## 1. First Principles



Spencer's output was vast, covering several other disciplines
besides philosophy and making it difficult to make sense of his
philosophizing separate from his non-philosophical writing. And there
is so much Spencer to make sense of, namely many thousand printed
 pages.[1]
 Besides ethics and political philosophy, Spencer wrote at length
about psychology, biology and, especially, about sociology. Certain
themes, not unexpectedly, run through much of this material. Coming to
terms with Spencer and measuring his legacy requires expertise in all
of these fields, which no one today has. Notwithstanding this caveat,
it seems fair to say that next to ethics and political philosophy,
Spencer's lasting impact has been most pronounced in sociology.
In many revealing respects, the latter grounds and orients the former.
Hence, it seems best to discuss his sociology first before turning to
his moral and political theory. But taking up his sociological theory,
in turn, requires addressing, however briefly, the elemental axioms
undergirding his entire "Synthetic Philosophy," which
consisted of *The Principles of Biology* (1864-7),
*The Principles of Psychology* (1855 and 1870-2), *The
Principles of Sociology* (1876-96), and
*The Principles of Ethics* (1879-93).



*First Principles* was issued in 1862 as an axiomatic
prolegomena to the synthetic philosophy, which came to a close with
the publication of the 1896, final volume of *The Principles of
Sociology*. Though disguised as mid-19th century speculative
physics, *First Principles* is mostly metaphysics encompassing
all inorganic change and organic evolution. The synthetic philosophy
purports to illustrate in often maddening detail what follows from
*First Principles*.



According to Spencer in *First Principles*, three principles
regulate the universe, namely the Law of the Persistence of Force, the
Law of the Instability of the Homogeneous and the Law of the
Multiplicity of Effects. Though originally homogeneous, the universe
is gradually becoming increasingly heterogeneous because Force or
Energy expands un-uniformly. Homogeneity is unstable because Force is
unstable and variable. And because of the Law of the Multiplicity of
Effects, heterogeneous consequences grow exponentially, forever
accelerating the tempo of homogeneity evolving into heterogeneity.
Spencer postulates, though not always consistently, that the universe
will eventually equilibrate, eventually dissolving towards
homogeneity.



Using some of Spencer's other terminology, the universe is
relentlessly becoming more complex, forever subdividing into
multifarious aggregates. As these aggregates become increasingly
differentiated, their components become increasingly dissimilar
speeding up the entire process and making the universe heterogeneous
without end until equilibrium occurs. Or more parsimoniously:
"Evolution is definable as a change from an incoherent
homogeneity to a coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation
of motion and integration of matter." (Spencer, 1915: 291). For
Spencer, then, all organic as well as inorganic phenomena were
evolving, becoming evermore integrated and heterogeneous. As Spencer
was to emphasize years later, this holds human social evolution no
less:



> 
> Now, we propose in the first place to show, that this law of organic
> progress is the law of all progress. Whether it be in the development
> of the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, in the
> development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce,
> of Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same evolution of the
> simple into the complex, through successive differentiations, holds
> throughout. From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the
> latest results of civilization, we shall find that transformation of
> the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which progress
> essentially consists. (Spencer, vol. I, 1901:
>  10)[2]
> 



In sum, societies were not only becoming increasingly complex,
heterogeneous and cohesive. They were becoming additionally
interdependent and their components, including their human members,
more and more specialized and individuated.


## 2.The Principles of Sociology



*The Principles of Sociology* has often been considered seminal
in the development of modern sociology both for its method and for
much of its content. Replete with endless examples from the distant
past, recent past and present, it speculatively describes and explains
the entire arch of human social
 evolution.[3]
 Part V, "Political Institutions," is especially relevant
for understanding Spencer's ethics. Together with his
*Principles of Ethics*, "Political Institutions"
crowns the synthetic philosophy. They are its whole
 point.[4]



On Spencer's account, social evolution unfolds through four
universal stages. These are 1) "primitive" societies
characterized by casual political cooperation, 2)
"militant" societies characterized by rigid, hierarchical
political control, 3) "industrial" societies where
centralized political hegemony collapses, giving way to minimally
regulated markets and 4) spontaneously, self-regulating, market
utopias in which government withers away. Overpopulation causing
violent conflicts between social groups fuels this cycle of
consolidation and reversal to which no society is immune.



