4.b.5. Self-regarding and other-regarding
actions

 

 

“[T]here is a sphere of action in which the interests of society, as distinct from those of the individual, are involved only indirectly if they are involved at all….” (On Liberty, chapter 1 [page 8])

On the basis of Mill’s remarks about this sphere, it might seem that his view could be described in the following way:

We should make a distinction between self-regarding actions—i.e., actions of yours that only affect you—and other-regarding actions—i.e., actions of yours that (also) affect other people. The harm principle forbids society from interfering with your self-regarding actions, and allows society to interfere with your other-regarding actions in order to prevent you from harming others (or punish you for having harmed others).

 

There is, however, a problem with this distinction. Determining which actions are self-regarding is not straightforward. Consider the following example. Imagine that you are a thrill seeker who spends as much of your free time as possible doing dangerous stunts in isolated locations without taking any reasonable safety precautions. A stunt goes wrong.

stunt

 You made sure to do your stunts away from people, so that you would not put them at risk. The person most affected by your actions is you. That being said, society is affected to some degree as well. Recall that harm can be done by inaction. You have destroyed (or largely reduced) your ability to protect other people’s rights—i.e., to prevent a third party from harming someone. You have also destroyed (or largely reduced) your ability to fulfill people’s rights—for example, your ability to contribute to society by working. In other words, the result of your excessive and negligent risk-taking is that inaction will be your only option in many situations where you used to be able to take action. Does this count as harm?

Mill’s answer is found in Chapter 4. His view is that it depends on whether you, by destroying your abilities, “violate any specific duty to the public or bring harm to any assignable individual”. People employed as public servants, such as a police officer or a soldier, have specific duties to the public. A parent, for example, has duties to their child (an assignable individual). In such cases, Mill’s view is that destroying or damaging your abilities counts as harm to others. Society can legitimately interfere with your liberty in order to prevent you from becoming unable to fulfill your specific public duties or your duties to specific individuals. However, if those two conditions do not apply to you, and the only effect on others is that you now have less ability to benefit society in general, Mill says you have not harmed others. This is because society cannot demand that each member make themselves as useful to society as possible. Mill argues against “preventing [people] from impairing their ability to render to society benefits that society doesn’t claim it has a right to demand!”

Risking injury to yourself and not others seems like a paradigm case of a self-regarding action, and yet we see that the harm principle does sometimes apply to such actions.

There is also a problem with the assertion that the harm principle “allows society to interfere with your other-regarding actions in order to prevent you from harming others (or punish you for having harmed others).” This is too narrow. If we were to use the language of respecting, protecting, and fulfilling people’s rights, this phrase states that the harm principle only concerns duties to respect people’s rights. As we have seen, Mill allows society to compel you to also satisfy the other two duties—that is, duties to prevent a third party from harming others and duties to do your part in “any other joint work necessary to the interests of the society whose protection he enjoys” (Lib., 1 [p.7])