Governing the Barbarians: Considerations on Mill’s Defense of Despotism

In this paper, I interrogate John Stuart Mill’s claim that “despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.” To do so, I first sketch Mill’s characterization of three principles: the principle of utility, the principle of liberty, and the principle of progress. Crucially, Mill thinks that these principles relate to one another in very different ways, depending on whether the society is “civilized” or “barbaric” (“backwards”). In “civilized” contexts, he thinks, liberty clearly contributes to happiness and improvement, and so maximizes utility. In “barbaric” societies, however, liberty tends not to maximize utility; rather, it tends to undermine utility. Furthermore, liberty generally does not lead to improvement, and despotism may instead be needed to attain it. Having sketched these arguments, I then explore a number of tensions in Mill’s argument, due largely to an analogy he makes between children and “barbarians.” I conclude that Mill’s argument for despotism is not adequately justified by the terms of his own argument. Indeed, facets of the argument arguably conflict with the utilitarian grounds on which he himself wants to stake all ethical claims.

Democracy: Friendship in the Company of Strangers?

Democracy is typically premised on the values of treating persons as “free” and “equal.” Friendship is a relationship that shows us how we treat one another when we try to instantiate these values in joint decision-making. Cross-cultural psychology and cultural anthropology suggest that friendship-like relationships exist in all societies. Accordingly, it would seem that in every society there is already some understanding of what “free and equal treatment” in joint or collective decision-making entails. Based on these observations, I discuss the potentially constructive role that the concept and practice of friendship can play in cross-cultural dialogues about democracy. More specifically, I describe how appeals to friendship can help to generate greater agreement among self-described democrats regarding the attractiveness of specifically deliberative forms of decision-making. To illustrate, I discuss the apparent conflict between so-called “models” of “agonistic democracy” and “deliberative democracy.” Developing a modified Aristotelian conception of civic friendship, I indicate why democracy might be conceived as embodying a form of “friendship in the company of strangers.” While aiming at amicable cooperation between strangers, democracy, at whatever geographic scale, also involves deliberative engagements where conflict is intentionally brought out, rather than ignored or suppressed.