Chapter 2: On the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
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-         Silencing opinion held by someone robs posterity & existing generation. ‘If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose… the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.’

-         Say opinion to be suppressed may be true – ‘To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. … All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility’ – have no authority to decide the question for mankind, & exclude others from means of judging. After all, ‘every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd;’.

-         (Definition of the Assumption of Infallibility: ‘it is not the feeling sure of a doctrine… . It is the undertaking to decide the question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary side’).

-         Possible Objection 1: Cos judgement may be used erroneously, does that mean we can’t use it at all? To prohibit what we think pernicious not claiming exemption to error, but fulfilling duty incumbent on us/them, though fallible, of acting on conscientious conviction: if never to act on our opinions because they might be wrong, we’d leave our interests uncared for. We shouldn’t allow doctrines we think dangerous to mankind to scatter unrestrained.

-         Mill’s Dismissal: ‘There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation’. It’s the complete liberty of contradicting & disproving our opinion which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action, and humans can have no rational assurance of being right on any other terms.

-         We need discussion as well as experience to rectify our mistakes. Our ability to discern & judge what’s right/wrong, & the conclusions thus formed can only be relied upon by keeping our minds open to criticisms: ‘The steady habit of correcting & completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others… is the only stable foundation for just reliance on it’. Can be surer of propositions if every opportunity given to challenge them and these attempts fail – e.g. Netwtonian science – wouldn’t feel so assured of its truth if not permitted to question it).

-         Possible Objection 2: Some beliefs are, it is alleged, useful/indispensable to human well-being, and so gov. should seek to defend them, not on grounds of their possible truth, but on grounds of their usefulness (utility?).

-         Mill’s Dismissal: ’the assumption of infallibility is merely shifted from one point to another. The usefulness of an opinion is itself a matter of opinion: as disputable, as open to discussion, and requiring discussion as much, as the opinion itself’. Also ‘The truth of an opinion is part of its utility’.

-         Some Example of Assumption of Infallibility: Socrates, Jesus: (many who shudder would have done same – not bad men, but possessed >full measure of moral/religious & patriotic feelings of time & people.) Marcus Aurelius, persecuted Christianity: felt it undermined belief & reverence for received divinities (keep Empire together) & cos didn’t believe what he’d heard (story of crucified God): assumption of infallibility on two levels.

-         Possible Objection 3: persecution is an ordeal through which truth ought to pass, so it does not matter if ‘heretics’ are persecuted – it won’t do the truth any harm.

-         Mill’s Dismissal: ‘People who defend this mode of treating benefactors, cannot be supposed to set much value on the benefit;’. Dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution refuted by experience: ‘the Reformation broke out at least twenty times before Luther, and was put down.’ Persecution always succeeded, save where heretics too strong to be effectually persecuted. General advantage of truth; if extinguished, over time people will rediscover it or when persecution abates it will come out again.

-         If punishments only social, for all ‘but those whose pecuniary circumstances make them independent of the good will of the people, opinion, on this subject, is as efficacious as law’. For those with means & desire no favour from public or gov. powers only ill-thought/ spoken of to fear – should be able to bear this.

-         The Loss to Mankind of no Freedom of Speech: Social intolerance roots out no opinions, but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from any active effort for their diffusion – continue to smoulder in narrow circles of thinking. In such cases ‘free & daring speculation on the highest subjects, is abandoned’ and ‘mental development cramped’ – not only imp for great thinkers with timid characters, but freedom of thinking also ‘indispensable, to enable average human beings to attain the mental stature which they are capable of.’. In an atmos. of mental slavery you can’t have an intellectually active people. High scale of mental activity (in Euro 3 periods: times immediately following the Reformation, 2^nd half 18^th century, Germany Goethe-Fichtean period.) – ‘Every single improvement which has taken place in the human mind or in institutions [in Europe] can be traced to one or other of them’.

-         Say the Received Opinion is true: ‘if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as dead dogma, not a living truth’ (otherwise don’t know the parts of argument which explain and justify, can’t defend yourself & belief will yield at slightest semblance of an argument). Need to know arguments vs. your position, not just those for it + need to hear them from someone who actually believes them, not just for the sake of dismissal – do justice to arguments. Must know objections to argument in most plausible and persuasive form – otherwise won’t possess portion of the truth which removes that difficulty. Otherwise, conclusions might be true, but might be false for all you know (says 99/100 ‘educated’ men like this). ‘How can the answer be known to be satisfactory, if the objectors have no opportunity of showing that it is satisfactory?’. (Cat. Church – allows priests access to heretical books, in order to answer them – more culture, but not more freedom, than laity).

