Read the excerpt below and answer the question. The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used. The faculties are called into no exercise by doing a thing merely because others do it, no more than by believing a thing only because others believe it. (from "On Liberty: On Individuality, as One of the Elements of Wellbeing"; chapter 3, section 3) Explain Mill's argument in this passage and describe, in your own words, how this excerpt applies to public and private life today. Your answer should be at least one hundred words.

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Ray

4 March, 09:11

Read the excerpt below and answer the question. The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used. The faculties are called into no exercise by doing a thing merely because others do it, no more than by believing a thing only because others believe it. (from "On Liberty: On Individuality, as One of the Elements of Wellbeing"; chapter 3, section 3) Explain Mill's argument in this passage and describe, in your own words, how this excerpt applies to public and private life today. Your answer should be at least one hundred words.

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Zain Herring · Answer 1

John Stuart Mill is arguing against conformity. The human being, through its faculties of "perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference", only excercices those faculties when going against custom, against what is known as received wisdom. If someone merely follows the dictates of custom, then he is not thinking, or judging, or making moral choices: he is, so to speak, on autopilot, or simply following the herd. He is not asserting himself as an individual in full command of his humanity. In our daily lives we face many situations where we follow preestablished behaviors: at work, in the street, when dealing with our family. But it is only when we depart from what is expected from us that we become individuals, when we reject the well-worn path of custom and make personal choices.