1. Mill on the value of individuality
Michael Lacewing
© Michael Lacewing

2. Mill’s theories Mill is a utilitarian, but a sophisticated one:
The pleasures of thought, feeling, and imagination are central to human happiness.
‘I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a progressive being’.
These interests include freedom, the pursuit of truth, and the development of individual character.

3. Utility, freedom and individuality
Connect freedom and individuality:
‘the only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way’.
Connect individuality and utility:
‘the free development of individuality is one of the leading essentials of well-being’.

4. The importance of individuality
Individual utility:
autonomy is a key component of happiness.
Social utility: the ‘experiments of living’ individuals conduct are
a means of proving the worth of different modes of living; and
enable the genius of some people to introduce new good ideas in society.

5. Is liberty so central to utility?
But must we have as much autonomy as the Harm Principle gives us?
Not all societies that limited freedom were stagnant.
Does liberty ensure utility through the growth of rationality and knowledge of what is truly good?
However, these points leave the importance of individuality untouched.
Frederick the Great
of Prussia

6. Social tyranny
Tyranny is no longer the rulers dominating the people, because the people rule.
But the people who rule, even in a democracy, are not the people who are ruled: there is a majority and minority. The new danger is tyranny of the majority.

7. Social tyranny and individuality
Through socially-endorsed preferences and ways of living, disapproval and offence, ‘it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself’.