Sobre la libertad de John Stuart Mill y la disputa sobre el canon liberal (con unas breves consideraciones sobre la educación obligatoria).

Abstract

First part of this work, taking the idea of Harold Bloom’s Western Canon, but translating it to the dominion of the analysis about the construction and development of what we could call the Liberal Canon, affirms that this Canon is closed with On Liberty; but, as a canonical thought is always a dynamic reality, complex and with a permanent internal tension, the readings and interpretations of OnmLiberty, mainly the ones published in our country that read Mill from a non-liberal, illiberal or against-liberalism standpoint (as the recent one by Carlos Rodríguez Braun), indeed, are examples of an internal struggle inside this Canon in order to“open it” and to overcome the enormous influence (Bloom’s “anxiety of influence”) that this work has reached in western thought. An example about the internal tension inside the Liberal canon between utilitarianism (and its defense of individual value and well-being, that it is dynamic and in construction, as a crucial element of a free, and just, state) and liberalism (and its defense of the primal value of liberty essentially interpreted as non-intervention and limited power), we discover in the discussion developed by Mill at 5th chapter of On Liberty on compulsory education. At the second part of this work the thesis of Mill on this subject are showed and commented in an ample way, due to their relevance for the interpretation of the precise sense of Mill’s liberalism. We think that it’s possible to articulate both tendencies without forcing Mill to put aside liberalism due to the fact that he admits possible limitations to liberty at precise circumstances. It’s possible, so, to affirm that there are good liberal reasons from utilitarian roots to sustain two different claims: (a) that is necessary to assure a universal and compulsory education to a certain extent, and (b) that if it is the case that this universal and compulsory education is not properly assured, it is acceptable and it would be justified that the State itself not only stimulates this kind of education but also that directly provides it, to the extreme of establishing what are the contents of this education, assuring them.Finally, at last part of this work, we defend that there is no contradiction between this defence of universal and compulsory education by the State and the parallel criticism by Mill against the role of a permanent state citizenship education. To conclude, we defend the central role of Mill and On Liberty inside Liberal Canon, that must be interpreted in a plural, diverse, dynamic and alive sense, not necessarily enclosed in an exclusive way inside the thesis, by the way crucial to liberalism (but not the sole one) of limited power and refusal of interventionism. Only making liberalism something diverse and plural present liberals will be able to overcome the influence of Mill and to think in a genuine post-millian way.