More precisely, as embryonic kinship groups grow more numerous, they
"come to be everywhere in one another's way,"
(Spencer, vol. II, 1876-93: 37). The more these primal societies crowd
each other, the more externally violent and militant they become.
Success in war requires greater solidarity and politically
consolidated and enforced cohesion. Unremitting warfare fuses and
formalizes political control, eradicating societies that fail to
consolidate sufficiently. Clans form into nations and tribal chiefs
become kings. As militarily successful societies subdue and absorb
their rivals, they tend to stabilize and to "compound" and
"recompound," stimulating the division of labor and
commerce. The division of labor and spread of contractual exchange
transform successful and established "militant" societies
into "negatively regulative industrial" societies prizing
individual freedom and basic rights where the state recedes to
protecting citizens against force and fraud at home and aggression
from abroad. Other things being equal, a society in which life,
liberty, and property, are secure, and all interests justly regarded,
must prosper more than one in which they are not; and, consequently,
among competing industrial societies there must be gradual replacing
of those in which personal rights are imperfectly maintained, by those
in which they are perfectly maintained." (Spencer, vol. II,
1876-93: 608). And societies where rights are perfectly maintained
will in due course confederate together in an ever-expanding pacific
equilibrium. As noted previously, equilibrium is always unstable,
risking dissolution and regression. Indeed by the end of his life,
Spencer was far less sanguine about industrial societies avoiding
war.[5]



Notwithstanding his increasing pessimism regarding liberal progress
and international concord, the extent to which normative theorizing
informs Spencer's sociological theorizing is palpable. Sociology
and ethics intertwine. We shall shortly see just how utilitarian as
well as how individualistic both were.



Many recent interpreters of Spencer, especially sociologists, have
insisted that his sociological theory and his ethics do not
intertwine, that his sociology stands apart and that therefore we can
discount his moral theory in our efforts to understand his legacy to
social science. For instance, J. D. Y. Peel has argued that
Spencer's sociology is "logically independent of his
ethics." Jonathan H. Turner concurs, claiming that
Spencer's ethics and other ideological shortcomings "get
in the way of viewing Spencer as a theorist whose [sociological] ideas
have endured (if only by rediscovery)." For Turner, his
"sociology is written so that these deficiencies can easily be
ignored." Robert Carneiro and Robert Perrin cite and reiterate
Peel's assessment.[6] 
 And more recently, Mark Francis
implies much the same, writing that Spencer's theory of social
change "operated on a different level than his moral
theory.".[7]
 But just because many
years later we can get something out of his sociology while ignoring
his ethics and, for that matter, anything else besides sociology that
he wrote, we would err in thinking that we have correctly interpreted
Spencer let alone thinking that we have correctly interpreted even
just his sociology. It is one thing to discover how a past thinker
seems to presage our present thinking on this matter or that, and it
is another thing entirely to try to interpret a past thinker as best
we can.



Nowhere does Spencer's ethics and sociology entwine more
palpably than in his Lamarckism, though how much Spencer borrowed from
Lamarck as opposed to Darwin is contested. However, Peter J. Bowler
has lately argued that both Spencer and Darwin believed that the
inheritance of acquired characteristics and natural selection together
drove evolution. For Bowler, it is no less mistaken to view Spencer as
owing everything to Lamarck as it is to see him as owing very little
to Lamarck.[8]
Bowler's assessment is supported by Spencer's claims in
two late essays from 1886 and 1893 entitled "The Factors of
Organic Evolution" and "The Inadequacy of 'Natural
Selection.'"[9]
 The earlier essay alleges that evolution
by natural selection declines in significance compared to
use-inheritance as human mental and moral capacities develop. The
latter gradually replaces the former as the mechanism of evolutionary
change. "Factors of Organic Evolution" succinctly weaves
together use-inheritance, associationist psychology, moral
intuitionism and utility. Actions producing pleasure or pain tend to
cause mental associations between types of actions and pleasures or
pains. Sentiments of approval and disapproval also complement these
associations. We tend naturally to approve pleasure-producing actions
and disapprove pain-producing ones. Because of use-inheritance, these
feelings of approval and disapproval intensify into deep-seated moral
instincts of approval and disapproval, which gradually become refined
moral intuitions.



To what extent Spencer's sociology was functionalist has also
been disputed. According to James G. Kennedy, Spencer created
 functionalism.[10]
 It would seem that
regarding Spencer as a functionalist is another way of viewing him as,
in contemporary normative terminology, a consequentialist. That is,
social evolution favors social institutions and normative practices
that promote human solidarity, happiness and flourishing.



Spencer's reputation in sociology has faded. Social theorists remember
him though most probably remember little about him though this may be
changing somewhat. Moral philosophers, for their part, have mostly
forgotten him even though 19th-century classical utilitarians like
Mill and Henry Sidgwick, Idealists like T. H. Green and J. S.
Mackenzie, and new liberals like D. G. Ritchie discussed him at
considerable length though mostly critically. And 20th-century ideal
utilitarians like Moore and Hastings Rashdall and Oxford intuitionists
like W. D. Ross also felt compelled to engage him. Spencer was very
much part of their intellectual context. He oriented their thinking
not insignificantly. We cannot properly interpret them unless we take
Spencer more seriously than we do.


