Week 2 Seminar Reading

For anybody struggling to understand the seminar reading, I have found a fantastic source that simplifies it and makes it a lot easier to understand!

Also check out http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/onliberty/section1.rhtml

JS Mill- On Liberty (Introduction)
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." — John Stuart Mill, Essay on Liberty.

In this essay Mill also warns of a second danger to liberty, which democracies are prone to, namely, the tyranny of the majority. In a representative democracy, if you can control the majority (and get them to vote for, and elect, your candidates) then you can control everyone (because your candidates, once "democratically elected", will pass whatever laws are needed for this, as was done by Hitler's agents in the 1930s in Nazi Germany and seems to be happening today in the U.S.A.).
Here's what Mill writes in the Introduction to On Liberty about the tyranny of the majority:
Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. 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 more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to 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. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs as protection against political despotism. — On Liberty, The Library of Liberal Arts edition, p.7.

http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/jsmill.htm

Mary Wollstonecraft- A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women
Chapter IV

CHAPTER 4OBSERVATIONS ON THE STATE OF DEGRADATION TO WHICH WOMAN IS REDUCED BY VARIOUS CAUSES.That woman is degraded is, I think, clear. The power of generalizing ideas, of drawing comprehensive conclusions from individual observations, is the only acquirement for an immortal being that deserves the name of knowledge. Without it, where is the store laid up to clothe the soul when it leaves the body? This power has not only been denied to women; but writers have insisted that it is inconsistent with their sexual character.The grand source of female folly and vice has ever appeared to me to arise from narrowness of mind. Pleasure is the business of a woman's life, according to the present modification of society, and while it continues to be so, little can be expected from such weak beings. Exalted by their inferiority (this sounds like a contradiction) they constantly demand homage as women.Ah! why do women, I write with affectionate solicitude, condescend to receive a degree of attention and respect from strangers? Confined in cages, like the feathered race, they have nothing to do but to plume themselves, and stalk with mock-majesty from perch to perch. The passions of men have thus placed women on thrones; and, till mankind become more reasonable, it is to be feared that women will avail themselves of the power which they attain with the least exertion.Lewis the XIVth spread factitious manners and flattered women by a puerile attention to the whole sex. A king is always a king, and a woman always a woman: his authority and her sex, ever stand between them and rational converse. With a lover, I grant she should be so, and her sensibility will naturally lead her to endeavour to excite emotion, not to gratify her vanity but her heart. This I do not allow to be coquetry, it is the artless impulse of nature, I only exclaim against the sexual desire of conquest, when the heart is out of the question.This desire is not confined to women; "I have endeavoured," says Lord Chesterfield, "to gain the hearts of twenty women, whose persons I would not have given a fig for." The libertine who in a gust of passion, takes advantage of unsuspecting tenderness, is a saint when compared with this cold-hearted rascal.I lament that women are systematically degraded by receiving trivial attentions. I scarcely am able to govern my muscles, when I see a man start with eager solicitude to lift a handkerchief, or shut a door, when the LADY could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two.Men, in their youth, are prepared for professions, and marriage is not considered as the grand feature in their lives; whilst women, on the contrary, have no other scheme to sharpen their faculties. To rise in the world, and have the liberty of running from pleasure to pleasure, they must marry advantageously, and to this object their time is sacrificed, and their persons often legally prostituted.Yet, novels, music, poetry and gallantry, all tend to make women the creatures of sensation. It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion.I am fully persuaded, that we should hear of none of these infantine airs, if girls were allowed to take sufficient exercise and not confined in close rooms till their muscles are relaxed and their powers of digestion destroyed. "Educate women like men," says Rousseau , "and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us." This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.In the same strain have I heard men argue against instructing the poor. "Teach them to read and write," say they, "and you take them out of the station assigned them by nature." Ignorance is a frail base for virtue!In the regulation of a family, in the education of children, understanding is particularly required: strength both of body and mind. Now, from all the observation that I have been able to make, women of sensibility are the most unfit for this task, because they will infallibly, carried away by their feelings, spoil a child's temper. The management of the temper, the first and most important branch of education, requires the sober steady eye of reason; a plan of conduct equally distant from tyranny and indulgence; yet these are the extremes that people of sensibility alternately fall into; always shooting beyond the mark.Polygamy is another physical degradation; and a plausible argument for the custom is drawn from the well-attested fact, that in the countries where it is established, more females are born than males. Forster, after observing that of the two sexes amongst animals, the most vigorous and hottest constitution always prevails, and produces its kind; he adds,- "If this be applied to the inhabitants of Africa, it is evident that the men there, accustomed to polygamy, are enervated by the use of so many women, and therefore less vigorous; the women on the contrary, are of a hotter constitution... and thus the generality of children are born females."The necessity of polygamy, therefore, does not appear; yet when a man seduces a woman, it should I think, be termed a LEFT-HANDED marriage, and the man should be LEGALLY obliged to maintain the woman and her children. The woman who is faithful to the father of her children demands respect, and should not be treated like a prostitute; though I readily grant, that if it be necessary for a man and woman to live together in order to bring up their offspring, nature never intended that a man should have more than one wife.A woman who has lost her honour, imagines that she cannot fall lower, and as for recovering her former station, it is impossible; prostitution becomes her only refuge. This, however, arises, in a great degree, from the state of idleness in which women are educated, always taught to look up to man for a maintenance, and to consider their persons as the proper return for his exertions to support them.In tracing the causes that in my opinion, have degraded woman, I not laid any great stress upon the example of a few women (Sappho, Eloisa, Mrs. Macaulay, the Empress of Russia, Madame d'Eon, etc). These, and many more, may be reckoned exceptions; and, are not all heroes, as well as heroines, exceptions to general rules? I wish to see women neither heroines nor brutes; but reasonable creatures.

http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/wollstonecraft.htm