I do not agree with John Stuart Mill on everything, but he is far and away the best thinker I’ve ever read on the topic of freedom of speech. The second chapter of his “On Liberty” is filled with philosophical gems, but here’s my favorite quote of all: “The steady habit of correcting and completing (one’s) own opinion by collating it with those of others … is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it.” In other words, the only reasonable basis for dependence upon our own opinions is an unending willingness to acknowledge that we might be wrong.
As someone who spends a good deal of time putting his opinions on public display for the rest of Brown to praise, lambast or ignore, I hold this quote near and dear. In fact, after the countless times I’ve been wrong in my life as a heavily opinionated person, this concept is what keeps me going. My belief in this idea is one of the things that helps me appreciate Brown as fully as possible.
Judging by the surface-level platitudes of our liberal arts community, we Brown students seem to follow this doctrine well. “We should always be critical,” we say. “Challenge the status quo,” we boldly proclaim. “Speak truth to power, question the answers, challenge authority,” we repeat ad nauseam. But how many of us proud pluralists actually follow Mill’s directive to never assume that a debate is settled, to never disregard criticism, to never give up the hunt for the truths of the human condition?
Frankly, I think the answer to that question is not many. For all of our communal devotion to Brown’s intellectual rigor and liberal arts ideology, I think we fail this test all the time in a few very specific ways.
First, a lot of us tend to summarily reject, rather than argue against, opinions with which we disagree. This behavior was on hilarious and hideous display last November with the publication of Oliver Hudson’s ’14 now classic Herald opinions column on the immorality of universal suffrage (“Universal suffrage is immoral,” Nov. 13). Now to some, it probably seems silly to even argue with Hudson’s position. Maybe, some think, our devotion to universal democracy should just be settled and accepted, and those who stand in opposition to such a fundamental idea should be ignored. Maybe it simply doesn’t feel worth it to waste time arguing with one ridiculous opinion. I understand this attitude because it is exactly how I felt after his piece appeared on The Herald’s website.
But isn’t it often our biggest opponents who make us best understand our principles best in the first place? Arguing against democracy’s detractors helps us to better appreciate the worth of democracy to begin with. Mill’s conception of opinion does not only oblige us to accept our fallibility. It also encourages us to expect others to do the same and act accordingly by opposing them if we find them to be wrong.
Secondly, we often yield to political calculation. In the ugly, unsettled no man’s land of political argumentation, when the other side seems so unerringly evil and wrong and our side seems so completely moral and right, it is incredibly easy to become unyielding and intransigent. Furthermore, it takes no effort whatsoever to slip into a position from which we sling zingers, half-truths and hatred at the other side so that we can win the political battle of the day. Needless to say, this violates the Millian principle above, as it becomes impossible to actually search for a workable conception of the good when all that we are trying to do is win a never-ending political fight.
Furthermore, there is an even worse externality to this sort of political behavior. In the history of American democracy, politics has never been pretty. Even the founding fathers themselves, as devoted to the ideals of political involvement as any Americans before or since, lamented their time in politics and waxed eloquent about their desires to return to their farms and families. But if we take the heinousness of political conflict as a given, if we let it stand as nothing but a battle between two tone-deaf idiots competing for complete victory, we reach a crisis of low expectations.
Politics can and should be so much more than this sort of awful battle. Despite the mudslinging, the quasi-murderous oppositional anger and the mind-numbing slowness of political progress, politics can be a societal search for shared values and communal truth. That probably sounds hopelessly idealistic to a few of my readers, but that’s how it should sound. It’s hard work to always push for real truth-seeking in politics and human life, but we can never forget how important that work is. Following Mill’s principle of our own opinions’ fallibility is an essential part of that task.
Kevin Carty ’15 is from Washington DC. He can be followed @Politicarty or emailed at kevin_carty@brown.edu.
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