Mill as ambivalent democrat

Introduction

Mill’s place in the democratic family is fiercely contested; he has been characterized as a thoroughgoing democrat, a non-democrat, and everything in between. ¹ One common approach scholars have taken in determining Mill’s democratic credentials is to focus on and interpret the tension between participation and competence in his political thought. ² That there is a tension is not debated; rather, scholars disagree over how to interpret the tension and its implications for Mill’s status as a democrat. On the one hand, they note that Mill favors democracy because of its ability, by way of political participation, to cultivate the intellectual and moral virtues in a wide range of persons; it therefore stands in contrast to aristocracy and monarchy, which, by definition, restrict political participation and, hence, the cultivation of the virtues to one or the few. ³ In other words, Mill favors democracy on the basis of its educative function; as Carole Pateman argues, it is because democracy promotes ‘the right kind of individual character…that Mill regards popular, democratic government as the “ideally best polity”’. ⁴ Similarly, Wendy Donner argues that it is primarily because ‘intellectual, practical, and moral excellences are all fostered by active participation in political life’, that Mill saw all non-democratic forms of government as less than ideal. ⁵ Moreover, participation in local affairs is crucial for training individuals to participate at the national level, and as such, ‘it is by participating at the local level that the individual “learns democracy”’. ⁶ These scholars stress the value that Mill places on caring for the good of others (moral virtue) and exercising one’s intellectual faculties on a wide range of concerns (intellectual virtue) as Mill’s reasons for preferring democratic government.

On the other hand, scholars have also paid attention to Mill’s insistence on the value of competence in politics, which entails that those with superior moral and intellectual virtues ought to have disproportionately greater influence. ⁷ It is because, as Graeme Duncan writes, Mill viewed ordinary individuals as ‘incapable of freeing themselves from the trammels of custom and tradition, of separating themselves from their personal and class interests, and of mastering the technical complexities of politics’, ⁸ that they ought not to decide on public matters, but rather, are to elect and defer to the judgements of their representatives – that is, enlightened individuals who are more virtuous and hence, competent than themselves. According to Duncan, Mill was worried that the working class would, through democratic majoritarianism, impose their morally and intellectually impoverished interests on all. It is for this reason that Mill favored institutions ‘in which the educated and disinterested…sections of the community were over-represented in relation to the numerical support’. ⁹ Specifically, J. H. Burns points to Mill’s support for plural voting ¹⁰ and his rejection of pledges as expressions of Mill’s distrust of the masses and his corresponding commitment to expert authority. Characterizing Mill’s views in the following way, Burns writes: ‘It is not for the people to govern, but only to choose a well-qualified assembly to govern for them; it is not for that assembly to make laws, but only to see that they are made by a panel of experts.’ ¹¹ John Plamenatz not only echoes Burns’ characterization of Mill’s elitism, but he also confidently extrapolates it to contemporary politics, arguing: ‘That the politically active are a minority was as clear to John Stuart Mill as to any political scientist of the twentieth century.’ ¹²

While there is little debate that the tension between competence and participation is present in Mill’s thought, how scholars understand and interpret the tension has produced different conclusions regarding Mill’s status as a democrat. For example, Burns emphasizes Mill’s commitment to competence, which he locates in Mill’s rejection of a fundamental democratic assumption; namely, ‘that men are equal in the moral and intellectual qualities required by the exercise of political power’. ¹³ As a result, Burns argues that ‘[Mill] ought not to suffer, as a political theorist, from being represented as an inconsistent democrat. A consistent viewpoint unites Mill’s political thought from start to finish; but it is not…the viewpoint of a democrat.’ ¹⁴ This view is echoed by Alan Kahan, who characterizes Mill as an ‘aristocratic liberal’ because of Mill’s ‘common distaste for the masses and the middle classes, [his] fear and contempt of mediocrity, [and] the primacy of individuality and diversity’. ¹⁵ However, other scholars, such as Dennis Thompson and Nadia Urbinati, have, in their own ways, interpreted the tension differently and argued for the opposite view; namely, that Mill is a democrat. ¹⁶ By specifying two kinds of competence in Mill’s political thought – deliberative and skilled – Urbinati argues that while Mill saw skilled competence as a technical knowledge that only a few would be trained to acquire, Mill viewed deliberative competence as accessible to all citizens. Deliberative competence is crucial in Mill’s thought, Urbinati argues, because it is the deliberation of the representative assembly that represents the voices of citizens, that limits skilled governmental activity. In doing so, according to Urbinati, Mill was ‘protecting politics from the power of expertise, whose proliferation characterized modern society’. ¹⁷ As such, Urbinati argues, ‘Mill’s conception of the assembly as a “talking” and agonistic body was unequivocally democratic’. ¹⁸ Thompson has also confidently argued that ‘we need not be reluctant to call Mill’s theory a theory of democracy’. ¹⁹ While acknowledging the tension between participation and competence in Mill’s thought, Thompson argues that this tension will, over time, be resolved in favor of participation, for as citizens participate, they will become competent to such an extent that differences in competence between them and experts will be narrowed – presumably to the point where the differences would be negligible. In arguing for the priority of the value of participation, Thompson writes: ‘If the principle of participation were fully realized, the values expressed by the principle of competence would also be fulfilled – given Mill’s assumption that citizens become more competent as they take a more active role in politics.’ ²⁰ And others, such as Duncan and Pateman, view Mill as an ambivalent democrat; while Duncan carefully notes that Mill advanced arguments in favor of political participation out of ‘a desire to improve all men’, ²¹ the fact that Mill favored institutions in which the minority (of morally and intellectually virtuous citizens) was disproportionately represented entails that ‘his democratic credentials are thrown strongly into question’. ²² Relatedly, Pateman writes: ‘In his practical proposals Mill does not take his own arguments about participation seriously enough.’ ²³ As a result, according to Duncan, Mill’s commitments to both competence and participation result in ‘an untidy and unsuccessful compromise which can best be labeled democratic – or even bourgeois democratic – Platonism’. ²⁴

Regardless of their conclusions – whether Mill is a democrat, an anti-democrat, or something in between – these scholars share a methodological assumption; namely, that concluding whether competence or participation is the overriding trope in Mill’s writings determines the status of his democratic commitments. If competence is the overriding value in Mill’s writings, then Mill is not a democrat; if participation is the overriding value, then he is a democrat. And if one value does not clearly override the other, then he is an ambivalent democrat.

