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Mill Vs Burke
Topic Started: May 19 2006, 05:24 AM (76 Views)
cmoehle
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Chris - San Antonio TX
From Thoroughly Modern Mill: A utilitarian who became a liberal--but never understood the limits of reason
Quote:
 
May 20 sees the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Stuart Mill, the greatest exponent of 19th-century [sic, classical] liberalism, whose philosophy still dominates jurisprudence in the English-speaking world....

Mill famously referred to the Conservative Party as "the stupider party," he being, from 1865, a member of Parliament in the Liberal interest. And no doubt the average Tory MP was no match for the brain that had conceived the "System of Logic"--an enduring classic and Mill's greatest achievement. Yet Mill suffered from the same defect as his father. He never understood that wisdom is deeper and rarer than rational thought. He never understood that the intellect, which flies so easily to its conclusions, relies on something else for its premises. Those [sicclassical[/i], classical] conservatives who upheld what Mill called "the despotism of custom" against the "experiments in living" advocated in "On Liberty" were not stupid simply because they recognized the limits of the human intellect. They were, on the contrary, aware that freedom and custom are mutually dependent, and that to free oneself from moral norms is to surrender to the state. For only the state can manage the ensuing disaster.


Corrections mine. There needs to be a distinction between parties and principles.

My argument: If "freedom and custom are mutually dependent", then neither the classical liberal Mill nor the classical conservative Burke were correct. To surrender to the state is no better than free experiment.
Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
--Barry Goldwater
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