On Liberty
John Stuart Mill
On Liberty
ClassicsNonfictionPhilosophyPolitics & SocietyEssays
6h 26m listening
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"On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill is an essay published in 1859. Mill applies utilitarian ethics to explore the relationship between individual freedom and governmental authority. He warns against the "tyranny of the majority" in democracies and argues that personal liberty should only be restricted to prevent harm to others. Mill outlines three basic freedoms and champions individuality as essential to human flourishing. This influential work, shaped significantly by his collaboration with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill, remains a cornerstone of liberal political thought.
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About the book
Published in 1859, On Liberty is John Stuart Mill’s essay on the limits of the power that society can rightly exercise over the individual. Its central principle is that the only purpose for which power may be exercised over anyone against their will is to prevent harm to others; a person’s own good is not, on its own, a sufficient reason. Mill defends freedom of thought and discussion, arguing that even false opinions sharpen the truth, and warns that the tyranny of public opinion can be as stifling as the tyranny of rulers. He treats individuality and experiments in living as essential to human progress. He dedicated the essay to his late wife, Harriet Taylor Mill, whose thinking he credited in its making.
Characters
Socrates — The persecuted thinker
Put to death by his countrymen for impiety, Mill’s first example of how society can condemn its best men.
Christ — The persecuted teacher
Mill’s second example, condemned as a blasphemer by men who believed they were doing right.
Marcus Aurelius — The good persecutor
The wisest and best of emperors, who nonetheless persecuted Christianity, proof that good intentions do not justify suppression.
Wilhelm von Humboldt — The inspiration
The German thinker whose ideal of the full development of each individual Mill takes as his starting point.
The Mormons — A persecuted minority
The religious community whose treatment Mill cites as an example of intolerance in his own day.
About the author
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was an English philosopher, economist and politician, born in London, the son of the philosopher James Mill. His father gave him an extraordinarily rigorous education, beginning Greek at the age of three, in the hope of making him a champion of Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism. At twenty he suffered a breakdown, from which he recovered partly through reading Wordsworth’s poetry, and he went on to broaden the philosophy he had inherited. For thirty-five years he worked for the East India Company. His books include A System of Logic (1843), Principles of Political Economy (1848), On Liberty (1859), Utilitarianism (1863) and The Subjection of Women (1869). He married Harriet Taylor in 1851 and credited her as a partner in his thinking. As a member of Parliament from 1865 to 1868 he proposed giving women the vote. He died in Avignon in 1873, and his Autobiography appeared that year.