In the clamour and din following the recent riots we are hearing wildly conflicting views on what should be the appropriate response from our liberal democracy.  What light might two great and interlinked philosophers of the past shed on these troubled times?

If the great social and political theorist, John Stuart Mill, one of the founders of the liberal democratic state, were alive today he would be horrified at the distortion our society has made of his great doctrines. In the flaming cities of the past few days we can see the death of a distorted liberalism, but also I believe the rebirth of the true liberal ideal which has shaped Britain.

If we combine the insights of Mill’s great essays Utilitarianism and On Liberty we find two principles which provide the foundation of the liberal democratic state, principles we have arguably forgotten.

The first is that rights cannot exist without responsibilities. Surprising though it seems, Mill the great liberal was not in favour of universal suffrage. He saw the ignorance and prejudice of an ill-educated mob as an enemy of democracy. He would be appalled to know, for example, that 17% of our young people are functionally illiterate and that every citizen automatically gains the right to vote at eighteen irrespective of educational achievement.

What is more, Mill’s great influence was the philosopher Aristotle. So when Mill called the greatest good “happiness” he meant something closer to the Greek eudaimonia.

The word eudaimonia is difficult to translate but the approximate meaning is “flourishing”. To Aristotle there were none of the false dichotomies between individual and society. The flourishing of the individual was central to the flourishing of society. The polis or city state required citizens committed to their own development – citizens committed to being the best they could possibly be with all the responsibilities to make the best of their opportunities which this implies.

So Aristotle would be baffled to see a society where uneducated rioters have the vote and at the same time trash their communities. Where young people choose to get pregnant out of wedlock and in their young teens, with no social penalty. Where citizens take benefits without thinking of ever paying them back. Where fathers have multiple children by different mothers and exercise no care over any of them. He would be amazed that we actually give incentives for single parents to remain single, and for youths to remain unskilled and unemployed.

Central to the concept of flourishing is the building of character. Aristotle and Mill would have applauded the anger and indignation of those standing outside their burnt- out shops: “be angry with the right person, on the right issue, for the right length of time” Aristotle is recorded as saying in Nichomachean Ethics. He saw the building and getting of wisdom as the key virtue – not an intellectual wisdom, but a practical wisdom of right judgement. He would I believe have pointed the finger as much at politicians as at rioters. After all, it is successive governments that have defined our education by league tables and tests rather than virtues and character traits – who have neglected the social and moral aspects of education. The new baccalaureat style GCSE, let’s remember, omits any religious or ethical dimension.

And to Mill the key social virtue was sympathy. If you couldn’t stand in another’s shoes and feel their pain and fear and vulnerability then you would never be capable of building the flourishing society.

“In the Golden Rule¹ of Jesus of Nazareth,” wrote the atheist Mill, “we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility”.

The emphasis on rights without responsibility has bred a society whose ugly indifference creates individuals who mug and abuse the broken Malaysian visitor whose fate recorded on YouTube quite rightly represents the death of the old liberalism.

The second of John Stuart Mill’s great principles involves the distinction between public and private morality. Mill argues forcibly in On Liberty that the actions between two private individuals, done with consent and harming no-one else, is of no business to anyone but themselves. It is ironic that just as the press is called to account for violating this principle by hacking into phones, by paying for privileged information, by themselves corrupting the Police to sell them stories of celebrities and their private business, so the very Police resources which could have been concentrated on issues of national security have been diverted to investigate phone hacking.

Ironic too that the kind of issues which will now need to be addressed – issues of single parenting, of respect for authority (be it Police or teacher), are being addressed by the two institutions most clearly at fault in the subversion of morality – the political classes (who are sullied by the expenses scandal) and the Press (sullied by the phone hacking scandal). It’s as if the Vicar has been caught in bed with the local MP and is still proclaiming every Sunday “sex outside marriage is wrong”. No-one is listening – and if they do, it makes them even angrier at the absurd double standards.

Part of this problem lies in a misunderstanding of Mill’s version of individualism. Mill’s Aristotelean view can be summarised thus: an individual only makes sense within a social context and a sense of destiny. The Greeks were teleological in their worldview, meaning the end or goal is the reference point for what we mean by “goodness”.

The getting of happiness was not a material idea, but an issue of soul-building in which our animal natures are civilised by education and the right sort of emulation of heroes.

Against this background Aristotle saw the magnificence of a new BMW or a Samsung flatscreen as a celebration of a morally good life, not the reflection of its bankruptcy.

Now that we have new heroes in the wounded Malaysian student and the murdered pensioner, heroes who would not be bowed and cowed by the cowardly brutality of the mob, there is a sense that a collective resurgence of a good will and the virtue of sympathy may be arising. And if this could also reignite the debate about true virtues of education – the formation of character able to respond appropriately and rightly to any situation, we might yet look forward to a brighter future.

Out of the ashes of the inner city riots and the old, dead liberalism, perhaps the spirit of Mill can rise and help us shape a Britain to be proud of – one where all its citizens can flourish and “the individual” as a concept is replaced by the idea of the wise and flourishing character whose self-fulfilment is grounded on a bedrock of moral goodness.

^{1 Matthew 7 v 18 “do to others as you would have them do to you”.  Some argue that this represents an example of a moral absolute, present in all cultures}.