Stuart Mill Paternalism

One of the more severe charges against Mill's conception of liberty involves socio-cultural background of the author's politics. Mill advocates paternalism on moral grounds in several instances that suggest an intellectual bias and a level of intellectual superiority, embedded in the nineteenth century culture and the Western world. Under Mill's paradigm, freedom is limited to those who are capable of rationality, allowing despotism as a sufficient alternative to 'educating' in all other instances (Goldberg, 2000). Thus, one's incompetence allows for a coercive force and social control (Conly, 2013).
Firstly, Mill strongly supports the idea of schooling of minors, and urges that the state mandates parents to educate their children (Mill, [1859]

Nevertheless, while Utilitarianism is the key approach of Mill's politics, in On Liberty, Mill's ideal of utility departs from this discourse by disregarding the concept of natural rights. As mentioned earlier, individuality derives from personal development and self-realisation, 'grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive beings' (Mill, [1859] 2009, p.20), and this is the true utility of individuality. Thus, 'higher pleasures' (intellectual and moral) are valued more than base pleasures (physical or emotional), contributing to the society, and producing higher forms of happiness. In this sense, Mill 'left the true utilitarian spirit far behind' (Berkowitz, 200, p.148). Within his model, utility no longer accepts 'lower pleasures', embracing the most virtuous principles of individuality and liberty of

On the one hand, it was investigated how this principal of liberty and autonomy challenges the need for state control, embedded in paternalism. Mill shows that individuality ensures freedom and a regulatory system for a functional society that would be compromised by paternalism or outside coercive forces. Self-development and social progress are the core principles of Millian Utilitarianism, which restricts state control to a single problem of harm to others, leaving a very limited space for regulation of individuals. However, at the same time limits and boundaries of his 'harm principle' are rather unclear, and there is a strong evidence to suggest that all acts are social acts that involve affect others. Hence, Mill's solutions within the harm principle can be interpreted in a similar way to soft paternalism