Joseph Hamburger. John Stuart Mill on Liberty and Control.

Hall, Donald E.

Joseph Hamburger. John Stuart Mill on Liberty and Control (Princeton UP, 1999), xx + 239 pp., $35.00 cloth.

This is a difficult book to assess and discuss delicately. It is a posthumous production that is, in self-admitted fashion, imperfectly realized. Its author, Joseph Hamburger, Pelatiah Petit Professor of Political and Social Science at Yale University, died in 1997, leaving a manuscript that "was almost ready for publication" (ix), in the words of his posthumous editor "P.A.H." (one of his children whose identity remains unrevealed). Yet, frankly, such an assessment was far too optimistic. The editor reveals her or his reluctance "to modify arguments or to resolve issues that [Hamburger] had left for further consideration" and only "altered his manuscript where clearly guided by his notes or by necessity" (ix). While such a reverential stance is no doubt laudable from the standpoint of filial respect, it has given us a book that is still uneven and repetitious, though certainly containing many small gems of analysis. The manuscript as a whole, however, can at best be termed a jewel very much in the rough.

It does set out its purpose clearly, which it states in its preface: "While Mill did value liberty and individuality [...] he also advocated placing quite a few limitations on liberty and many encroachments on individuality. [...] Mill advocated the introduction of inhibitions, moral restraints, and social pressures" (xi). These limitations are explored over the course of nine chapters, many of which, unfortunately, make the same points time and time again. Much of the analysis is drawn from articles previously published in various journals and collections; those essays should have stood as the final monument to the career of a skilled reader of Mill and his context.

And certainly there are passages demonstrating great skill. I was particularly struck with the cogency of Hamburger's argument in chapter eight, "How Much Liberty?" In the context of earlier chapters, this one is highly repetitious, but in retrospect it stands out as the best expression of Hamburger's reading of the ways Mill's "plan for moral reform would have lead to many restrictions on individual liberty" (166). Indeed, if a reader picks up this book from a library shelf and wants a succinct expression of its larger argument, she or he should simply read chapter eight, in which Hamburger explores Mill's excoriations of "depravity," including sexual excess and selfishness. He charts the forms of social pressure that Mill theorized as effective checks on such "self-regarding conduct," focusing especially on the strategic use of "shaming to improve the character of selfish and miserably individualistic persons" (173). In Hamburger's analysis, this thorough dependency upon social pressure accounts for Mill's surprising opposition to the secret ballot, for Mill felt that something as publicly consequential as voting should be open to the view and criticism of the entire public.

Hamburger also discusses adroitly here institutional checks on individual liberty, such as Mill's call for a "system of education that provided a 'restraining discipline' which would create the habit of subordinating personal impulses and aims to what were considered the ends of society" (194, original emphasis). The chapter builds very effectively toward its concluding discussion of Mill's view of historical progression, in which a gradual uniformity of opinion would be cultivated, one that would lead to a "morally regenerated society" (202). In such an "organic period," "liberty would not disappear, but it would be modified sufficiently to allow moral authority, cohesion, duty, and altruism to coexist with it" (202). Hamburger's analysis here certainly checks effectively other critics' lionization of Mill as the advocate of nearly unbounded liberty.

Another largely successful chapter is Hamburger's second, "Cultural Reform." Much of the chapter builds upon the general thesis that Mill "wished to bring about a cultural revolution" (21) that included both new forms of liberty and new constraints on liberty. Yet some of the most compelling sections offer detailed analysis of how "Mill's turn from conventional to cultural politics was sparked and perhaps shaped by Harriet Taylor" (23). In particular Hamburger traces Taylor's published rejection of Christianity and defense of eccentricity as they reappeared later in Mill's own work. Furthermore, he uses Mill's own commentary on Taylor's "art of morality" (29) to trace the broader discursive and ethical changes that Mill too was seeking, in which "long-term, fundamental change was driven by ideas and beliefs not by legislation or economic forces" (31). The innovative thinker is thus accorded a particularly important role in creating social change. Mill saw his own writing and that of Harriet Taylor as constituting a form of political action, for they were "bold, radical thinker[s], out of step with [their] own time, whose speculations would serve to bring into existence a new moral and social order in the distant future" (35). Hamburger offers superbly supported analysis of this memorable partnership directed toward effecting profound social and cultural change.

If only all of his analysis were so succinctly offered and powerfully supported. Hamburger's ninth chapter, "Mill's Rhetoric," meanders in its discussion of possible influences on Mill's rhetorical strategies, the particular targets of his rhetoric, as well as Mill's equivocations and evasions. It is a murky argument at best. We find Mill at once on a "quest for intellectual honesty" (219) and "lack[ing] candor" (215). Hamburger's argument here is not "almost ready for publication." It needs substantial clarification and revision.

Elsewhere and more commonly the problem is simply repetition. Chapter Four, "Candor or Concealment," substantially repeats analysis offered in earlier chapters. Chapter Five, "Arguments about Christianity in On Liberty," overlaps significantly with Chapter Three, "Mill and Christianity." If warranted here, I could even quote the same sentences repeated time and again. But that would be overkill and no doubt regarded as disrespectful toward a deceased colleague.

And certainly I have no wish to disparage the memory of a scholar who clearly said much in his career that was insightful about social theory in general and John Stuart Mill in particular. But I certainly think that Princeton University Press, which published this posthumous work, should self-reflect on its own priorities and perhaps motives. In this day of decreasing university library budgets and an over-abundance of published scholarship, this book should not have been published. Of course, one could cynically suppose that the press hoped to sell numerous expensive library copies on the basis of the name of the book's author. I prefer to think that the press simply fulfilled a contractual obligation and wished to honor a departed scholar. Certainly I too wish to honor the memory of Joseph Hamburger, a fine scholar and critic, and find no fault with the son or daughter who helped bring this book to publication. But I do question the priorities of a press that necessarily publishes a limited number of titles per year and perhaps rejected or postponed a more polished and path-breaking book while this one was in production.

Donald E. Hall

California State University, Northridge