## 3. Spencer's "Liberal" Utilitarianism



Spencer was a sociologist in part. But he was even more a moral
philosopher. He was what we now refer to as a liberal utilitarian
first who traded heavily in evolutionary theory in order to explain
how our liberal utilitarian sense of justice emerges.



Though a utilitarian, Spencer took distributive justice no less
seriously than Mill. For him as for Mill, liberty and justice were
equivalent. Whereas Mill equated fundamental justice with his liberty
principle, Spencer equated justice with equal liberty, which holds
that the "liberty of each, limited by the like liberty of all,
is the rule in conformity with which society must be organized"
(Spencer, 1970: 79). Moreover, for Spencer as for Mill, liberty was
sacrosanct, insuring that his utilitarianism was equally a bona fide
form of liberalism. For both, respect for liberty also just happened
to work out for the utilitarian best all things considered.
Indefeasible liberty, properly formulated, and utility were therefore
fully compossible.



Now in Spencer's case, especially by *The Principles of
Ethics* (1879-93), this compossibility rested on a complex
evolutionary moral psychology combining associationism, Lamarckian
use-inheritance, intuitionism and utility. Pleasure-producing activity
has tended to generate biologically inheritable associations between
certain types of actions, pleasurable feelings and feelings of
approval. Gradually, utilitarianism becomes
 intuitive.[11]
 And wherever utilitarian intuitions thrive, societies tend to be more
vibrant as well as stable. Social evolution favors cultures that
internalize utilitarian maxims intuitively. Conduct "restrained
within the required limits [stipulated by the principle of equal
freedom], calling out no antagonistic passions, favors harmonious
cooperation, profits the group, and, by implications, profits the
average of individuals." Consequently, "groups formed of
members having this adaptation of nature" tend "to survive
and spread" (Spencer, vol. II, 1978: 43). Wherever general
utility thrives, societies thrive. General utility and cultural
stamina go hand-in-hand. And general utility thrives best where
individuals exercise and develop their faculties within the parameters
stipulated by equal freedom.



In short, like any moral intuition, equal freedom favors societies
that internalize it and, ultimately, self-consciously invoke it. And
wherever societies celebrate equal freedom as an ultimate principle of
justice, well-being flourishes and utilitarian liberalism spreads.



Spencer likewise took moral rights seriously insofar as properly
celebrating equal freedom entailed recognizing and celebrating basic
moral rights as its "corollaries." Moral rights specify
equal freedom, making its normative requirements substantively
clearer. They stipulate our most essential sources of happiness,
namely life and liberty. Moral rights to life and liberty are
conditions of general happiness. They guarantee each individual the
opportunity to exercise his or her faculties according to his or her
own lights, which is the source of real happiness. Moral rights
can't make us happy but merely give us the equal chance to make
ourselves happy as best we can. They consequently promote general
happiness indirectly. And since they are "corollaries" of
equal freedom, they are no less indefeasible than the principle of
equal freedom itself.



Basic moral rights, then, emerge as intuitions too though they are
more specific than our generalized intuitive appreciation of the
utilitarian prowess of equal freedom. Consequently, self-consciously
internalizing and refining our intuitive sense of equal freedom,
transforming it into a principle of practical reasoning,
simultaneously transforms our emerging normative intuitions about the
sanctity of life and liberty into stringent juridical principles. And
this is simply another way of claiming that general utility flourishes
best wherever liberal principles are seriously invoked. Moral
societies are happier societies and more vibrant and successful to
boot.



Though Spencer sometimes labels basic moral rights
"natural" rights, we should not be misled, as some
scholars have been, by this characterization. Spencer's most
sustained and systematic discussion of moral rights occurs in the
concluding chapter, "The Great Political Superstition," of
*The Man Versus the State* (1884). There, he says that basic
rights are natural in the sense that they valorize
"customs" and "usages" that naturally arise as
a way of ameliorating social friction. Though conventional practices,
only very specific rights nevertheless effectively promote human
well-being. Only those societies that fortuitously embrace them
flourish.



