Category: Roles And Functions Of The State And The Nature Of State Power

T. H. Green, an Oxford Hegelian idealist, was an ardent supporter of positive liberty and moral freedom. Unlike Mill, Green made a complete departure from the utilitarian ground. He argued for moral development of the individual without subscribing to the pain and pleasure view of human nature. Unlike the social contractualists, he rejected the doctrine…

If Mill’s differentiation of actions is viewed in the context of classical liberalism and laissez-faire individualism, his admission of other regarding actions is a departure from what Smith, Ricardo, Spencer, or Malthus would argue. This departure provides room for the State to interfere when necessary in the interest of the society. In order to envisage the role…

Mill insisted on liberty of thought and expression and liberty of conduct. He was an ardent supporter of freedom of speech and opinion. He felt that if truth is to prevail ultimately, all ideas must be left alone to compete, as free discussions can nourish fruitful ideas. His opinion that ‘all mankind minus one lacks…

Mill was not comfortable with the utilitarian principle that his father and Bentham had advocated. His revision of the utilitarian principle is based on the introduction of qualitative factor in the element of happiness. For Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, utility was ensuring greatest or maximum happiness for greatest number, a quantitative matter. Bentham’s seven-point felicific calculus discussed above…

John Gray in his introduction to Mill’s On Liberty and Other Essays, says, ‘on the received and conventional view, John Stuart Mill is an eclectic and transitional thinker, who is never able either to endorse or to abandon the classical utilitarian philosophy he inherited from his father, James Mill …’32 But as we will see below, Mill’s dilemma…

Nineteenth century, however, ruefully confessed the inherent shortcomings of free economy and the limited state. The conflict of interest between the landed or the aristocratic class and the rising capitalist class was already won in favour of the latter. Now, the growing problem of inequality and economic hardship in terms of working conditions, poor sanitation,…

James Mill and his son, John Stuart Mill supported the utilitarian doctrine. James Mill, carrying on the tradition of Bentham, argued that representative democracy is the only legitimate form of government, as it alone conforms to the principles of utility. He also supported ‘property as the chief source of pleasure. Linking the right to property…

While Smith, Malthus and Ricardo were the advocates of economic and laissez-faire individualism; Bentham of philosophical and political individualism; Herbert Spencer provided sociological ground for laissez-faire individualism. Will Durant in his The Story of Philosophy, writes, ‘his (Spencer’s) interest is predominantly in the problems of economics and government; he begins and ends, like Plato, with discourses on moral and political justice’.25 And…

Bentham is a utilitarian thinker and is considered as one the leading theorists of liberalism. He is also known as a philosophic radical. The utilitarian doctrine has its beginning, like all doctrines falling within the framework of liberalism, the individual psychology. Bentham’s utilitarian doctrine conceives two impulses, ‘two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure’, which are…

After Smith, Thomas Robert Malthus in An Essay on the Principles of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society (1798) and David Ricardo in Principles of Political Economy (1917) advocated non-interference of the State in the individual liberty. Malthus cited the reason of population and Ricardo, rent to further the cause of laissez-faire. Malthus put forward a dreadful…