There is much to be gleaned from such an approach; the tension between competence and participation is certainly present in Mill’s writings, and it encourages us to consider issues that are still salient today, such as the role of competence in a democracy and the value of citizen participation. However, the dominance of this approach ignores another method by which to think about Mill’s status as a democrat; namely, his multifaceted conception of human flourishing. In this article, I argue that Mill is an ambivalent democrat not because he contradicts himself, but because different dimensions of democracy corrupt and cultivate different aspects of human flourishing. Specifically, Mill is an ambivalent democrat because while democratic society corrupts the aspect of human flourishing that is individuality, democratic politics, rightly structured, cultivates other aspects of human flourishing, such as the moral and intellectual virtues. As such, this article systematically connects Mill’s multifaceted ethics to his views on democratic society and politics in order to produce a more complete account of the relationship between Mill’s ethical and political commitments. To put it differently, I agree with scholars such as Duncan and Pateman in their conclusion that Mill is an ambivalent democrat, but I do so on ethical rather than on political grounds.

To be clear, this approach – that of arguing for Mill’s status as a democrat on the basis of his ethics – is not completely unprecedented, for numerous scholars have made astute observations that connect Mill’s ethics to his politics. For example, Maria Morales has argued that Mill defended democracy ‘as a form of life’ because ‘democratic participation fosters moral character development’. ²⁵ Moreover, as noted earlier, scholars who focus on the tension between competence and participation recognize Mill’s ethical reasons for valuing democracy. Others, however, have observed that Mill was worried about democracy precisely for its detrimental effects on another value: individuality. More specifically, they point out Mill’s concern with the power of the masses by way of public opinion, which he saw as spelling the death of individuality. According to Terrence Ball, Mill sees a ‘tendency in democratic societies toward conformity of taste and opinion and a corresponding distaste for those who differ with or deviate from prevailing views and conventional norms’. ²⁶ Or as Harry Clor succinctly puts it, democratic modernity has produced mass conformity. ²⁷

These observations are all correct, but they are piecemeal in the sense that they connect one dimension of democracy to one aspect of Mill’s conception of human flourishing. More broadly, scholars ignore or understate the real tensions in Mill’s political and ethical thought, or they acknowledge the tensions without explaining them. Through a comprehensive analysis of Mill’s account of democratic society, democratic politics and a multifaceted conception of Millian flourishing, I make sense of Mill’s ambivalence with respect to democracy. To put it another way, what is needed is an analysis that systematically connects the multifaceted nature of Mill’s ethical ideal to his nuanced views about democracy, which this article provides. When we do so, I argue, we achieve two objectives. First, in contrast to scholars who focus on the tension between competence and participation, we obtain a more complete depiction of his views on democracy that we miss when we solely focus on his explicitly political institutions and avoid his distinct conception of democratic society. Second, we obtain a more systematic analysis of how Mill’s ethics and his politics connect, as opposed to the correct but piecemeal observations that some scholars have made about the relationship between Mill’s ethics and politics. As a result, we will cease to portray Mill as either a democrat because democracy promotes the moral and intellectual virtues or an anti-democrat because democracy diminishes individuality. In other words, this article not only advances a new and distinct argument about Mill’s status as a democrat, but it also encourages a certain approach to Mill’s writings – that of systematically evaluating his democratic credentials on the basis of his multifaceted ethics – that has been neglected in recent scholarship.

In order to show that Mill is an ambivalent democrat because different dimensions of democracy corrupt and cultivate different aspects of human flourishing, this article proceeds in three parts. In part I, I demonstrate that Mill’s notion of human flourishing is multifaceted in that it includes individuality, moral virtue and intellectual virtue. In part II, I show how Mill sees democratic society as corrupting the aspect of human flourishing that is individuality. Yet, if democratic society is a factor that corrupts human flourishing, it is not the only factor; another factor is commercial society, which corrupts other aspects of human flourishing: namely, the intellectual and moral virtues. Democratic political institutions can counter these effects. Hence, Mill argues for democratic political participation, rightly structured by certain institutions in order to cultivate the intellectual and moral virtues, and part III explicates how he sees this to be the case. The article concludes by evaluating Mill’s views and contrasts them with the scholarship on civic virtue, which is the dominant scholarly mode of thinking about the relationship between ethics and politics today.

I: Mill’s multifaceted conception of human flourishing

Mill’s conception of human flourishing is characterized by three aspects individuality, moral virtue and intellectual virtue. First, since the notion of individuality is familiar to readers of Mill’s On Liberty, I will only briefly reconstruct it here. Individuality entails orienting oneself towards one’s beliefs and actions in a certain way: as entities that one has reflectively endorsed (in the case of beliefs) and chosen (in the case of actions) as one’s own. With respect to one’s beliefs, one ought not simply to assume the beliefs of one’s society, but rather, one ought to critically scrutinize them in order to determine for oneself whether those beliefs are justified and, therefore, whether one ought to adopt and endorse them. One must not ‘assent[.] undoubtingly’, ²⁸ but rather, one must know both sides of an issue and be able to refute the other side in order to justifiably prefer one’s own view. Moreover, one ought to take responsibility not only for possessing justified beliefs, but also for possessing them in the right way; that is, one must feel the truth of one’s beliefs with conviction and, as a result, act accordingly. One must possess ‘a lively apprehension of the truth which [one] nominally recognize[s], so that it may penetrate the feelings, and acquire a real mastery over the conduct’. ²⁹ It is not enough to possess true, justified beliefs; one must possess them in the right way. ³⁰ What one believes therefore affects and transforms one’s sentiments, actions and, more broadly, one’s character.

Furthermore, with respect to one’s actions, one ought to choose one’s way of life, as opposed to having it chosen for one by society, or by those by whom one is surrounded. Mill approaches the issue of choosing one’s actions in terms of the role that custom plays and ought to play in one’s life. Custom consists in the socially dominant beliefs and ways of acting that are so commonplace and entrenched that people accept them as ‘natural’ and do not think to reflect upon them; it ‘appear[s] to them self-evident and self-justifying’. ³¹ Custom is, as Mill writes, ‘a second nature, but is continually mistaken for the first’. ³² While custom per se is not problematic, to simply conform to it as such, is. This is because to do so ‘does not educate or develop in him any of the qualities which are the distinctive endowment of a human being’. ³³ Specifically, these qualities include ‘the human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminate feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, [which] are exercised only in making a choice’. ³⁴ To exercise choice is a crucial characteristic of an individual’s flourishing, and, therefore, the activities required for exercising choice – such as judging and perceiving – are also indirectly constitutive of human flourishing. That one has chosen one’s good – at least partially – constitutes one’s good. In short, according to Mill, we must critically scrutinize our beliefs and actions in order to determine the beliefs and acts that constitute our characters, instead of having our characters determined for us by others. This is one crucial part of human flourishing.

