Doug: Just a few thoughts on reading/decoding Mill.
I agree with Patrick that the initiative to read strongly must come from
the student (and be facilitated by the teacher), and I'm as concerned as
you about abuses of contextless passages in the service of comprehension
testing -- or whatever. The Mill passage made me reach for my copy on
the shelf, a well-hilighted copy I've kept since undergrad days. The
excerpt I see is on pp. 21-22 of the 1956 Bobbs-Merrill edition, edited
by Currin Shields. It's at the beginning of Chapt 2 where Mill makes
some careful comparisons between the advantages of the "liberty of press"
as a security against "corrupt or tyrannical government" and the
advantages of preventing governments with popular support from silencing
minority opinion, for the "peculiar evil of silencing the expression of
an opinion,is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the
existing generation -- those who dissent from the opinion, still more
than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of
the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong they lose, what
is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier
impression of truth produced by its collision with error."(21)
If I'm able to decode the text (successfully? coherently? helpfully?) to
my own (imaginary) satisfaction, it's because of access and practice: I
have a copy of On Liberty on the shelf, and could trace the preceding
topical strings and discourse functions in the chapter where the qt
appears ("freedom of political disc" & comparisons of coercive powers of
tyrannical vs. popular governments, etc.). Second, I've read the text in
different disciplinary contexts (Hist, Poli Sci, English) and though this
was long ago, it's still in the bones, still feels like a familiar and
trusted voice. As Bartholomae says quoting IA Richards, "Read as though
it made sense and perhaps it will"(Ways of Reading).
Also, Mill is tricky to get right in a summary, since no excerpt is an
unqualified nutshell summary of what On Liberty is all about (In fact, I
remember how my venerable Philosophy prof. focused on all the
contradictions). Currin Shields, in the intro to my copy, writes that
"Mill's theory is a parcel of logical difficulties. These chiefly result
from confusion on Mill's part about his purpose,or purposes, in the
essay. Mill often leaves an impression that he is discussing one issue,
when actually he is discussing, in a misleading way, an entirely
different issue."(xix). In other words, while I read this challenging
prose in good faith, I know that Mill trips me up here and there, and
it's up to me to find that thread again, the clear path thru the
labyrinth. A day-glo hi-lighter helps.
Cheers, Glenn Deer
Dept. of English
University of British Columbia
