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John Stuart Mill

  Social virtues                                                 

  Violations:      

·         Violating another’s rights (as defined either by legal provision or tacit understanding)

·         Individuals who don’t bear their share to defend nation

·         Those things condemned by universal experience

·        Definite damage or a definite risk of damage to an individual or the public

  Punishment (or societal reaction):

·         Society has right to enforce social virtues at all costs (but question must be asked if interfering will promote the general welfare.)

  Self-regarding virtues

  Violations:

·         Hurting others but not violating their rights (ie constitutional or natural rights)

·         Hurting self (assuming you are of age)

  Punishment:

·         May be punished by opinion but not by law

·         Society should foster education to teach good moral character

·         Help each other identify right or wrong

·         Violators should be held in contempt and told they are wrong

·         People can avoid them, warn against them, and leave them to the punishment of their own vice

·         “In all such cases there should be prefect freedom, legal or social, to do the action and stand the consequences”

Why do we want a difference in how we punish social and self-regarding virtues?

·         An individual is the one most interested (and informed) in his own well being

·         Societal interference will be grounded on presumptions which may be wrong or misapplied to individual cases

·         Freedom calls for it

·         Odds are that the interference will be wrong and in the wrong place

·         Laws against personal conduct are just opinions hastily and lazily made

·         Public considers anything they don’t like to be an injury

·         “There is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it.”

·         “There are many who consider it an injury to themselves any conduct which they have a distaste for”

  But how can we separate acts of harm to self to those that harm others? After all 1) Vice diminishes the resources of those that rely on him and his community and perhaps he becomes a burden; 2) he is a bad example to others; 3) if society is to protect the helpless, why not protect those who are helpless to vice?

·         Punish the violations of social rules and not the vices they are associated with

·         Society must suffer inconvenience for the sake of freedom

·         Society should be able to inculcate values during an individual’s childhood. If it fails to do so then it is failure of the society

·         People will rebel if they are punished for things that are their own business