Second, Mill views moral virtue, understood as a concern for the good of others, as an important aspect of human flourishing. If individuality is centrally about how individuals relate to themselves – namely, to their beliefs and actions – then moral virtue is concerned with how individuals relate to one another. In Utility of Religion, Mill argues that the ‘Religion of Humanity’ ought to replace traditional religions, defining it as ‘the sense of unity with mankind, and a deep feeling for the general good’. ³⁵ Countering the notion that it is impossible for individuals to be motivated by an intangible ideal that does not consist in rewards and punishments in the afterlife, Mill points to the love of country – a phenomenon that has historically existed ³⁶ – and asserts that the human species is simply a ‘larger country’. ³⁷ The two phenomena supposedly differ in degree, not in kind. Invoking the parallel between the two concerns, Mill argues: ‘If, then, persons could be trained, as we see they were, not only to believe in theory that the good of their country was an object to which all others ought to yield, but to feel this practically as the grand duty of life, so also may they be made to feel the same absolute obligation towards the universal good.’ ³⁸ Instead of being motivated to act for the good of the whole by punishments and rewards in the afterlife, individuals would be motivated by ‘the approbation…of those whom we respect and ideally of all those, dead or living, whom we venerate’. ³⁹

What makes the cultivation of moral virtue a realistic possibility, according to Mill, is that it is rooted in ‘a powerful principle in human nature’, ⁴⁰ which consists in ‘the social feelings of mankind – the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures’. ⁴¹ At times, Mill seems to suggest that merely moving away from ‘the state of savage independence’ to an ‘advancing civilization’ inculcates and strengthens the idea that because one lives in a society of equals, therefore ‘the interests of all are to be regarded equally’. ⁴² In fact, Mill goes even further, declaring that as a civilized individual one cannot help but see oneself as ‘a member of a body’, ⁴³ and, as a result, one cannot live in a way that disregards the interests of others. Furthermore, as one cooperates with others, ‘[one’s] ends are identified with those of others; there is at least a temporary feeling that the interests of others are [one’s] own interests’. ⁴⁴ And as individuals continue to cooperate, the notion that one is concerned with the good of others becomes increasingly instinctive; one is transformed into ‘a being who of course pays regard to others’. ⁴⁵ While at times, Mill suggests that an increased regard for the good of others is an inevitable outcome of civilization, he also makes it clear that this outcome requires the deliberate construction of laws, social arrangements, education and public opinion ⁴⁶ to promote the notion that the good of the individual is inextricably bound up with the good of the whole.

Third, along with individuality and moral virtue, Mill emphasizes intellectual virtue as a crucial aspect of human flourishing. ‘Next to selfishness,’ Mill declares, ‘the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation.’ ⁴⁷ Mental cultivation is not specific to particular areas of knowledge, but rather, refers to the exercise of the intellectual faculties in a variety of areas of knowledge. The cultivated mind ‘finds sources of inexhaustible interest in all that surrounds it: in the objects of nature, the achievements of art, the imaginations of poetry, the incidents of history, the ways of mankind, past and present, and their prospects in the future’. ⁴⁸ Intellectual virtue involves a certain disposition towards that which is outside of oneself; specifically, it consists in a desire to learn about the world one inhabits, or to possess ‘an intelligent interest in these objects of contemplation’. ⁴⁹ It is because one lives ‘in a world in which there is so much to interest, so much to enjoy, and so much to correct and improve’ ⁵⁰ that everyone ought to cultivate their intellectual virtue and thereby lead an ‘enviable existence’. ⁵¹ As such, individuals who lack intellectual virtue are ‘indifferent…[having] no moral or human interest in these things’. ⁵² What the intellectual and moral virtues share is a care for and an engagement with what is outside of oneself, whether it be other individuals (moral virtue) or the world one inhabits (intellectual virtue). ⁵³

And given that politics is part of the world one inhabits, it is unsurprising that Mill views political activity as a way to cultivate intellectual virtue. In addition, the intellectual virtue relevant for politics is crucially practical, whereby thought is successfully tied to action; that is, it has a practical application. In contrast to the kind of thinking ‘that stops at amusement, or at simple contemplation’, intellectual virtue in politics consists ‘in successful application to practice’. ⁵⁴ In the absence of a practical component that gives precision and purpose to thought, Mill argues that such thinking ‘generates nothing better than the mystical metaphysics of the Pythagoreans or the Veds’. ⁵⁵ While we ought not to read Mill’s philosophy as solely interested in use-value, ⁵⁶ these passages suggest that Mill does see real value in the kind of thinking that informs practice. Taken together, individuality, moral virtue and intellectual virtue constitute Mill’s conception of human flourishing. In the following section, I show how a certain dimension of democracy – that is, democratic society – diminishes one aspect of human flourishing, which is individuality.

II: The perils of democratic society

In order to argue for how democratic society diminishes individuality, ⁵⁷ Mill elaborates a political history in the opening pages of On Liberty, tracing the transition in the locus of abuse as political authority shifted from the king to the people. Specifically, the potential locus of abuse shifted from a ruler who was independent of and identifiable by citizens to a majority within the citizenry itself. This is because in contrast to monarchies, political power in democracies is theoretically not independent of citizens, but rather, emanates from citizens who share in political power. This power is possessed by citizens, and is exercised by individuals whom citizens elect and who are ‘revocable at their pleasure’. ⁵⁸ As a result, citizens of new democracies were initially concerned with electing the right ‘magistrates’ to exercise political power on their behalf, and were less concerned with limiting political power itself. The notion that democratic political power needed to be limited sounded nonsensical, for it was thought that insofar as ‘the rulers [were] identified with the people; that their interest and will [were] the interest and will of the nation’, ⁵⁹ democracies could not abuse their citizens.

However, such a view overlooks the possibility that the source of political abuse may be within the citizenry itself, in contrast to outside of and in opposition to it; more specifically, majorities can abuse minorities. While democracy theoretically entails that ‘the will of the people’ determines the decisions that concern collective life, Mill argues that this phrase is misleading, for it ‘practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority’. ⁶⁰ To put it another way, the danger of democracy is that it is easy to conflate the will of the part with the will of the whole. This conflation occurs as easily as it does due to majoritarianism, or the notion that the will of the majority is binding on all. Insofar as the ‘will of the people’ is exercised through elected individuals, Mill is pointing out that it is actually the power of majorities that is exercised through those whom they elect. As a result, it is not fully accurate to say that those who exercise power are accountable to the community, for this suggests that magistrates are accountable to every individual in the community. Rather, they are accountable ‘to the strongest party therein’, ⁶¹ and as a result, majorities, through their elected magistrates, can tyrannize minorities by enacting legislation that systematically discriminates against them. ⁶² Here, Mill is alluding to how easy it is to view the unity of the ultimate political decision as reflecting the unity of ‘the people’ when, in fact, ‘the people’ is composed of a diverse plurality of voices. Political decisions are not the result of unanimous consensus, but rather, of a procedure that honors the voices of the majority.