Recent scholars have misinterpreted Spencer's theory rights
because, among other reasons, they have no doubt misunderstood
Spencer's motives for writing *The Man Versus the State*.
The essay is a highly polemical protest, in the name of strong rights
as the best antidote, against the dangers of incremental legislative
reforms introducing socialism surreptitiously into Britain. Its
vitriolic, anti-socialist language surely accounts for much of its
sometimes nasty social Darwinist rhetoric, which is unmatched in
Spencer's other writings notwithstanding scattered passages in
*The Principles of Ethics* and in *The Principles of
Sociology*
 (1876-96).[12]



Spencer's "liberal" utilitarian credentials are
therefore compelling as his 1863 exchange of letters with Mill further
testifies. Between the 1861 serial publication of
*Utilitarianism* in *Fraser's Magazine* and its
1863 publication as a book, Spencer wrote Mill, protesting that Mill
erroneously implied that he was anti-utilitarian in a footnote near
the end of the last chapter, "Of the Connection Between Justice
and Utility." Agreeing with Benthamism that happiness is the
"ultimate" end, Spencer firmly disagrees that it should be
our "proximate" end. He next adds:



> 
> But the view for which I contend is, that Morality properly so-called
> - the science of right conduct - has for its object to
> determine how and why certain modes of conduct are detrimental, and
> certain other modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot be
> accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution of
> things; and I conceive it to be the business of moral science to
> deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what
> kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds
> to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be
> recognized as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to irrespective
> of a direct estimation of happiness or misery (Spencer, vol. II, 1904:
>  88-9).[13]
> 



Specific types of actions, in short, necessarily always promote
general utility best over the long term though not always in the
interim. While they may not always promote it proximately, they
invariably promote it ultimately or, in other words, indirectly. These
action types constitute uncompromising, normative "laws of
conduct." As such, they specify the parameters of equal freedom.
That is, they constitute our fundamental moral rights. We have moral
rights to these action types if we have moral rights to anything at
all.



Spencer as much as Mill, then, advocates indirect utilitarianism by
featuring robust moral rights. For both theorists, rights-oriented
utilitarianism best fosters general happiness because individuals
succeed in making themselves happiest when they develop their mental
and physical faculties by exercising them as they deem most
appropriate, which, in turn, requires extensive freedom. But since we
live socially, what we practically require is equal freedom suitably
fleshed out in terms of its moral right corollaries. Moral rights to
life and liberty secure our most vital opportunities for making
ourselves as happy as we possibly can. So if Mill remains potently
germane because his legacy to contemporary liberal utilitarian still
inspires, then we should take better account of Spencer than,
unfortunately, we currently do.



Spencer's "liberal" utilitarianism, however, differs
from Mill's in several respects, including principally the
greater stringency that Spencer ascribed to moral rights. Indeed, Mill
regarded this difference as the fundamental one between them. Mill
responded to Spencer's letter professing allegiance to
utilitarianism, observing that he concurs fully with Spencer that
utilitarianism must incorporate the "widest and most general
principles" that it possibly can. However, in contrast to
Spencer, Mill protests that he "cannot admit that any of these
principles are necessary, or that the practical conclusions which can
be drawn from them are even (absolutely) universal" (Duncan,
ed., 1908:
 108).[14]


## 4. Rational Versus Empirical Utilitarianism



Spencer referred to his own brand of utilitarianism as
"rational" utilitarianism, which he claimed improved upon
Bentham's inferior "empirical" utilitarianism. And
though he never labeled Mill a "rational" utilitarian,
presumably he regarded him as one.



One should not underestimate what "rational"
utilitarianism implied for Spencer metaethically. In identifying
himself as a "rational" utilitarian, Spencer distanced
himself decidedly from social Darwinism, showing why Moore's
infamous judgment was misplaced. Responding to T. H. Huxley's
accusation that he conflated good with "survival of the
fittest," Spencer insisted that "fittest" and
"best" were not equivalent. He agreed with Huxley that
though ethics can be evolutionarily explained, ethics nevertheless
preempts normal struggle for existence with the arrival of humans.
Humans invest evolution with an "ethical check," making
human evolution qualitatively different from non-human evolution.
"Rational" utilitarianism constitutes the most advanced
form of "ethical check[ing]" insofar as it specifies the
"equitable limits to his [the individual's] activities,
and of the restraints which must be imposed upon him" in his
interactions with others (Spencer, vol. I, 1901:
 125-28).[15]
 In short, once we begin systematizing our inchoate utilitarian
intuitions with the principle of equal freedom and its derivative
moral rights, we begin "check[ing]" evolutionary struggle
for survival with unprecedented skill and subtlety. We
self-consciously invest our utilitarianism with stringent liberal
principles in order to advance our well-being as never before.