-         If truth not discussed: ‘not only the grounds of the opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the meaning of the opinion itself’. Otherwise, ‘the shell and husk only of the meaning is retained, the finer essence being lost’. Almost all ethical doctrines & religious creeds. Expatiates on Christianity: whilst struggle – full of vitality. Now: ‘Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post, as soon as there is no enemy in the field’. Christians now: give homage to the Christian creed, but real allegiance to interests & suggestions of worldly life.

-         A Possible Objection: Does that mean that an absence of unanimity is an indispensable condition of true knowledge? Is it necessary that some part of mankind persist in error, to enable any to realise the truth? Does a proposition cease to be true once it is generally received?

-         Mill’s Dismissal: cessation of serious controversy nec for consolidation of opinion. Suggests Socratic dialectics – help to attain a stable belief, resting on ‘a clear apprehension both of the meaning if doctrines and of their evidence’.

-         When (as is most frequently the case) an opinion partly true and partly false: e.g. 18^th cent: Rousseau hit at received opinion – though received opinion ‘nearer’ to the truth than Rousseau, he forced ’its elements to recombine in a better form and with additional ingredients’. (e.g. supplied lots of truths wanting in popular opinion: e.g. superior worth of simplicity of life). Opinions favourable to democ. & arisctoc., property & equality, sociality & individuality etc… Unless ‘expressed with equal freedom , and enforced and defended with equal talent and energy, there is no chance of both elements obtaining their due’. It is whichever one happens to be in the minority at a particular place and time which deserves to be encouraged and countenanced – opinions which represent at that time ‘neglected interests, the side of human well-being in danger of getting less than its fair share’. But notes: ‘Truth, in the great practical concerns of life, is so much a question of the reconciling and combining of opposites, that very few have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment with an approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the rough process of a struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners’.

-         Admits that freest discussion tends not to cure tendency of all opinions to become sectarian, but actually heightened thereby. ‘But it is not on the impassioned partisan, it is on the calmer and more disinterested bystander, that this collision of opinions works its salutary effect.’ (Yes – but how many people are actually like this?). Says there’s always hope when people forced to listen to both sides; it’s when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices. Says that there are few mental attributes rarer than ‘that judicial faculty which can sit in intelligent judgement between two sides of a question, of which only one is represented by an advocate before it,’ that truth only has a chance if both sides gives, and gets, a fair and quality hearing. (But some discussions: e.g. foxhunting – tendency to get sectarian: are his hopes of standards & style of debate – Socratic – and his implicit assumption that most are open minded – both excessively idealistic/unrealistic/mistaken?).

-         Recapitulation: 4 distinct grounds why freedom of though & expression of opinion nec to mental well-being of mankind ‘on which all their other well-being depends’.

-         1. To silence an opinion (that may ’for aught we can certainly know, be true’) is to assume our own infallibility.

-         2. Silenced opinion v often contains a portion of the truth, ‘and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.’

-         3. If received opinion is whole truth: lack of vigorous debate – held as prejudice, ‘with little comprehension or feeling on rational grounds’. And also

-         4. The meaning of the doctrine itself might be lost/enfeebled/deprived of its vital effect on character and conduct (become mere dogma).

-         On those who say that, ‘that the free expression of all opinions should be permitted, on condition that the manner be temperate, and do not pass the bounds of fair discussion’: mentions impossibility of fixing such a boundary – if argument forceful, bound to upset. Admits that arguing sophistically/suppressing facts/misstate elements of case/misrepresent other side v. bad. – but done continually & sometimes in good faith – so rarely possible to stamp misrep. as morally culpable, still less poss. to interfere through law. Invective/sarcasm/personality etc. usually used by prev opinion but decried when used by countervailing opinion. If counters use it – deters no-one from prev, but if used by prev, really does deter people from taking counter view. Says it’s obvious that law & authority have no business here (?) but opinion should have a role, though should be case by case, fair, & not prejudiced to one side or the other. Admits it’s often violated, but that many controversialists observe and/or strive for this morality of public discussion.

Other Notes in this Category

1. Chapter 1: Introductory
2. Chapter 2: On the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
3. Chapter 3: Of Individuality, as one of the Elements of Well-Being
4. Chapter 4: Of the Limits to the Authority of Society over the Individual
5. Chapter 5: Applications

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