Akin to political majorities, which, through their elected officials, govern by passing laws that are binding on all, social majorities also ‘govern’, although not through legislation. In the same way that the political will of the majority can oppress minorities, the social will of the majority can also tyrannize outsiders, who take the form not of minorities, but rather of dissenting individuals – by imposing custom on them. Therefore, the relevant condition for tyranny, whether political or social, is structural: the presence of a majority and those who fall outside of it, whether as a minority group or as individual dissenters. Social majorities will seek to bind all members of a collective according to custom, including those who hold to dissenting beliefs and ways of life. ‘The majority’, Mill declares, ‘being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are…cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody.’ ⁶³ In other words, democratic society, through social majorities, tyrannizes over dissenting individuals by mandating that all abide by custom.

But how, exactly, do social majorities come into existence? According to Mill, it is due to egalitarian society, understood as a social structure with homogenous customs, which is the result of the collapse of a differentiated, hierarchical society. Power (both social and political) resides in those who have property and ‘powers and acquirements of mind’, ⁶⁴ and so, in the early stages of civilization, the small numbers of individuals who possess property and intelligence have political power, while the masses are intellectually and materially impoverished. However, over time, not only are property and intelligence more widely distributed, but individuals learn, by way of the division of labor, the value of cooperating with one another to reach common ends. This, combined with the role of newspapers in disseminating new ideas ⁶⁵ and facilitating increased communication between individuals, ‘carries home the voice of the many to every individual among them: by the newspaper each learns that others are feeling as he feels, and that if he is ready, he will find them also prepared to act upon what they feel’. ⁶⁶ These factors, combined, ‘enable the people on all decisive occasions to form a collective will, and render that collective will irresistible’. ⁶⁷ This, according to Mill, is how social and political power shifted from the few to the many, and marked the transition from a hierarchical order to an egalitarian one.

This transition is significant because it alters a society’s customs from being relatively heterogeneous to being homogenous. As Mill writes: ‘[T]he circumstances which surround different classes and individuals, and shape their characters, are daily becoming more assimilated. Formerly, different ranks, different neighborhoods, different trades and professions, lived in what might be called different worlds; at present, to a great degree in the same.’ ⁶⁸ Insofar as each class in a hierarchical society is defined by its own set of customs, such a society is marked by a plurality of norms, mores, tastes and habits that distinguish classes from one another. However, as hierarchical society began to give way to an egalitarian society, the class system broke down, resulting in customs being less differentiated and more homogenous. Society was no longer characterized by a plurality of customs, defined by the plurality of hierarchically ordered classes, but rather, by homogenous customs, or the customs held by the majority of the people. Individuals therefore no longer looked to the class of which they were a part to determine their customs, but rather, to everyone around them. Moreover, the norm of equality undercuts the exceptionalism of the upper classes as well as any institutional support for non-conformity, making the opinions of everyone a source of authority.

To be clear, Mill does not think that social majorities are necessarily tyrannical; at best, social majorities are a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for producing tyranny in democratic society. The key factor that makes it likely for social majorities to become tyrannical, however, is located in the nature of human beings to impose their own ways of thinking and acting on others. ‘The disposition of mankind,’ Mill declares, ‘whether as rulers or as fellow-citizens, to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others, is so energetically supported by some of the best and by some of the worst feelings incident to human nature, that it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power.’ ⁶⁹ In other words, the desire of individuals to impose their customs on everyone is not particular to democratic societies, for it is a constant part of human nature. However, under democratic society, the ‘want of power’ that restrained individuals in hierarchical societies dissolves, for individuals who are now equals can combine with one another to constitute a social majority that imposes its will, which takes the form of custom, on all. To put it differently, egalitarian societies empower individuals who want to act tyrannically into majorities that can act tyrannically. ⁷⁰

In order to demonstrate that the power of the social tyranny of majorities is akin to the political tyranny of majorities, Mill anthropomorphizes ‘society’ as though it is an agent that intentionally commits actions: ‘Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny.’ ⁷¹ Furthermore, society can ‘fetter the development, and if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own’. ⁷² It does not matter that social authority in terms of custom consists in the arbitrary preferences, or ‘the likings and dislikings of society, or of some powerful portion of it’, ⁷³ rather than in justified reasons; the point is that it still has a powerful effect on individuals. Furthermore, the power of social authority is derived from its appearance as natural; custom is ‘a second nature, but is continually mistaken for the first’. ⁷⁴ As a result, most individuals do not recognize custom for what it is: the majority’s set of contingent beliefs and actions that could have been otherwise. Moreover, to the extent that the ‘natural’ has connotations of not only being morally upright, but also constituting a moral obligation that takes the form of an external standard that all must obey, dissenters are characterized as ‘impious, immoral, even monstrous and contrary to nature’. ⁷⁵ The majority’s view of custom as morally binding on all also justifies tyrannizing dissenters into adopting custom. Conformists may see such tyranny as acceptable, for it is simply a way of enforcing an impartial moral obligation that ‘immoral’ dissenters are violating or failing to uphold. ⁷⁶ As a corollary, because conformists who constitute the majority see their own beliefs and ways of life as natural and therefore as morally upright, this reinforces their commitment to believing and acting as they do, for this is the very definition of thinking and acting morally. They have no reason to deviate from or question custom. The power of custom is therefore self-reinforcing: individuals who dare to dissent are compelled to assimilate to custom, while those who constitute the majority are encouraged to maintain their conformity to custom.

However, while social authority is just as powerful as political authority in its effects, Mill suggests that the nature of social authority is fundamentally different from that of political authority, and it is precisely the differences between the two kinds of authority that make checking the abuse of social authority more difficult than that of political authority. It is important to note that Mill uses the figures of the ‘ruler’, the ‘magistrate’ and the ‘public authorities’ as stand-ins for political power; the tyranny of the political majority, according to Mill, is typically expressed ‘through the acts of the public authorities’ ⁷⁷ and in emphasizing the need to limit political power, Mill argues that there needs to be protection ‘against the tyranny of the magistrate’. ⁷⁸ There are two points that we ought to pay attention to here. First, the tyranny of the political majority is carried out by particular individuals that occupy political office and are therefore easily distinguishable from those who are not rulers or magistrates. Second, political tyranny is exercised through positive actions. What is therefore significant is that ‘rulers’ ⁷⁹ and ‘magistrates’ ⁸⁰ and ‘public authorities’ ⁸¹ are particular individuals whom citizens can single out from crowds and hold responsible for committing certain actions. Political power can be checked, at least theoretically, because there are particular individuals – namely, those who exercise political power on behalf of citizens – who can be checked for certain actions.