Now Henry Sidgwick seems to have understood what Spencer meant by
"rational" utilitarianism better than most, although
Sidgwick didn't get Spencer entirely right either. Sidgwick
engaged Spencer critically on numerous occasions. The concluding of
Book II of *The Methods of Ethics* (1907), entitled
"Deductive Hedonism," is a sustained though veiled
criticism of
 Spencer.[16]



For Sidgwick, Spencer's utilitarianism was merely seemingly
deductive even though it purported to be more scientific and
rigorously rational than "empirical" utilitarianism.
However, deductive hedonism fails because, contrary to what deductive
hedonists like Spencer think, no general science of the causes of
pleasure and pain exists, insuring that we will never succeed in
formulating universal, indefeasible moral rules for promoting
happiness. Moreover, Spencer only makes matters worse for himself in
claiming that we can nevertheless formulate indefeasible moral rules
for hypothetically perfectly moral human beings. First of all, in
Sidgwick's view, since we can't possibly imagine what
perfectly moral humans would look like, we could never possibly deduce
an ideal moral code of "absolute" ethics for them.
Secondly, even if we could somehow conceptualize such a code, it would
nevertheless provide inadequate normative guidance to humans as we
find them with all their actual desires, emotions and irrational
 proclivities.[17]
 For Sidgwick, all we have is utilitarian common-sense, which we can,
and should, try to refine and systematize according the demands of our
changing
 circumstances.[18]



Sidgwick, then, faulted Spencer for deceiving himself in thinking that
he had successfully made "empirical" utilitarianism more
rigorous by making it deductive and therefore "rational."
Rather, Spencer was simply offering just another variety of
"empirical" utilitarianism instead. Nevertheless,
Spencer's version of "empirical" utilitarianism was
much closer to Sidgwick's than Sidgwick recognized. Spencer not
only shadowed Mill substantively but Sidgwick methodologically.



In the preface to the sixth edition of *The Methods of Ethics*
(1901), Sidgwick writes that as he became increasingly aware of the
shortcomings of utilitarian calculation, he became ever more sensitive
to the utilitarian efficacy of common sense "on the ground of
the general presumption which evolution afforded that moral sentiments
and opinions would point to conduct conducive to general
happiness..." (Sidgwick, 1907: xxiii). In other words,
common sense morality is a generally reliable, right-making decision
procedure because social evolution has privileged the emergence of
general happiness-generating moral sentiments. And whenever common
sense fails us with conflicting or foggy guidance, we have little
choice but to engage in order-restoring, utilitarian calculation. The
latter works hand-in-glove with the former, forever refining and
systematizing it.



Now Spencer's "empirical" utilitarianism works much
the same way even though Spencer obfuscated these similarities by
spuriously distinguishing between "empirical" and
supposedly superior, "rational" utilitarianism. Much like
Sidgwick, Spencer holds that our common sense moral judgments derive
their intuitive force from their proven utility-promoting power
inherited from one generation to the next. Contrary to what
"empirical" utilitarians like Bentham have mistakenly
maintained, we never make utilitarian calculations in an
intuition-free vacuum. Promoting utility is never simply a matter of
choosing options, especially when much is at stake, by calculating and
critically comparing utilities. Rather, the emergence of utilitarian
practical reasoning begins wherever our moral intuitions breakdown.
Moral science tests and refines our moral intuitions, which often
prove "necessarily vague" and contradictory. In order to
"make guidance by them adequate to all requirements, their
dictates have to be interpreted and made definite by science; to which
end there must be analysis of those conditions to complete living
which they respond to, and from converse with which they have
arisen." Such analysis invariably entails recognizing the
happiness of "each and all, as the end to be achieved by
fulfillment of these conditions" (Spencer, vol. I, 1978:
204).



"Empirical" utilitarianism is "unconsciously
made" out of the "accumulated results of past human
experience," eventually giving way to "rational"
utilitarianism which is "determined by the intellect"
(Spencer, 1969: 279 ff.). The latter, moreover, "implies
guidance by the general conclusions which analysis of experience
yields," calculating the "distant effects" on lives
"at large" (Spencer, 1981: 162-5).



In sum, "rational" utilitarianism is critical and
empirical rather than deductive. It resolutely though judiciously
embraces indefeasible moral rights as necessary conditions of general
happiness, making utilitarianism rigorously and uncompromisingly
liberal. And it was also evolutionary, much like Sidgwick's. For
both Spencer and Sidgwick, utilitarian practical reasoning exposes,
refines and systematizes our underlying moral intuitions, which have
thus far evolved in spite of their under-appreciated utility. Whereas
Spencer labeled this progress towards "rational"
utilitarianism, Sidgwick more appropriately called this
"progress in the direction of a closer approximation to a
perfectly enlightened [empirical] Utilitarianism" (Sidgwick,
1907: 455).



