in the essays which I did not discuss this week; however, I find it fascinating to see the ways in which his essay undercuts the notion of being able to arrive at absolute truth. The notion of dialectical reasoning desires to discover absolute truth, but if the truth discovered is always available for discussion and dissenting opinion, then it will never be absolute.
I'll see you all next week!
Works Cited
Mill, John Stuart. "From On Liberty." Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton, 1958.
No comments:
Post a Comment