However, Mill suggests that checking the power of social authority is more difficult than that of political authority, and the reason for this lies in the distinctions between the natures of the two kinds of authority. Unlike political authority, which is exercised by particular individuals, social authority is not exercised by a particular individual or even a group of individuals, but rather, by ‘society’, ‘prevailing opinion and feeling’ and ‘collective opinion’, ⁸² which are faceless, impersonal entities. As a result, the paradox of Mill’s use of ‘society’ is that although he refers to it as though it is an agent that intentionally commits actions, ‘society’ is not an agent like a magistrate that we can identify and hold responsible for certain intentions and actions. Social authority is faceless, and yet, it has tremendous power to shape the beliefs and actions of individuals. As such, social authority is much like political authority in its efficacy, and yet it is unlike political authority because to locate it in particular individuals is impossible and hence, to hold the abusers of social authority responsible is likewise impossible. And because social authority is disembodied, it cannot intend in the way that human beings who hold political office, intend. What this means is that social authority does not need to intend to tyrannize in order to have a tyrannical effect on dissenting individuals. ⁸³

In other words, social tyranny occurs simply by majorities portraying certain beliefs and actions as natural, necessary, morally upright and, therefore, binding on all. The key to maintaining social tyranny – that is, a world where social majorities stigmatize dissenters for their unconventional beliefs and ways of life, and where conformists who constitute the social majority continue to conform – is to portray it as though no other world is possible, both morally and practically. This means that custom holds the power that it does not only through the ways that individuals speak and act, but also through individuals refraining from speaking and acting. More specifically, when certain individuals who may not necessarily believe in the validity of such views fail to speak out against it – that is, they fail to propose that such views are perhaps not ‘natural’ and therefore contingent, and that other ways of thinking and living are possible – they perpetuate existing customs and, therefore, perpetuate a tyranny that they may not intend. Social tyranny through custom requires not just active perpetrators, but also complicit collaborators who can collaborate and hence uphold the tyranny of the majority without doing much of anything or even being aware of their role. As such, social tyranny occurs as effectively as it does precisely because – and not simply in spite of the fact that – there are no particular beings to blame or hold responsible.

And while Mill’s initial critique of custom lies in the fact that it is a tool of social domination by majorities with respect to individual dissenters, his critique runs much deeper and hence, is more radical than it initially appears. The social tyranny of custom is not simply problematic because it deters individuals outside of the majority from openly dissenting; rather, it is problematic because it continuously entrenches itself as natural, which entails that conformists within the majority are content to assume ready-made beliefs and ways of life, instead of working out their own beliefs and ways of life for themselves. In having individuals conform to custom, ‘society…save[s] its members the trouble of forming their own character’. ⁸⁴ Mill makes it clear that to have character does not consist in ‘fitting [oneself]…into any of the small number of moulds which society provides’, ⁸⁵ but rather, consists in actively working to shape one’s beliefs and actions, and hence, one’s own character. And because one’s character is the product of one’s effort and work, and not something that one automatically possesses, then to the extent that conformists blindly accept their own ways of life as natural and morally upright, conformists undermine their own ability to reflectively think and act for themselves. In short, the tyranny of the social majority is problematic not only because it stifles dissenting individuals, but also because it harms those in the majority by convincing them that it is acceptable to simply adopt custom and refrain from interrogating their own beliefs and ways of life. Or to put it differently, the tyranny of the social majority is pernicious because it undermines the individualities of all, not just the individualities of dissenters.

However, if democratic society produces the social tyranny that corrupts individuality, which is an important aspect of human flourishing, it is not the only factor to worry about. Mill also fears other factors, such as commercial society, that he sees as corroding the moral and intellectual virtues. While Mill does, at times, applaud ‘the spirit of commerce’, citing it as ‘one of the greatest instruments not only of civilization…but of improvement and culture’, ⁸⁶ he is clear that commercial society poses significant dangers, emphatically declaring: ‘The most serious danger to the future prospects of mankind is in the unbalanced influence of the commercial spirit.’ ⁸⁷ While Mill commends the energy with which individuals ardently pursue their desires, he worries that the energy is directed towards the wrong objects, and that this misdirection corrupts both the moral and intellectual virtues. ⁸⁸ Mill writes:

The private money-getting occupation of almost every one is more or less a mechanical routine; it brings but few of his faculties into action, while its exclusive pursuit tends to fasten his attention and interest exclusively upon himself, and upon his family as an appendage of himself: making him indifferent to the public, to the more generous objects and the nobler interests, and, in his inordinate regard for his personal comforts, selfish and cowardly. ⁸⁹

However, Mill makes it clear that there is nothing inevitable about the stunted intellectual and moral virtues of mankind, but rather, these stunted virtues are the product of particular institutions. Specifically, commercial society has structured the world in ways that discourage complex forms of thought that take the good of others into account; as Mill writes: ‘Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the generality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on things which tend only to personal advantage.’ ⁹² Insofar as institutions shape the activities of individuals, which then shape their thoughts and concerns, we ought to construct the right kinds of institutions to produce intellectually and morally virtuous citizens. Such a view about the relationship between institutions and individual character leads Mill to declare: ‘The deep rooted selfishness which forms the general character of the existing state of society, is so deeply rooted, only because the whole course of institutions tends to foster it.’ ⁹³ If commercial society encourages individuals to focus all of their energies on activities that corrode their moral and intellectual virtues, then other institutions can be constructed to supply these virtues. One such institution is democracy, understood in its structured, participatory form, and I now turn to Mill’s argument for how democratic political participation, structured by the Hare Method and the open ballot, cultivates the intellectual and moral virtues.