Notwithstanding the undervalued similarities between their respective
versions of evolutionary utilitarianism, Spencer and Sidgwick
nevertheless parted company in two fundamental respects. First,
whereas for Spencer, "rational" utilitarianism refines
"empirical" utilitarianism by converging on indefeasible
moral rights, for Sidgwick, systematization never ceases. Rather,
systematizing common sense continues indefinitely in order to keep
pace with the vicissitudes of our social circumstances. The best
utilitarian strategy requires flexibility and not the cramping
rigidity of unyielding rights. In effect, Spencer's
utilitarianism was too dogmatically liberal for Sidgwick's more
tempered political tastes.



Second, Spencer was a Lamarckian while Sidgwick was not. For Spencer,
moral faculty exercise hones each individual's moral intuitions.
Being biologically (and not just culturally) inheritable, these
intuitions become increasingly authoritative in succeeding
generations, favoring those cultures wherever moral common sense
becomes more uncompromising all things being equal. Eventually,
members of favored societies begin consciously recognizing, and
further deliberately refining, the utility-generating potency of their
inherited moral intuitions. "Rational," scientific
utilitarianism slowly replaces common sense, "empirical"
utilitarianism as we learn the incomparable value of equal freedom and
its derivative moral rights as everyday utilitarian decision
 procedures.[19]



Their differences aside, Spencer was nonetheless as much a utilitarian
as Sidgwick, which the latter fully recognized though we should
hesitate labeling Spencer a classical utilitarian as we now label
Sidgwick. Moreover, Sidgwick was hardly alone at the turn of the
twentieth-century in depicting Spencer as fundamentally utilitarian.
J. H. Muirhead viewed him as a utilitarian as did W. D. Ross as late
as 1939. (Muirhead, 1897: 136; Ross, 1939: 59). Even scholars in
Germany at that time read Spencer as a utilitarian. For instance, A.
G. Sinclair viewed him as a utilitarian worth comparing with Sidgwick.
In his 1907 *Der Utilitarismus bei Sidgwick und Spencer*,
Sinclair concludes "Daher ist er [Spencer], wie wir schon gesagt
haben, ein evolutionistischer Hedonist und nicht ein ethischer
Evolutionist," which we can translate as "Therefore he
(Spencer) is, as we have already seen, an evolutionary hedonist and
not an ethical evolutionist" (Sinclair, 1907: 49). So however
much we have fallen into the erroneous habit of regarding Spencer as
little invested with 19th-century utilitarianism, he was not received
that way at all by his immediate contemporaries both in England and in
continental Europe.


## 5. Political Rights



Not only was Spencer less than a "social Darwinist" as we
have come to understand social Darwinism, but he was also less
unambiguously libertarian as some, such as Eric Mack and Tibor Machan,
have made him out to be. Not only his underlying utilitarianism but
also the distinction, which he never forswears, between "rights
properly so-called" and "political" rights, makes it
problematic to read him as what we would call a
'libertarian'.



Whereas "rights properly so-called" are authentic
specifications of equal freedom, "political rights" are
not. They are interim devices conditional on our moral imperfection.
Insofar as we remain morally imperfect requiring government
enforcement of moral rights proper, political rights insure that
government nevertheless remains mostly benign, never unduly violating
moral rights proper themselves. The "right to ignore the
state" and the right of universal suffrage are two essential
political rights for Spencer. In *Social Statics*, Spencer says
"we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a
condition of voluntary outlawry." Every citizen is "free
to drop connection with the state - to relinquish its protection
and to refuse paying for its support" (Spencer, 1970: 185). For
Spencer, this right helps restrict government to protecting proper
moral rights because it allows citizens to take their business
elsewhere when it doesn't.



However, Spencer eventually repudiated this mere political
right.  For instance, in his 1894 *An Autobiography*, he
insists that since citizens "cannot avoid benefiting by the
social order which government maintains," they have no right to
opt out from its protection (Spencer, 1904, vol. 1: 362). They may not
legitimately take their business elsewhere whenever they feel that
their fundamental moral rights are being ill-protected. Because he
eventually repudiated the "right to ignore the state," we
should not interpret Spencer as he comes across in Nozick 1974 (p.
289-290, footnote 10, the text of which is on p. 350), where he is
referenced in support of such a right.



Spencer's commitment to the right of universal suffrage likewise
wanes in his later writings. Whereas in *Social Statics*, he
regards universal suffrage as a dependable means of preventing
government from overreaching its duty of sticking to protecting moral
rights proper, by the later *Principles of Ethics* he concludes
that universal suffrage fails to do this effectively and so he
abandons his support of it. He later concluded that universal suffrage
threatened respect for moral rights more than it protected them. 
Universal suffrage, especially when extended to women, encouraged
"over-legislation," allowing government to take up
responsibilities which were none of its business.



