The Spirit of the Age by Mill - Book Report/Review Example

Critique of John Stuart Mill’s The Spirit of the Age Essay Introduction The purpose of this paper is to critique John Stuart Mill’s theory of authority thoroughly discussed in his essay The Spirit of the Age. It is widely known in the field of political philosophy that the concept of authority is debatable and puzzling. It is thus very important to stress in the beginning that Mill was interested in authority in a very particular way. Specifically, he was interested in the ‘submissiveness’ of certain people to the political and moral convictions of others (Mill, 1859). In other words, Mill was interested in relying on or having faith in authority, or, more specifically, trusting the ideas of other people although the follower does not understand the specific justifications for such ideas, and certain traits of the individual followed, like his religious beliefs or social status, on account of which his ideas are accepted by the follower as trustworthy. Critiquing The Spirit of the Age When an individual believes in an opinion on authority, he is viewed by Mill to be abandoning his own opinion as to the credibility of that opinion due to respect to the opinion of another person. Mill was hence interested in the concept of authority in the area of belief; and since the writing of The Spirit of the Age, Mill performed a methodical process of presenting an explanation of authority quite embedded into his own arguments in the field of political philosophy. The Spirit of the Age held the original declaration of Mill’s principle of authority. It was also, as discerned from his essay, his original version of the utilitarian political philosophy and morality. It held the original explanation of his ‘new opinions’, which are those created by Mill after the well-publicized mental problem that had made him discontented with the instructions and arguments of his ‘first instructors’ (Mill, 1859). The Spirit of the Age can therefore be seen as being situated at, or close to, the start of the topic—his continued attempt to modify utilitarianism. Analysis of his theory of authority is hence necessarily part of such bigger attempt; and a main purpose of such an analysis should be to look for the reasons why he at first engaged in this revisionary activity in the discipline of political philosophy by creating a theory of authority. The Spirit of the Age indirectly represents an ultimate deviation from the utilitarian theory of Jeremy Bentham, which views ‘utility’ as a decision or action which supports or upholds the highest level of happiness (Bentham, 1843). Mill expresses this objection to Bentham’s utilitarianism in this essay. He, specifically, challenged Bentham’s notion of government and man, claiming that it does not consider personal development and disregards the risks of democracy. He argues here that ignorant biases rule and nobody respects the authority of the educated. Nevertheless, this is the current situation and the problem is how to overcome it. Mill is not trying to improperly malign people’s intellect; he claims, “I yield to no one in the degree of intelligence of which I believe them to be capable” (Mill, 1831, para 10). However, most people will not ever have the necessary freedom to carry out the intellectual labor needed to determine moral truth or to explore the proofs through which these truths are determined. Mill does not support a mindless, unquestioning obedience to authority. All individuals can look at and scrutinize the political, social, and moral knowledge or truths developed by specialists; in short, they can familiarize themselves with the substantiation of the truths which are introduced to them. However, there are boundaries to their capability to learn, and respect to the instructed is still important. As stated by Mill, “Let him learn what he can, and as well as he can—still however bearing in mind, that there are others who probably know much with which he not only is unacquainted, but of the evidence of which, in the existing state of his knowledge, it is impossible that he should be a competent judge” (Mill, 1831, para 11). In other words, the learned follower should respect experts or those with specialized knowledge. Mill believes that it will be for the greater good if the evidence of the social and moral knowledge of the highest value to people is revealed to the people. His goal is educated, not unquestioning, obedience. The main benefit of moral truth is the authority of sufficiently informed, educated minds, which is entirely human. The lifetime goal of Mill is already widely known to his audience. Yet, Mill’s tough justification of the importance of authority would refer to old religious authority. Mill therefore disagrees that the needed authority in social and moral philosophy is alive today. More especially, he clarifies that the lack of this form of authority is typical of an era of chaotic or disordered change (Nash et al., 2001). Mill is obviously talking about traditional religious beliefs. The Spirit of the Age is an important manual to the understanding of his written works. It shows both the determination of his goal to promote the positivist era, described in clear contrast to the West’s old theological belief, and the strength of his dedication to the transformation or change of humankind for a divine God. The strong ambition of Mill to build a modern version of the medieval religious authority, although associated with his political goals, was, though, largely came from what has been identified as his primary goal—the substitution of a religious or spiritual with an entirely human point of view and morality. So as to allow the creation of the new world of nonreligious or positivist utilitarianism-- the attainment of moral power—the formation of a new religious authority—was vital (Mill, 1859). Mill dedicated his thoughts to that goal. Obviously, all of this is very much in contrast to the earlier image of Mill as the defender of individual liberty and individualism—an image which is, in numerous regards, confusing. In The Spirit of the Age, Mill clearly shows that religious authority is the power to create and influence the ideas and faith of the people according to the new and greater human morality he aspired to create and promote. In The Spirit of the Age, it is obvious that Mill considered freedom of expression and freedom of speech as a crucial way to allow the popular influence and total success of positivism, which is to get rid of the traces of the metaphysical and religious human consciousness (Nash et al., 2001). It is obvious from the essay that Mill wants to bring about what he believed as the suspended course of social and political revolution, and in order to achieve this, theological bases of the traditional order must be ended. Positivism, as discussed in The Spirit of the Age, is identified by its disagreement with every metaphysical and religious theories, structures, and methods, viewed by Mill as the leftovers of a long-gone period. Its main purpose was to put an end to the West’s theological approach—as well as its outcome, the metaphysical view of natural law and natural rights (Nash et al., 2001). Mill believes that a positive ethics was totally the same as nonreligious utilitarianism. Conclusion In The Spirit of the Age, basically, Mill supports the downfall of the old aristocracy and the advance of democracy ruled by an ‘aristocracy of intellect’. The major subject of his Spirit of the Age is his main belief about his own age, which, for him, is an ‘age of transition’. It is important to determine, not only how Mill embraced such idea of history, but how it influenced his view of religious and political changes and his part in them. References Bentham, J. (1843). The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number. Retrieved from http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1999#lf0872-09_head_006 Mill, J.S. (1831, January 9). The Spirit of the Age. Retrieved from http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/256#lf0223-22_label_1091 Mill, J.S. (1859). Of the Limits to the Authority of Society over the Individual. Retrieved from http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/233#lf0223-18_label_691 Nash, T. et al. (2001). When We are Free. Michigan, USA: Northwood University Press. Read More