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Mill‘s on Liberty is a tool for social and political philosophical pedagogy; especially in this contemporary time the world faces numerous economic, social and political challenges like terrorism, Arab Spring and so on. But how far Mill‘s on Liberty will go on to proffering plausible solutions to the menace are another issue. One of the major areas of interest on the Arab uprising could be the demands of democracy or rather the best form of political system that will be peculiar to the Arabs as to alleviate their economic, social and political ills and thus, bring new life and common good for all. At this point, Mill makes his submission which culminates in common good of all citizens; he proposed the best form of government to be
‗Proportional Representation‘ in representative democracy.
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public debate and elections they exercise those very deliberative capacities that it is the aim of government to develop.In Considerations on Representative Democracy, Mill argues that a form of representative democracy is the best ideal form of government. It is not an invariant ideal, which holds regardless of historical or social circumstances. But he does think that it is the best form of government for societies with sufficient resources, security, and culture of self-reliance. In particular, Mill thinks that representative democracy has two criteria that make it the best form of good government: first, that government is good insofar as it promotes the common good, where this is conceived of as promoting the moral, intellectual, and active traits of its citizens, and second, that government is good insofar as it makes effective use of institutions and the resources of its citizens to promote the common good.
Insofar as the second is really a component of first, we might conclude that Mill's ultimate political criterion is that good government should promote the common good of its citizens.
Mill does not explicitly invoke his version of utilitarianism. Perhaps he wants his defence of representative democracy to rest on more ecumenical premises. But he clearly understands this political criterion of the common good in broadly consequentialist or result-oriented terms. Moreover, though he may not mention the higher pleasures doctrine explicitly, it is also clear that Mill understands the good of each in broadly perfectionist terms that emphasize the importance of an active and autonomous form of life that exercises intellectual, deliberative, and creative capacities.Yet majority rule cannot be the only expression of "supreme power" in a democracy. If so, as Tocqueville notes above, the majority would too easily tyrannise the minority. Thus, while it is clear that democracy must guarantee the expression of the popular will through majority rule, it is equally clear that it must guarantee that the majority will not use its power to violate the basic and inalienable rights of the minority. For one, a defining characteristic of democracy must be the people's right to change the majority through elections. This right is the people's "supreme authority."
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The minority, therefore, must have the right to seek to become the majority and possess all the rights necessary to compete fairly in elections - speech, assembly, association, petition, since otherwise the majority would make itself permanent and become a dictatorship. For the majority, ensuring the minority's rights becomes a matter of self-interest, since it must utilise the same rights when it is in minority to seek to become a majority again. This holds equally true in a multiparty parliamentary democracy, where no party has a majority, since a government must still be formed in coalition by a majority of parliament members.
America's experience is unique in scope, but all democracies have witnessed "the tyranny of the majority" applied against different social groups. Nearly all democracies, for example, restricted voting to specific economic groups, most frequently to male property owners, and only slowly expanded the franchise to men generally. Women were systematically denied equal political and social rights. The first state to grant equal suffrage was Wyoming, then still a territory in 1869; the first country to do so was New Zealand, but only in 1893. British women over the age of thirty were given the vote in 1918, and in 1928 the age limit was lowered to twenty-one. Women in the United States gained suffrage in 1920, while France did not adopt universal suffrage until after liberation from the Nazi occupation in 1944.
Despite having the right to vote in most countries today, women still suffers formal discrimination in many places of the world. Perhaps, part of our research work is to use liberty to find implications for Arab Spring, it is therefore necessary to know first the historiography of Arab Spring.
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Endnotes
1. M. Pickering, Auguste Comte: an intellectual biography, (London:Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 540.
2. Loc. cit.
3. E. Bellin, The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East.
Comparative Politics.Vol. 36, No. 2.(, 2004), p. 73.
4. D. S. Sorenson, Transition in the Arab Spring: Spring or Fall? Strategic Studies Quarterly.( 2011), p. 22. Anderson, L. (2001) Political Decay in the Arab World.
Delivered the Eighteenth Annual Joseph (Buddy) Strelitz Lecture on 8 December 1999.
5. H. Albrecht, H., & O.Schlumberger, ‗Waiting for Godot‗: Regime Change without Democratization in the Middle East, International Political Science Review, Vol. 25, No.
4, (2004), p. 371.
6. S. Rosiny, The Arab Spring: Triggers, Dynamics and Prospects. GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies/Leibniz-Institut für Globale und Regionale Stuidien. English Edition , 1, online: <www.giga-hamburg.de/giga-focus/international> (2012)
7. L. Anderson, Demystifying the Arab spring: parsing the differences between Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Foreign Affairs,(2011), p. 2.
8. J. S. Mill, On Liberty, http://www.bartleby.com/130/1.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty Retrieved 24 April 2014
9. M. Aurelius, "Meditations", Book I, Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty Retrieved on 8 March, 2017. ISBN 1853264865
10. T. Hobbes, Leviathan, Part 2, Ch. XXI, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty Retrieved on 12 June 2015.
