On Liberty


On Liberty is an essay published in 1859 by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, written with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill. It applied Mill's ethical system of utilitarianism to society and state. Mill suggested standards for the relationship between authority and liberty. He emphasized the importance of individuality, which he considered a prerequisite to the higher pleasures—the summum bonum of utilitarianism. Furthermore, Mill asserted that democratic ideals may result in the tyranny of the majority. Among the standards proposed are Mill's three basic liberties of individuals, his three legitimate objections to government intervention, and his two maxims regarding the relationship of the individual to society.
On Liberty was a greatly influential and well-received work. Some classical liberals and libertarians have criticized it for its apparent discontinuity with Utilitarianism, and vagueness in defining the arena within which individuals can contest government infringements on their personal freedom of action. The ideas presented in On Liberty have remained the basis of much political thought. It has remained in print since its initial publication. A copy of On Liberty is passed to the president of the British Liberal Democrats as a symbol of office.
Mill's marriage to Harriet Taylor Mill greatly influenced the concepts in On Liberty, which was published shortly after she died.

Composition

According to his autobiography, On Liberty was first conceived as a short essay in 1854. As the ideas developed, the essay was expanded, rewritten and "sedulously" corrected by Mill and his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill. After suffering a mental breakdown and eventually meeting and subsequently marrying Harriet, Mill changed many of his beliefs on moral life and women's rights. Mill states that On Liberty "was more directly and literally our joint production than anything else which bears my name."
The final draft was nearly complete when his wife died suddenly in 1858. Mill suggests that he made no alterations to the text at this point and that one of his first acts after her death was to publish it and to "consecrate it to her memory." The composition of this work was also indebted to the work of the German thinker Wilhelm von Humboldt, especially his essay On the Limits of State Action. Finally published in 1859, On Liberty was one of Mill's two most influential books.

Overview

Introduction

John Stuart Mill opens his essay by discussing the historical "struggle between authority and liberty," describing the tyranny of government, which, in his view, needs to be controlled by the liberty of the citizens. He divides this control of authority into two mechanisms: necessary rights belonging to citizens, and the "establishment of constitutional checks by which the consent of the community, or of a body of some sort, supposed to represent its interests, was made a necessary condition to some of the more important acts of the governing power." Because society was—in its early stages—subjected to such turbulent conditions, it was forced to accept rule "by a master." However, as mankind progressed, it became conceivable for the people to rule themselves. Mill admits that this new form of society seemed immune to tyranny because "there was no fear of tyrannizing over self." Despite the high hopes of the Enlightenment, Mill argues that the democratic ideals were not as easily met as expected. First, even in a democracy, the rulers were not always the same sort of people as the ruled. Second, there is a risk of a "tyranny of the majority" in which the many oppress the few who, according to democratic ideals, have just as much a right to pursue their legitimate ends.
In Mill's view, tyranny of the majority is worse than tyranny of government because it is not limited to a political function. Where one can be protected from a tyrant, it is much harder to be protected "against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling." The prevailing opinions within society will be the basis of all rules of conduct within society; thus there can be no safeguard in law against the tyranny of the majority. Mill's proof goes as follows: the majority opinion may not be the correct opinion. The only justification for a person's preference for a particular moral belief is that it is that person's preference. On a specific issue, people will align themselves either for or against that issue; the side of greatest volume will prevail, but is not necessarily correct. In conclusion to this analysis of past governments, Mill proposes a single standard for which a person's liberty may be restricted:
That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.... Over himself, over his body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

Mill clarifies that this standard is solely based on utility, not on natural rights. According to Mill, children and "barbarian" nations benefit from limited freedom. Just despots, such as Charlemagne and Akbar the Great, were historically beneficial to people not yet fit to rule themselves.
J. S. Mill concludes the Introduction by discussing what he claimed were the three basic liberties in order of importance:
  1. The freedom of thought and emotion. This includes the freedom to act on such thought, i.e. freedom of speech
  2. The freedom to pursue tastes, even if they are deemed "immoral"
  3. The freedom to unite so long as the involved members are of age, the involved members are not forced, and no harm is done to others
While Mill admits that these freedoms could—in certain situations—be pushed aside, he claims that in contemporary and civilised societies there is no justification for their removal.

