Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-l82ql Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-29T21:21:52.772Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Self–Development and the Liberal State: The Cases of John Stuart Mill and Wilhelm von Humboldt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

Andrew Valls
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

For both John Stuart Mill and Wilhelm von Humboldt, self–development is a central value that shapes much of their respective political philosophies. Despite this shared value, however, Mill and Humboldt came to quite different political conclusions. Mill defends an activist state that helps establish the material and institutional prerequisites for self–development, while Humboldt argues for a highly restricted state that provides only security. This divergence is explained by a number of factors: variations in their conceptions of self–development itself; their different views of the empirical prerequisites of self–development; their different views of the state and its relation to society; and their views of the relation between “positive” and “negative” goods.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , Spring 1999 , pp. 251 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

I wish to thank Dale Miller and five anonymous reviewers for The Review of Politics for their very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I also wish to acknowledge my deep debt to Frederick G. Whelan for his assistance on this paper and for all the support he has given me over the last ten years.

1. Mill, John Stewart, Autobiography of John Stuart Mill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 179–80Google Scholar.

2. Burrow, John W., “Editor's Introduction,” The Limits of State Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. vii Google Scholar. See also Sweet, Paul R., Wilhelm von Humboldt, A Biography. Volume One: 1767–1808 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1978)Google Scholar, “Appendix: The Publication, Reception, and Influence of The Limits of State Action.”

3. Mill, , On Liberty, in Three Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 9 Google Scholar.

4. Mill, , Autobiography, p. 100 Google Scholar.

5. von Humboldt, Wilhelm, The Limits of State Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 17 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Mill, , On Liberty, p. 2 Google Scholar; Humboldt, , Limits, p. 51 Google Scholar.

7. Mill, , On Liberty, p. 74 Google Scholar.

8. Ibid., p. 73.

9. Ibid., p. 42.

10. Ibid., p. 74.

11. Humboldt, , Limits, pp. 12–13 Google Scholar.

12. Ibid., p. 79.

13. Ibid., pp. 19, 17.

14. Mill, , On Liberty, p. 78 Google Scholar.

15. Burrow, , “Introduction,” p. xix Google Scholar.

16. Humboldt, , Limits, p. 98 Google Scholar.

17. Mill, , On Liberty, p. 93 Google Scholar.

18. Himmelfarb, Gertrude, On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1990), p. 61 Google Scholar.

19. Humboldt, , Limits, p. 28 Google Scholar.

20. Vogel, Ursula, “Liberty is Beautiful: von Humboldt's Gift to Liberalism,” History of Political Thought 3 (1982): 96 Google Scholar.

21. Donner, Wendy, The Liberal Self: John Stuart Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 139 Google Scholar.

22. Mill, “Utilitarianism,” Mill, and Bentham, Jeremy, Utilitarianism and Other Essays, ed. Ryan, Alan (London: Penguin Press, 1987), p. 281 Google Scholar.

23. Mill, , On Liberty, p. 83 Google Scholar.

24. Brink, David O., “Mill's Deliberative Utilitarianism,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 21 (1992): 79 Google Scholar.

25. Humboldt, , Limits, p. 23 Google Scholar.

26. For a similar interpretation, see Burrows, , “Introduction,” p. xxxviii Google Scholar.

27. Humboldt, , Limits, pp. 23–24 Google Scholar.

28. Ibid., p. 24.

29. Ibid., p. 23.

30. Ibid., pp. 32–33.

31. Ibid., p. 26.

32. Ibid., p. 25.

33. Ibid., p. 24.

34. Ibid., p. 26.

35. Ibid., p. 39; see Sorkin, David, “Wilhelm von Humboldt: The Theory and Practice of Self–Formation (Bildung), 1791–1810,” Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (1983): 58 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. Humboldt, , Limits, p. 29 Google Scholar.