11. J. Locke, Two Treatises on Government: A Translation into Modern English, ISR, 2009, p. 76 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty Retrieved on 16 March, 2014.
12. O. William (compiler), Freedom: Keys to Freedom from Twenty-one National Leaders ,(Main Street Publications, Memphis, Tennessee,2008), p. 133, ISBN 978-0-9801152-0-8
13. J. S. Mill, On Liberty,(Chicago: The Great Books Foundation, 1955), p. 11.
14 Ibid. p.15.
15 M. Cohen, (ed.), The philosophy of John. Stuart Mill, (New York: The Modern Library, 1961), p. 196.
16. "The Advocates for Self-Government Definitions of Libertarianism -The Advocates for Self-Government. , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty Retrieved on 8 March ,2017.
17. D. Kelley, "Life, liberty, and property." Social Philosophy and Policy (1984) 1#2 p.108
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18. M. Cranstons, ‗Liberalism,‘ in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Paul Edwards (ed.), (New York: Macmillan and the Free Press, 1967), p. 459.
19. J. Locke, The Second Treatise of Government in Two Treatises of Government, Peter Laslett, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960[1689] ), p. 287.
20. J. S. Mill, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, J. M. Robson (ed.), (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1963), vol. 21: p. 262.
21. G. F. Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism: An Essay on Epistemology and Political Theory, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p.162.
22. G. F. Gaus, ‗Backwards into the Future: Neo-republicanism as a Post- socialist Critique of Market Society,‘ Social Philosophy & Policy, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003b), p. 59.
23. P.E. Frankel, F. D. Miller and J. Paul, Eds.Liberalism: Old and New, (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 37.
24. W. Beveridge, Full Employment in a Free Society, (London: Allen and Unwin, 1944), p. 96.
25. J. M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,( London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Cambridge University Press ,1973), p. 44.
26. J. Dewey, Characters and Events, Joseph Ratner (ed.),( New York: Henry Holt, 1929), p. 551.
27. J. A. Hobson, The Economics of Unemployment, London: Allen and Unwin,1922), p.
49.
28. J. W. Ely, Jr, The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights, ( New York: Oxford University Press,1992), p. 26.
29. J. S. Mill, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, J. M. Robson (ed.), (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1963), Vol.18, p.293.
30. Ibid. p. 203.
31. Ibid. p.267.
32. G. F. Gaus, The Modern Liberal Theory of Man, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983a), p.23.
33. M. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 1.
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34. J. Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 68.
35. Mill, op. cit., Vol. 18, p.224.
36. Loc.cit.
37. J. Rawls, Law of Peoples, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999a), p.66.
38. Mill, op. cit., Vol. 21, p. 119.
39. Ibid. p. 122.
40. J. S. Mill, Three Essays On Liberty, Representative Government, and The Subjection of Women, (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975), p. 24.
41. Ibid. p. 26.
42. Ibid. p. 28.
43. Ibid. p. 31.
44. Ibid. p. 32.
45. Ibid. p. 66.
46. Ibid. p. 73.
47. Ibid. p. 116.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid. p. 117.
50. J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, Liberty, and Representative Government, (New York: E.P.
Dutton & Co., Inc., 1951), p. 88.
51. Ibid. p. 90.
52. Ibid. p.157.
53. J. Sommerville, Social and Political philosophy, (New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1963), p. 310.
54. J. S. Mill, On Liberty, (Chicago: The Great Books Foundation, 1955), p. 94.
127 55. Ibid. p. 97.
56. E. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1790), p. 43.
57. J. S. Mill, On Liberty, The Library of Liberal Arts edition, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p.7.
58. Ibid.
59. J. S. Mill, On Liberty, E Rapaport, (ed.), (USA: Hackett Publishing Company, 1978), p. xv.
60. F. Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1879), p.
66.
61. J. S. Mill, New Essays On J. S. Mill and Utilitarianism, (Ontario: Canada Association for Publishing in Philosophy,1979), p. 243.
62. I. Hassan, & P. Dyer,"The State of Middle Eastern Youth.".The Muslim World.107 (1): 3–12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring, date Retrieved 30 March 2017
63. The Arab Spring—One Year Later: The CenSEI Report analyzes how 2011's clamor for democratic reform met 2012's need to sustain its momentum. The CenSEI Report, 13 February 2012, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring, 64. The New York Times, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring, date Retrieved 14
April, 2011
65. R. Suetonius, The Lives of Twelve Caesars, Life of Julius Caesar, (London: Oxford Press, 1978), p. 80.
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CHAPTER FOUR
HISTORIGRAPHY OF ARAB SPRING
4.1 CONCEPTS AND DEFINITION OF HISTORIOGRAPHY OF ARAB SPRING