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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 505 sequence we like. In the end, both Hobbes' clandestine free rider and Sidgwick's clandestine Act-Utilitarian in the non-ideal, non-Utilitarian society have reason to preserve social stability by concealing their violation of the rules. Only under those conditions can they advance their personal agendas. Thus on Sidgwick's view, the principle of Utilitarianism should not be propagated at all in its most general form in a non-ideal, non-Utilitarian society, for its effects on the general community may well be subversive of moral conduct if openly acknowledged: the opinion that secrecy may render an action right which would not otherwise be so should itself be kept comparatively secret; and similarly it seems expedient that the doctrine that esoteric morality is expedient should itself be kept esoteric .... And thus a Utilitarian may reasonably desire, on Utilitarian principles, that some of his conclusions should be rejected by mankind generally.13 Here Sidgwick claims not only the validity of a covert application of Utilitarian principles to support a secret exemption of oneself from some moral precept, but also the validity of secretly adopting these principles themselves. Both are justified on Utilitarian grounds. So when Mill in Utilitarianism 14 dismisses the possibility of such exemption as an objection to Utilitarianism because no doctrine can be formulated which successfully rules it out in all cases, he seems to miss the real point of the objection, which is the unrestricted character of the Utilitarian doctrine: All moral conceptions must admit the possibility of exceptions in practice, but Utilitarianism is unique in rationalizing such exceptions in theory. Mill's own, liberal solution to the free rider problem recommends intensive social conditioning: [L]aws and social arrangements should place the happiness or … the interest of every individual as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; and … education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human character, should so use that power to establish in the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole … so that not only he may be unable to conceive the possibility of happiness to himself, consistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but also that a direct impulse to promote the general good may be in every individual one of the habitual motives of action ... [italics added].15 Ibid., p. 490. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. Samuel Gorovitz (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1979), chap. 2, par. 25, pp. 24-25. I discuss this passage further in Volume II, Chapter IV.8. 15 Ibid., 17. 13 14 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