37. Ibid., p. 35.

38. Ibid.

39. Mill, , On Liberty, pp. 140–41Google Scholar.

40. Mill, , Principles of Political Economy (London: Penguin, 1985), pp. 345–46Google Scholar.

41. Ibid., p. 334.

42. Vogel, , “Liberty is Beautiful,” p. 79 Google Scholar.

43. Bruford, Walter H., The German Tradition of Self–Cultivation: Bildung from Humboldt to Thomas Mann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 23 Google Scholar.

44. Beiser, Frederick C., Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism: The Genesis of German Political Thought, 1790–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 136 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. This is the dominant, though not unanimous, view among interpreters of Humboldt. For a dissenting account, see Sweet, , “Young Wilhelm von Humboldt's Writings (1789–93) Reconsidered,” Journal of the History of Ideas 34 (1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. Humboldt, , Limits, p. 34 Google Scholar.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid., p. 35.

49. For a contrary view, see Sorkin, , “Wilhelm von Humboldt,” pp. 66–69 Google Scholar, who briefly argues that there is a “civic” dimension to Humboldt's account of Bildung. It is true that Humboldt states that the developed individual should “attach himself to the State” (Limits, p. 52), but this statement appears in the context of an argument that the state should play no positive role in the individual's development. The point is that the individual should approach the state only after he has developed, to avoid being influenced by it.

50. Mill, , Considerations on Representative Government, in Three Essays, pp. 197–98Google Scholar.

51. Mill, , Principles, pp. 313–14Google Scholar.

52. Ibid., p. 276.

53. Humboldt, , Limits, p. 42 Google Scholar.

54. Ibid.

55. Ibid.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid., p. 43.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid., pp. 114–19.

60. Ibid., p. 107.

61. Ibid., p. 108.

62. Aris, Reinhold, History of Political Thought in Germany from 1789 to 1815 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1936), p. 153 Google Scholar.

63. Humboldt, , Limits, p. 89 Google Scholar.

64. Ibid., p. 89.

65. Ibid., p. 94.

66. Ibid., p. 104.

67. Ibid.

68. Ibid., p. 105.

69. Mill, , On Liberty, pp. 16–17 Google Scholar; see also p. 96.

70. Donner, , Liberal Self, p. 163 Google Scholar.

71. Mill, , Principles, p. 314 Google Scholar.

72. Ibid., pp. 310–11, 332.

73. Mill, , On Liberty, p. 14 Google Scholar.

74. Mill, , Principles, pp. 145–46Google Scholar.

75. Mill, , Autobiography, p. 136 Google Scholar.

76. Mill, , Principles, pp. 146–47Google Scholar.

77. Ibid., p. 151.

78. Ibid., pp. 147–51.

79. Mill, , On Liberty, p. 130 Google Scholar.

80. Ibid., p. 129.

81. Ibid.

82. Mill, , Principles, p. 305 Google Scholar.

83. Ibid., p. 307.

84. Ibid., p. 305.

85. Ibid., p. 318.

86. Humboldt, , Limits, p. 51 Google Scholar.

87. Ibid., p. 53.

88. Sorkin, , “Wilhelm von Humboldt,” pp. 62–63 Google Scholar. See also the fuller account in Sweet, , Wilhelm von Humboldt, A Biography. Volume Two: 1808–1835 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1980), chap. 8Google Scholar.

89. Sorkin, , “Wilhelm von Humboldt,” p. 63 Google Scholar.

90. See Burrow, , “Introduction,” p. ix Google Scholar.

91. Ibid., p. xxxiv.

92. Sweet, , “Young Wilhelm von Humboldt's Writings Reconsidered,” p. 477 Google Scholar.

93. For two quite different accounts of Humboldt's consistency, see Sorkin, , “Wilhelm von Humboldt,” pp. 63–66 Google Scholar, and Sweet, “Young Wilhelm von Humboldt's Writings Reconsidered,” passim.

94. Humboldt, , Limits, pp. 36, 39 Google Scholar.

95. Ibid., p. 138.

96. Ibid., pp. 134–36.

97. Sweet, , “Young Wilhelm von Humboldt's Writings Reconsidered,” p. 474 Google Scholar.