Of the liberty of thought and discussion

In the second chapter, J. S. Mill attempts to prove his claim from the first chapter that opinions ought never to be suppressed. Looking to the consequences of suppressing opinions, he concludes that opinions ought never to be suppressed, stating, "Such prejudice, or oversight, when it occurs, is altogether an evil; but it is one from which we cannot hope to be always exempt, and must be regarded as the price paid for an inestimable good." He claims that there are three sorts of beliefs that can be had—wholly false, partly true, and wholly true—all of which, according to Mill, benefit the common good:
Mill spends much of the chapter discussing the implications of and objections to the policy of never suppressing opinions. In doing so, Mill explains his opinion of Christian ethics, arguing that, while they are praiseworthy, they are incomplete on their own. Therefore, Mill concludes that suppression of opinion based on belief in infallible doctrine is dangerous. Among the other objections Mill answers is the objection that the truth will necessarily survive persecution and that society need only teach the grounds for truth, not the objections to it. Near the end of Chapter 2, Mill states that "unmeasured vituperation, enforced on the side of prevailing opinion, deters people from expressing contrary opinion, and from listening to those who express them."

On individuality as one of the elements of well-being

In the third chapter, J. S. Mill points out the inherent value of individuality since individuality is ex vi termini the thriving of the human person through the higher pleasures. He argues that a society ought to attempt to promote individuality as it is a prerequisite for creativity and diversity. With this in mind, Mill believes that conformity is dangerous. He states that he fears that Western civilization approaches this well-intentioned conformity to praiseworthy maxims characterized by the Chinese civilization. Therefore, Mill concludes that actions in themselves do not matter. Rather, the person behind the action and the action together are valuable. He writes:

On the limits to the authority of society over the individual

In the fourth chapter, J. S. Mill explains a system in which a person can discern what aspects of life should be governed by the individual and which by society. Generally, he holds that a person should be left as free to pursue his own interests as long as this does not harm the interests of others. In such a situation, "society has jurisdiction over ." He rejects the idea that this liberty is simply for the purpose of allowing selfish indifference. Rather, he argues that this liberal system will bring people to the good more effectively than physical or emotional coercion. This principle leads him to conclude that a person may, without fear of just punishment, harm himself through vice. Governments, he claims, should only punish a person for neglecting to fulfill a duty to others, not the vice that brought about the neglect.
J. S. Mill spends the rest of the chapter responding to objections to his maxim. He notes the objection that he contradicts himself in granting societal interference with youth because they are irrational, but denying societal interference with certain adults, though they act irrationally. Mill first responds by restating the claim that society ought to punish the harmful consequences of the irrational conduct, but not the irrational conduct itself, which is a personal matter. Furthermore, he notes the societal obligation is not to ensure that each individual is moral throughout adulthood. Rather, he states that, by educating youth, society has the opportunity and duty to ensure that a generation, as a whole, is generally moral.
Where some may object that there is justification for certain religious prohibitions in a society dominated by that religion, he argues that majority members ought to make rules that they would accept should they have been the minority. He states, "unless we are willing to adopt the logic of persecutors, and say that we may persecute others because we are right, and that they must not persecute us because they are wrong, we must beware of admitting a principle of which we should resent as a gross injustice the application to ourselves." In saying this, he references an earlier claim that morals and religion cannot be treated in the same light as mathematics because morals and religion are vastly more complex. Just as with living in a society with immoral people, Mill points out that agents who find another's conduct depraved do not have to socialise with the other, merely refrain from impeding their personal decisions. While Mill generally opposes the religiously motivated societal interference, he admits that it is conceivably permissible for religiously motivated laws to prohibit the use of what no religion obligates. For example, a Muslim state could feasibly prohibit pork. However, Mill still prefers a policy of society minding its own business.