III: The promise of democratic political participation

Mill’s argument for how structured democratic political participation cultivates the intellectual and moral virtues proceeds in two parts. First, he argues for the superiority of democracy over monarchy and aristocracy on the basis of a wider range of persons that will have the potential to cultivate the virtues. Second, he shows that while the ability to participate is necessary, it is not sufficient for cultivating the virtues. What is also required is for democratic participation to be structured by certain institutions, each which explicitly aims at the development of a particular virtue. Specifically, the Hare Method aims at the development of intellectual virtue, and the open ballot aims at the development of moral virtue. To put it another way, the first part of Mill’s argument concerns who can be cultivated, while the second part concerns how those who can be cultivated, will be cultivated. ⁹⁴

In order to judge democracy as superior to monarchy and aristocracy, Mill articulates two purposes of government: first, as an ‘agency of national education’, ⁹⁵ government ought to promote the ‘general mental advancement of the community’; and second, as ‘a set of organized arrangements for public business’, ⁹⁶ it ought to ‘organize the moral, intellectual, and active worth already existing, so as to operate with the greatest effect on public affairs’. ⁹⁷ The first pertains to the government’s effect on the flourishing of citizens (which includes the intellectual, moral and practical virtues), while the second pertains to what Mill often calls ‘the practical business of government’. ⁹⁸ The practical business of government is the governing of our common life, which involves creating and executing property law, establishing judicial procedure and dealing with matters of taxation and public finance. ⁹⁹ Mill is clear that democracy best advances the first purpose, but that any form of government can fulfill the second, such that ‘the mode of conducting the practical business of government, which is best under a free constitution, would generally be best also in an absolute monarchy’. ¹⁰⁰ As such, the relevant difference between the best monarchy or aristocracy and the best democracy lies in its effects on the flourishing of its citizens. Mill therefore primarily evaluates political regimes according to the kinds of virtuous lives that are produced in the citizenry.

Mill prefers democracy over monarchy and aristocracy because it makes possible the cultivation of the intellectual and moral virtues in a wider range of persons than monarchy and aristocracy are able to do. More specifically, because participating in political life is the mechanism that cultivates the intellectual and moral virtues in citizens, regimes in which a greater range of persons are able to participate in political life will result in populations that are more intellectually and morally virtuous than regimes where political participation is restricted to one or the few.

But how exactly do democratic regimes generate the intellectual and moral virtues in a way that non-democratic regimes do not? To put it another way, what is the mechanism that connects the democratic nature of a regime to the cultivation of the intellectually and morally virtuous individual? Mill suggests that the locus of authority is significant in shaping the relations not only between the rulers and the ruled, but also between the ruled with respect to producing intellectually and morally virtuous citizens. Moreover, Mill identifies two mechanisms that connect the locus of political authority to the virtues. The first is that the prospect of action motivates thought, ‘for the only sufficient incitement to mental exertion…is the prospect of some practical use to be made of its results’. ¹⁰¹ More specifically, most individuals are motivated to think when the results of their thinking will have a practical effect. The second is that actions that take the good of others as their object cultivate a concern for others. As Mill declares: ‘The food of feeling is action: even domestic affection lives on voluntary good offices.’ ¹⁰² As a result, ‘[w]herever the sphere of action of human beings is artificially circumscribed, their sentiments are narrowed and dwarfed in the same proportion’. ¹⁰³ If certain actions provide a context in which to cultivate certain sentiments, then acting in ways that benefit others will enable individuals to cultivate a concern for others. Mill then applies these two mechanisms to monarchy and democracy to show why democracy is superior to monarchy.

The problem with monarchy, then, is that ‘all the collective interests of the people are managed for them, all the thinking that has relation to collective interests done for them, and in which their minds are formed by, and consenting to, this abdication of their own energies’. ¹⁰⁴ In other words, the defect of monarchy and aristocracy consists in the kind of individual it produces – one who is intellectually stunted and whose moral capacities are impoverished. Given Mill’s first premise that the prospect of action motivates thought, those who have no stake in political life – namely, citizens of monarchies and aristocracies – will not be sufficiently motivated to think about political matters, for they have no prospect of seeing their thoughts or concerns have an ‘outward effect’ ¹⁰⁵ on the terms that govern their collective existence. As a result, citizens of monarchies and aristocracies will suffer from stunted intellectual faculties. This is not to say that no individual under monarchy or aristocracy (aside from the monarch and the aristocrats) will cultivate his or her intellectual faculties, for Mill acknowledges that some exceptional individuals may be motivated to think about politics even in the absence of their ability to affect outcomes; there may be ‘a class of savants’ ¹⁰⁶ for whom thinking is its own pleasure, and bureaucrats ‘will be taught some empirical maxims of government and public administration’. ¹⁰⁷ However, for most people, ‘the only sufficient incitement to mental exertion…is the prospect of some practical use to be made of its results’, ¹⁰⁸ and as a result, the prospects for intellectual cultivation for ‘the public at large’ ¹⁰⁹ under monarchy are minimal.

In contrast, according to Mill, democracies encourage the development of intellectual faculties in ‘the public at large’ and as a result, they are superior to monarchy and aristocracy. Because democratic citizens have a stake in the governance of their collective life, such that their participation has an effect on the outcome, they are motivated to think about political matters, which therefore cultivate their intellectual faculties. Because there is little ‘in most men’s ordinary life to give any largeness either to their conceptions or to their sentiments’, ¹¹⁰ exercising one’s public duty offers individuals the opportunity to develop their faculties and apply them to a wide range of large-scale issues that affect an expansive range of persons. While work and family are not unworthy pursuits, as they ‘will call forth some amount of intelligence and practical ability within a certain narrow range of ideas’, ¹¹¹ they are activities that affect a narrower range of persons than politics, and as a result, they do not ‘introduce[.] the mind to thoughts or feelings extending beyond individuals’. ¹¹² And to the extent that one’s thoughts and feelings are narrowly directed towards family and work, individuals lack the opportunity to strengthen their intellectual faculties on a larger scale.

In order to demonstrate precisely how political activity enlarges the intellectual faculties of individuals, Mill views the relation between the non-voter and the voter as akin to that between ‘the audience in a court of justice’ ¹¹³ and ‘the twelve men in the jury-box’. ¹¹⁴ Because the verdict that jurors reach has a direct and practical effect on the case in question, jurors are motivated to think about complex issues that go beyond the simple nature of their work. The verdict of the jury is comparable with the suffrage in that both are ways by which citizens have a practical effect on a decision, and that those who lack the suffrage, like those in the audience in a court of justice, have no chance of affecting a decision. And because neither the audience in a courtroom nor citizens who lack the suffrage have the prospect of affecting the decision, ‘there is no necessity and very little inducement to them to come to any [opinion or decision]’. ¹¹⁵ In being given the political responsibility to serve on a jury, individuals are made into responsible beings and they are motivated to cultivate intellectual virtue.