Spencer, then, was more than willing to modify political rights in
keeping with his changing assessment of how well they secured basic
moral rights on whose sanctity promoting happiness depended. The more
he became convinced that certain political rights were accordingly
counterproductive, the more readily he forsook them and the less
democratic, if not patently libertarian, he became.



Likewise, Spencer's declining enthusiasm for land
nationalization (which Hillel Steiner has recently found so
inspiring), coupled with growing doubts that it followed as a
corollary from the principle of equal freedom, testify to his waning
 radicalism.[20]
 According to Spencer in *Social Statics*, denying every
citizen the right to use of the earth equally was a "crime
inferior only in wickedness to the crime of taking away their lives or
personal liberties" (Spencer: 1970, 182.)  Private land
ownership was incompatible with equal freedom because it denied most
citizens equal access to the earth's surface on which faculty
exercise and happiness ultimately depended. However, by *The
Principles of Ethics*, Spencer abandoned advocating comprehensive
land nationalization, much to Henry George's ire. George, an
American, had previously regarded Spencer as a formidable ally in his
crusade to abolish private land tenure.



Now Spencer's repudiation of the moral right to use the earth
and the political right to ignore the state, as well as the political
right of universal suffrage, undermines his distinction between
rational and empirical utilitarianism. In forswearing the right to use
the earth -- because he subsequently became convinced that land
nationalization undermined, rather than promoted general utility
-- Spencer betrays just how much of a traditional empirical
utilitarian he was. He abandoned land nationalization not because he
concluded that the right to use the earth did not follow deductively
from the principle of equal freedom. Rather, he abandoned land reform
simply because he became convinced that it was an empirically
counterproductive strategy for promoting utility.



Even more obviously, by repudiating political rights like the
"right to ignore the state" and universal suffrage rights,
he similarly divulged just how much empirical utilitarian
considerations trumped all else in his practical reasoning. Not only
was Spencer not a committed or consistent libertarian, but he was not
much of rational utilitarian either. In the end, Spencer was mostly,
to repeat, what we would now call a liberal utilitarian who, much like
Mill, tried to combine strong rights with utility though, in
Spencer's case, he regarded moral rights as indefeasible.


## 6. Conclusion



Allan Gibbard has suggested that, for Sidgwick, in refining and
systematizing common sense, we transform "unconscious
utilitarianism" into "conscious utilitarianism." We
"apply scientific techniques of felicific assessment to further
the achievement of the old, unconscious goal" (Gibbard in Miller
and Williams, eds., 1982: 72). Spencer's "liberal"
utilitarianism was comparable moral science. Sidgwick, however, aimed
simply at "progress in the direction of a closer approximation
to a perfectly enlightened Utilitarianism" (Sidgwick, 1907:
455). Spencer, by contrast, had more grandiose aspirations for
repairing utilitarianism. Merely moving towards "perfectly
enlightened Utilitarianism" was scientifically under ambitious.
Fully "enlightened" utilitarianism was conceptually
accessible and perhaps even politically practicable. And Spencer had
discovered its secret, namely indefeasible moral rights.



Spencer, then, merits greater esteem if for no other reason than that
Sidgwick, besides Mill, took him so seriously as a fellow utilitarian
worthy of his critical attention. Unfortunately, contemporary
intellectual history has been less kind, preferring a more convenient
and simplistic narrative of the liberal canon that excludes him.



Spencer's "liberal" utilitarianism was bolder and
arguably more unstable than either Mill or Sidgwick's. He
followed Mill investing utilitarianism with robust moral rights hoping
to keep it ethically appealing without forgoing its systemic
coherence. While the principle of utility retreats to the background
as a standard of overall normative assessment, moral rights serve as
everyday sources of direct moral obligation, making Spencer no less an
indirect utilitarian than Mill. But Spencer's indirect
utilitarianism is more volatile, more logically precarious, because
Spencer burdened rights with indefeasibility while Mill made them
stringent but nevertheless overridable depending on the magnitude of
the utility at stake. For Spencer, we never compromise basic rights
let the heavens fall. But for Mill, the prospect of collapsing heavens
would easily justify appealing directly to the principle of utility at
the expense of respect for moral rights.



