John Stuart Mill and Free Will

John Stuart Mill was a brilliant man, with a mind that explored many options and challenged hundreds of others to question his beliefs. His most profound thoughts, however, seemed to fall around the idea of free will. Mill was even said to have felt that free will was one of his heaviest burdens to figure out and thus he pondered it for lengths of time. His belief system fell between the lines of fatalism and determinism. Never one to believe too much in fate, Mill seemed to take his chances more along the lines of determinism. His ideas were based on the fact that free will and determinism were one and the same and that each person did, in fact, control his own destiny. Although his thoughts were not inconclusive, they were not solidified either, though his opinion and solution on free will were as precise as he could make it.

There are two aspects to Mills thought process; the one he believed the most in, which is the fact that all human beings perform off of free will, and the fact that he believed human beings made their own fate by following through on everyday experiences and what kind of occurrences happened on a day to day basis. However he contradicted himself in the beginning by questioning whether human action was predetermined or not.

As a philosopher and a short stint at trying to be a minister, his religious beliefs certainly played into this thought process, but it seemed he did not want to mix the two ideas. Religion is a thick topic, covering wide bases and destiny is certainly a huge part of religion. For Mill to navigate through a religious maze to find out whether his beliefs were true or not definitely made him a bit more skeptical. Unfortunately, one concept cannot be investigated without the other, as God becomes a major topic when trying to understand the concept of free will. Mill would have to set his religious beliefs aside, or at least make amends with what he thought he believed. Mill could still believe in God, he would just have to rewrite that destiny was predetermined. He accounted for the fact that he would still be going to where the same God watched over him, only it would be his own actions that took him there eventually.

It seemed that Mill believed that free will was something that humans experienced through their own choice. Rather than have a predetermined path laid out for them, Mill struggled to understand if choices were actually made by a human's own thought process or if destiny truly did lead each individual where they were supposed to go. As Schefczyk states “We have to differentiate between the following two statements: On the one hand, that actions occur necessarily; on the other hand, that they are predetermined and agents have no influence on them.” (Pg. 1) These are the struggling arguments that Mill had to determine through his own form of trial and error. Though his belief system was turned upside down and even he struggled to better understand and grasp the two concepts, his decision for a solution seemed pretty definitive once he figured it out for himself. To better comprehend this quotation it is important to understand what fatalism and determinism mean, as those are the two opposing ideas.

Fatalism is the philosophical belief that a person has no control over his actions that will determine his fate. In other words, it means that fate controls the actions of the person and they are powerless to change their destiny because their future is already predetermined for them. They may be able to choose what they do, but technically it is not them doing the choosing, their actions lead them down a certain path no matter what. One would assume that determinism means quite the opposite but it is actually derived from fatalism. Determinism represents the human ability to make choices and decisions that will eventually lead to results or conclusions. Ultimately figuring that humans have a choice in their fate and that whatever choices they make will ultimately bring them to it, but it is not predetermined; it almost resembles the quote “for every action there is a reaction” or the cause and effect theory.

Mill was a determinist, and he absolutely believed in free will, which placed his solution in the fact that determinism is real and that free will was just that, a humans right to do what they wanted. Eventually, Mill started to speak about free discussion and how the public almost looked at the right of freedom of speech as a downfall rather than something to embrace. As Cartwright explains “He thinks that freedom is increasingly threatened, not so much by the law as by an oppressive public opinion, in England at least. Curbing this threat requires a widespread appreciation of why freedom of discussion and other freedoms are important.” (Pg.1) Mill's beliefs about freedom growingly increasingly dimmer seemed to have sparked something inside him, and his beliefs in freedom of speech and free will grew stronger with a bolder, sturdier argument. Without freedom of speech and with the law trying to oppress people, freedom altogether would be gone. Philosophically this was certainly scary for someone like Mill to begin to analyze, but rather than run away Mill embraced these beliefs and harped them on his followers, putting determinism at the forefront of his fight to prove its truth.

To justify whether Mill's solution is correct in his thinking, one must look at his beliefs as a whole. As Capaldi states “Mill established to his satisfaction that all thinking begins with experience and proceeds by means of the association of ideas based upon those experiences.” (Pg. 162) This is understandable and compatible with Mill's theory because he is re-enforcing the idea of free will through the way he proceeds through life. One must begin to experience life and go through each day and base each action on the experiences that occurred during the day. As previously stated, it is almost a chain reactions to one’s own actions. While Mill believes that a human makes their own path through life, he ensures that while he is experiencing life, he is also learning and making decisions based on what happens to him minute by minute. Mill's theory seems to be correct because if fatalism were, in fact, true, then one would be able to predict not only their own future but others' futures as well.

John Stuart Mill embarked on a philosophical journey to learn more about himself and the human race as a whole. He paved the way for many other philosophers, but more importantly determined his own thought process through rigorous introspection and the observing of others. His solution verified that determinism and free will are truly parallel concepts and because they run so close to one another, he must be a determinist. Fatalism occurred to him at one point but after further inspection his instincts led him to firmly believe that fate was in his own hands.

Determinism in Mill’s eyes is a successful solution because it follows his belief pattern and confirms what he worked hard to prove. Modern-day determinism is a widely believed idea, but so is fatalism. Both are equivocally compelling arguments, yet there is no one as profound as Mill to really argue the fact anymore. Philosophers will continue to work off of Mill's beliefs for years to come and they will most likely come up with the same solutions that he did. Today though, science is overwhelming and so for a man to conquer such a profound question; His efforts should be applauded and his intellectualism should be taken in high regard to any person who is battling the same philosophical struggles that he endured. Mill is a pioneer of determinism and although probably a hard journey for Mill, it boded well for the rest of the world.

Works Cited

Cartwright, Will. "John Stuart Mill on Freedom of Discussion." Richmond Journal of Philosophy 5 (2003): 1-7. Print.

Nicholas, Capaldi. John Stuart Mill: A biography. West Nyack: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print.

Schefczyk, Michael. "John Stuart Mill's ethics." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy N/A (2012): 1. Print.