Antipaternalism and Plural Voting Proposal in J. S. Mill’s Political Philosophy

Abstract

The appeal to inconsistency, which is sometimes raised against J. S. Mill’s political philosophy, takes various forms, and this paper focuses on the appeal to inconsistency between antipaternalism promoted in On Liberty and paternalistic justification of democracy and plural voting proposal introduced in Considerations on Representative Government. The paper characterizes Mill as a democratic instrumentalist and emphasizes that Mill’s justification of educational role of democracy and the epistemic value of plural voting proposal need not be grounded in paternalistic ideas. By combining Mill’s claim that the government can intervene and limit the freedom of an individual when she is performing an action by which a distinctive duty she has towards others is violated with Estlund’s idea of political justification through normative consent, the paper shows that Mill’s justification of democracy (and of plural voting proposal) can be grounded in duties we have towards others, and not in paternalism.