Now, critics of utilitarianism from William Whewell (1794-1866)
to David Lyons more recently have taken Mill and subsequent liberal
utilitarians to task for trying to have their utilitarian cake and eat
their liberalism too. As Lyons argues with great effect, by imposing
liberal juridical constraints on the pursuit of general utility, Mill
introduces as a second normative criterion with independent
"moral force" compromising his utilitarianism. He risks
embracing value pluralism if not abandoning utilitarianism altogether.
And if Mill's liberal version of utilitarianism is just value
pluralism in disguise, then he still faces the further dilemma of how
to arbitrate conflicts between utility and rights. If utility trumps
rights only when enough of it is at stake, we must still ask how much
enough is enough? And any systematic answer we might give simply
injects another normative criterion into the problematic logic of our
liberal utilitarian stew since we have now introduced a third higher
criterion that legislates conflicts between the moral force of the
principle of utility and the moral force of
 rights.[21]



If these dilemmas hold for Mill's utilitarianism, then the
implications are both better and worse for Spencer. Though for Mill,
utility always trumps rights when enough of the former is in jeopardy,
with Spencer, fundamental rights always trump utility no matter how
much of the latter is imperiled. Hence, Spencer does not need to
introduce surreptitiously supplemental criteria for adjudicating
conflicts between utility and rights because rights are indefeasible,
never giving way to the demands of utility or disutility no matter how
immediate and no matter how promising or how catastrophic. In short,
for Spencer, basic moral rights always carry the greater, practical
(if not formal) moral force. Liberalism always supersedes
utilitarianism in practice no matter how insistently Spencer feigns
loyalty to the latter.



Naturally, one can salvage this kind of utilitarianism's
authenticity by implausibly contending that indefeasible moral rights
always (meaning literally without exception) work out for the
utilitarian best over both the short and long-terms. As Wayne Sumner
correctly suggests, "absolute rights are not an impossible
output for a consequentialist methodology" (Sumner, 1987: 211).
While this maneuver would certainly rescue the logical integrity of
Spencer's liberal version of utilitarianism, it does so at the
cost of considerable common sense credibility. And even if it were
miraculously true that respecting rights without exception just
happened to maximize long-term utility, empirically demonstrating this
truth would certainly prove challenging at best. Moreover,
notwithstanding this maneuver's practical plausibility, it would
nevertheless seem to cause utilitarianism to retire a "residual
position" that is indeed hardly "worth calling
utilitarianism" (Williams in Smart and Williams, 1973: 135).



Whether Spencer actually envisioned his utilitarianism this way is
unclear. In any case, insofar as he also held that social evolution
was tending towards human moral perfectibility, he could afford to
worry less and less about whether rights-based utilitarianism was a
plausible philosophical enterprise. Increasing moral perfectibility
makes secondary decision procedures like basic moral rights
unnecessary as a utility-promoting strategy. Why bother with promoting
general utility indirectly once we have learned to promote it directly
with certainty of success? Why bother with substitute sources of
stand-in obligation when, thanks to having become moral saints, act
utilitarianism will fortunately always do? But moral
perfectibility's unlikelihood is no less plausible than the
likelihood of fanatical respect for basic moral rights always working
out for the utilitarian
 best.[22]
 In any case, just as the latter strategy causes utilitarianism to
retire completely for practical purposes, so the former strategy
amounts to liberalism entirely retiring in turn. Hence, Mill's
version of "liberal" utilitarianism must be deemed more
compelling and promising for those of us who remain stubbornly drawn
to this problematical philosophical enterprise.



Spencer's rights-based utilitarianism nonetheless has much to
recommend for it despite its unconventional features and implausible
implications. Even more than Mill, he suggests how liberal
utilitarians could attempt to moderate utilitarianism in other ways,
enabling it to retain a certain measure of considerable ethical
appeal. Spencer's utilitarianism wears its liberalism not only
by constraining the pursuit of utility externally by deploying robust
moral rights with palpable independent moral force. It also, and more
successfully, shows how utilitarians can liberalize their
utilitarianism by building internal constraints into their maximizing
aims. If, following Spencer, we make our maximizing goal
distribution-sensitive by including everyone's happiness within
it so that each individual obtains his or her fair share, then we have
salvaged some kind of consequentialist authenticity while
simultaneously securing individual integrity too. We have salvaged
utilitarianism as a happiness-promoting, if not a
happiness-maximizing, consequentialism. Because everyone is "to
count for one, nobody for more than one" not just as a resource
for generating utility but also as deserving to experience a share of
it, no one may be sacrificed callously without limit for the good of
the
 rest.[23]
 No one may be treated as a means only but must be treated as an end
as well.



Spencer's utilitarianism also has much to recommend for it
simply for its much undervalued importance in the development of
modern liberalism. If Mill and Sidgwick are critical to making sense
of our liberal canon, then Spencer is no less critical. If both are
crucial for coming to terms with Rawls particularly, and consequently
with post-Rawlsianism generally, as I strongly believe both are, then
Spencer surely deserves better from recent intellectual history.
Intellectual history is one of the many important narratives we tell
and retell ourselves. What a shame when we succumb to scholarly
laziness in constructing these narratives just because such laziness
both facilitates meeting the pedagogical challenges of teaching the
liberal tradition and answering our need for a coherent philosophical
identity.