Not only does the locus of political authority have implications for the cultivation of intellectual virtue, it also has implications for the cultivation of moral virtue. According to Mill’s second premise, namely, that action produces feeling, such that in acting for the good of others, one will come to care about others – citizens of monarchies and aristocracies have no political opportunities to act in ways that have the good of others as their object. As a result, they are deprived of opportunities to cultivate the appropriate moral sentiments towards their fellow citizens. ¹¹⁶ In having to do something for the interests of others, individuals will come to care about others. ‘Let a person have nothing to do for his country,’ Mill declares, ‘and he will not care for it.’ ¹¹⁷ Invoking the image of ‘a flock of sheep innocently nibbling the grass side by side’, ¹¹⁸ Mill suggests that a regime that demands nothing of its citizens with respect to public duty will divide and isolate citizens from one another, and therefore deprive them of opportunities to develop their moral virtue. Mill views acting for the public as a significant way to do this, such that in the absence of ‘this school of public spirit…scarcely any sense is entertained that private persons, in no eminent social situation, owe any duties to society, except to obey the laws and submit to the government’. ¹¹⁹ Democratic citizenship is not merely characterized by a vertical relationship of citizen obedience to the laws, but it is also marked by horizontal relations between citizens. While it is arguably plausible for individuals to cultivate moral virtue in non-political realms – for example, by engaging in charity work – the activity of democratic politics is importantly different in at least one way. Charity work is characterized by unequal relations, for it involves one party with greater resources alleviating the plight of those with fewer resources. It therefore operates in one direction, whereby one party gives and another receives. However, democratic politics involves equals who work together to build and establish a world in common, and as such, it requires that all engage in mutual giving and receiving. ¹²⁰ By being called on to apply impartial standards, each citizen takes into consideration the interests of a wide range of persons as opposed to simply advancing ‘his’ own partial interest. Through political participation, ‘he is made to feel that besides the interests which separate him from his fellow-citizens, he has interests which connect him with them’, ¹²¹ and as a result, he is ‘made to feel himself one of the public, and whatever is for their benefit to his benefit’. ¹²² As a ‘school of public spirit’, ¹²³ political participation alters how he relates to his fellow-citizens; he ‘learns to feel for and with his fellow citizens, and becomes consciously a member of a great community’. ¹²⁴ This contrasts with the private and commercial spheres where individuals do not pursue a common good, but rather, compete for goods, and as a result, see one another as rivals. Political life, on the other hand, consists in individuals participating in realizing the common good, and as a result, individuals view themselves and others as allies bound together in search of and in enacting the common good. ¹²⁵

In short, the activity of participating has a tendency to get citizens involved in common purposes and develop fellow feeling. It is important for citizens to cultivate both the intellectual and the moral virtues because the individual who possesses the former without the latter may employ his superior intellect to advance his private interests at the expense of the common good, while he who possesses the latter without the former is unable to successfully enact the common good that he intends. Democratic political participation therefore counters the detrimental effects of commercial society by educating and transforming human beings from being simple-minded and self-interested individuals into being intellectually engaged citizens who are concerned with the common good.

While democracy’s value consists in its potential, by way of political participation, to cultivate intellectually and morally virtuous beings in a wider range of persons than monarchy and aristocracy, Mill is clear that it is not simply a matter of participating at all that is significant, but rather, that citizens participate rightly. That is, they must participate in ways that encourage them to be impartial and to think about complex matters. If democracy is structured rightly, then it will counter the worst effects of commercial society; specifically, it will enlarge the minds of citizens beyond their commercial vocations and it will expand their moral sentiments beyond their private interests. However, in the absence of certain institutions that structure democracy to produce such effects, democracy will not only fail to cultivate the intellectual and moral virtues in its citizenry, but it will also translate the worst effects of commercial society into the political sphere. As a result, the relevant issue is not simply whether democracy is preferable to monarchy and aristocracy as a regime type, but also, what kinds of institutions are necessary for structuring democratic regimes in order to produce the intellectual and moral virtues. Mill therefore proposes the Hare Method of Representation that develops citizens’ intellectual virtue and the open ballot that develops citizens’ moral virtue.

Mill has multiple reasons for supporting the Hare Method of Representation; among them is that it counters the ‘low grade of intelligence in the representative body and in the popular opinions which control it’. ¹²⁶ By drawing the representatives of the less instructed majority into debate with the representatives of the more instructed minority, the Hare Method not only improves the general discourse of Parliament, but it also crucially cultivates the intellectual virtues of the majority representatives and the citizens who watch their representatives deliberate with one another.

Under existing institutional arrangements that existed in Mill’s time, candidates for political office were elected by a majority of voters in a constituency, leaving the views of the minority of voters unrepresented. The Hare Method was intended to correct for this lack of representation on behalf of minorities. Instead of requiring that candidates attain a straightforward majority of votes in order to be elected into political office, the Hare Method reconfigures the unit of representation to consist in a quota, determined by ‘taking averages, the number of voters being divided by the number of seats in the House’. ¹²⁷ Any candidate that attains the quota will therefore secure a seat in Parliament, and no more than the required votes for attaining the quota can be counted for a candidate. Moreover, citizens can rank-order multiple candidates on their ballot, such that if a citizen’s first-choice candidate fails to secure the quota, the citizen’s vote would be transferred to his second-choice candidate, and so on, until the vote counts for attaining a candidate’s quota.

An individual does not need the endorsement of a party in order to run as a candidate, nor are citizens required to vote for candidates put forth by their local party. Rather, any individual can run as a candidate for political office, and citizens can cast their votes for any candidate they wish. This primarily benefits citizens who are dissatisfied with their local choice of candidates, and who want to look to candidates outside of their district in order to be represented. This makes political office attainable for the ‘hundreds of able men of independent thought’ who, although lacking local influence, ‘have by their writings, or their exertions in some field of public usefulness, made themselves known and approved by a few persons in almost every district of the kingdom; and if every vote that would be given for them in every place could be counted for their election they might be able to complete the number of the quota’. ¹²⁸ The Hare Method therefore allows each individual to be represented by a candidate that he has chosen himself, and it makes possible the election of the very best candidates for political office – candidates who have no chance of being put forth and elected by their local constituencies.

The Hare Method is therefore an institution that, in the first instance, secures a public voice for the instructed minority of the population by way of the (instructed) representatives they elect. It therefore secures and makes visible a minority that existing electoral institutions threaten to render invisible. While it is certainly the case that majority representatives can outvote minority representatives on any given piece of legislation, Mill locates the influence of minority representatives at the level of deliberation. Describing majority representatives vis-à-vis minority representatives, Mill writes: ‘[T]hey [can] always outvote them, but they [will] speak and vote in their presence, and [be] subject to their criticism.’ ¹²⁹ When majority representatives disagree with minority representatives, majority representatives will be forced to give an account for their views – an account that, in the absence of those with whom they disagree, they ostensibly would not have to provide. And as majority representatives debate with minority representatives, ‘it would occasionally happen to them to be convinced that they were in the wrong’. ¹³⁰ As a result, the minds of majority representatives ‘would be inevitably raised by the influence of the minds with which they were in contact, or even in conflict’. ¹³¹ The influence of minority representatives will therefore cultivate not only the intellectual virtue of majority representatives, but also that of citizens who watch their representatives deliberate with one another.

