Troubling appropriations: JS Mill, liberalism, and the virtues of uncertainty
| Author | Menaka Philips |
| Published date | 01 January 2019 |
| Date | 01 January 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1474885116631201 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2019, Vol. 18(1) 68–88
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885116631201
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Article
Troubling appropriations:
JS Mill, liberalism, and the
virtues of uncertainty
Menaka Philips
Department of Political Science, Tulane University, USA
Abstract
Described as the ‘exemplary liberal’, John Stuart Mill is employed to support a dizzying
array of different, even competing visions of liberalism. That he has been so widely
appropriated is certainly a result of the plural perspectives and tensions embedded in
Mill’s political writings. Yet, while Mill scholars have generally been attuned to these
tensions, contemporary critics of liberalism have been less careful in their uses of his
work. Mill is used as an archetype of liberalism, and is often depicted as a less complex
thinker than is justified. He is now a popular target in debates concerning the dilemmas
of liberal individualism, and the inadequacies of liberal approaches to culture, harm, and
to progress in the context of empire. Such studies present Mill as a thinker driven by
ideological certainty, whereas he is more appropriately regarded as someone moved by
political uncertainty. Drawing on his Autobiography, I recover Mill’s appreciation for the
uncertainties of political thought and action to provide a more complex, and capacious
view of Mill’s work than is allowed in contemporary studies of liberalism. My examin-
ation thus troubles those contemporary appropriations, and suggests that scholarly
focus on liberalism can unduly restrict interpretive work in political theor y.
Keywords
Liberalism, JS Mill, individuality, culture, harm, progress, interpretation, uncertainty
Introduction
In the discipline of political science, for which debates about the meaning and
merits of liberalism are increasingly central (Bell, 2014), John Stuart Mill’s con-
tinued popularity is hardly surprising. Regarded by many to be the paradigmatic
philosopher of liberalism (Collini, 1977), Mill has become almost synonymous with
the term (Urbinati, 2002: 203). From questions about the ‘liberal individual’,
Corresponding author:
Menaka Philips, Department of Political Science, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, TulaneUniversity, 316
Norman Mayer Building, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA.
Email: mphilip1@tulane.edu
to examinations of liberal theories of empire – scholars see in Mill a ready source of
material to deploy. For some, his work outlines the socially embodied quality of
liberal theories of character, or the value-pluralist sensibilities of liberalism (Ball,
2000; Misra, 2012); for others, conversely, he defines the abstract nature of liberal
citizenship, and the Western cultural norms that hide beneath liberalism’s preten-
sions to universalism (Brown, 2006; Mehta, 1997; Mahmood, 2005). However, Mill
is read, he is inevitably read as a representative of liberalism. And so, perhaps
ironically, a thinker who was once described as being innately suspicious of ideas
(Whewell, 1866) is now singularly attached to the philosophical idea of the modern
age.
This article investigates how that attachment has influenced the appropriation of
Mill’s thought by contemporary scholars. Though Mill’s works have certainly
contributed to the liberal tradition, the motivations driving scholarly examinations
of Mill as a representative of that tradition have become troublesome. Now
emerged is a practice of calling upon Mill to substantiate scholarly investigations
of ‘liberalism’, an idea itself increasingly associated with ‘whatever aspect of mod-
ernity or western societies one happen[s] to dislike’ (Levy, 2015). This practice
creates an interpretive dilemma where appropriations of Mill by contemporary
scholars prime particular elements of his texts to fit whatever discussion of liber-
alism they intend to pursue. And indeed, this practice has generated some perplex-
ing, and contradictory interpretations of Mill on various questions: Is he an
abstract individualist (MacKinnon, 1989), or a closet apologist for social conform-
ity (Souffrant, 2000)? Is he a cultural relativist (Himmelfarb, 1974), or a cultural
universalist (Mahmood, 2005)?
Curiously, efforts to capture Mill within ideological narratives stand in distinct
contrast to the tradition of Mill scholarship that pays attention to his more complex
intellectual biography. Scholars in that tradition, like John Robson, Nicholas Capaldi,
and Richard Ashcraft repeatedly highlight Mill’s non-dogmatic mode of thinking. As
they note, Mill’s many-sided approach to argument, his rejection of absolutist claims,
and his recognition of the fallibilist quality of social and political knowledge all
coalesce to form a thinker driven by an ‘unceasing play of thought about ideas and
institutions’ (Robson, 1968: 85; see also Ashcraft, 1998 ; Capaldi, 2004).
Somewhere along the line, however, Mill’s self-described intellectual eclecticism,
and the observations of scholars that variously attended to it have become discon-
nected from contemporary deployments of Mill as the exemplary liberal. Thus,
despite warnings that attempts to trap Mill within narrow ideological labels will
always be upset by his many-sided approach to argument (Reeves, 2007), Mill is
increasingly tangled up in efforts to do exactly that.
This is no accident, as it reflects the extent to which political theory has become
saturated with inquiries into ‘liberalism’ and the ‘liberal subject’ (Gunnell, 1988: 84).
Reconnecting an account of Mill’s intellectual development with contemporary uses
of his work will expose the ways in which scholarly preoccupations with liberalism
have problematically conditioned appropriations of Mill’s thought. In doing so,
I aim to bring us back to a thinker who was inspired by the provisional nature of
political claims, and an experimental approach to political problems.
Philips 69
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