In addition to the Hare Method that structures democratic politics to cultivate the citizen’s intellectual virtue, the open ballot structures democratic politics to cultivate the citizen’s moral virtue. The mere ability to vote is not sufficient for cultivating moral virtue, for there is nothing that stops citizens from voting to advance their private interests. It therefore matters how individuals conceptualize the vote, as well as the institutional mechanisms that support such a conceptualization: as a trust (as opposed to a right) instituted in the form of the open ballot (as opposed to the closed ballot). Specifically, the publicity of the open ballot will force citizens to justify their votes to others, discouraging them from voting according to their private interests.

Mill argues that citizens ought to conceptualize the vote as a trust or a duty, such that they vote according to what is in the public interest, as opposed to a right that they are free to exercise according to their private interests. One does not have a right to one’s vote, for no one is ‘expected to consult exclusively the public benefit in the use he makes of his house, or his three per cent stock, or anything to which he really has a right’. ¹³² This suggests that Mill sees the exercise of rights as primarily for one’s own interest, independent of the public interest. The vote as a duty, in contrast to a right, entails that one ought to vote according to what one believes to be the public good; one’s vote ‘has no more to do with his personal wishes than the verdict of a juryman’. ¹³³ It is for this reason that Mill argues that any individual who does not vote according to what he perceives to be the public interest, does not deserve to vote at all. Through conceptualizing the vote in this way, Mill makes it clear that it is not simply important that people are motivated to participate in public life, but rather, that they are motivated to participate in public life in the right way; that is, impartially. To vote as an instrumental means to advancing one’s private interest is not only an abuse of suffrage, but it is also akin to a despotic act, for it ‘awakens and nourishes in him the disposition to use a public function for his own interest, pleasure, or caprice; the same feelings and purposes, on a humbler scale, which actuate a despot and an oppressor’. ¹³⁴ To vote according to the public interest, on the other hand, ‘elevate[s] his mind…opening his heart to an exalted patriotism and the obligation of public duty’, ¹³⁵ cultivating the very impartiality that constitutes moral virtue.

However, this conceptualization of the vote as a public trust or duty requires institutional support, and it is for this reason that Mill advocates for the open ballot over the closed ballot. Whether the ballot is open or closed is significant not only because of the impression it conveys to the citizen about the purpose of one’s vote, but also because it is an institutional mechanism to promote such a view. The publicity of the open ballot entails that individuals are required to give an account of their vote to others. And because individuals are generally responsive to the desire for a good reputation among their fellow citizens, they are likely to have good grounds for voting the way they do; at the very least, the open ballot will discourage individuals from voting in ways that will incur condemnation by others – that is, according to one’s private interest. The open ballot will facilitate the ‘stimulus or the restraint derived from the opinion of our fellow-creatures’ ¹³⁶ and will therefore encourage individuals to care about the good of others and vote accordingly.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Mill is an ambivalent democrat because different dimensions of democracy corrupt and cultivate different aspects of human flourishing. More specifically, democratic society corrupts individuality, while democratic politics, rightly structured, cultivates the intellectual and moral virtues. To put it another way, if the problem that Mill identifies in On Liberty is that individuals care too much about what others think regarding matters where they should not, such that they fail to think and act according to their own judgement, then the problem at the heart of writings such as Considerations, Mill’s two reviews of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and Civilization is that individuals do not care enough about the interests of others, for their obsession with commerce turns them away from the public. In other words, the concern of individuals is misdirected. The individual in democratic modernity is concerned about the opinions of others on issues that do not affect him, and he is not nearly concerned enough about the interests of others on issues that do affect them. More specifically, Mill suggests that what ails individuals is servile conformity in non-political matters and the triumph of self-interest in political matters. ¹³⁷ While Mill is pessimistic about how democratic society corrupts individuality, he is optimistic that structured political participation will cultivate the intellectual and moral virtues.

At first glance, Mill’s solution to the ills of modern life seems straightforward. However, it depends on a clear distinction between matters that concern the interests of others (i.e. political matters that seek the common good) and those that do not (non-political matters in the pursuit of individuality). While this article is not the place to resolve the extensive debate among Mill scholars about the precise meaning and tenability of the distinction, the very existence of the debate, along with Mill’s complicated and perplexing view that some self-regarding acts can justifiably suffer penalties at the hands of others, ¹³⁸ suggests that the distinction is not as clear-cut as Mill would have us believe. As a result, it may not be as simple as reorienting our concerns from those that do not affect the interests of others to those that do, if only because it is not obvious which objects we ought to count as ‘self-regarding’ as opposed to ‘other-regarding’. What this suggests, then, is that Mill is an ambivalent democrat not only because different dimensions of democracy cultivate and corrupt different aspects of human flourishing, but also because the different aspects of human flourishing stand in tension with one another.

One particularly glaring instance where this difficulty is borne out is in Mill’s discussion of the open ballot. It is entirely understandable that the publicity of the open ballot is Mill’s way of making it more likely that citizens will, under the knowledge that they will have to justify their votes to their fellow citizens, vote according to the common good. However, while the publicity of the open ballot may discourage individuals from voting according to their private interest, it may also discourage them from voting in any manner that counters public opinion – namely, according to one’s individuality. In other words, Mill expects that public opinion will have a salutary effect in political matters such as voting, but generally views it negatively in non-political matters, particularly with respect to the cultivation of one’s individuality. ¹³⁹

Regardless of the real challenges to Mill’s description of and solution to the predicament that democracy poses for human flourishing, Mill’s evaluative approach is still instructive for us today, for it pushes us to think about the virtues that we intrinsically value, and to consider how our political institutions encourage or discourage them. Insofar as we are committed to the intrinsic value of certain virtues, this approach is necessary. It is also distinct from the approach adopted by most contemporary theorists who are interested in the relationship between politics and virtue in the form of civic virtue. ¹⁴⁰ The worry with solely thinking in terms of civic virtue is that it forecloses our ability to think critically about the ways that certain political commitments may or may not be conducive towards certain human virtues independently of the value of those virtues as being instrumentally functional for maintaining certain political orders. The realization that certain institutions corrupt certain virtues does not necessarily mean that we ought to discard those institutions, but it may require us to think carefully about alternative sources that can supply or cultivate those virtues.