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J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings
John Stuart Mill is one of the few indisputably classic authors in the history of political thought. On Liberty, first published in 1851, has become celebrated as the most powerful defense of the freedom of the individual and it is now widely regarded as the most important theoretical foundation for Liberalism as a political creed. Similarly, his The Subjection of Women, a powerful indictment of the political, social, and economic position of women, has become one of the cardinal documents of modern feminism. This edition brings together these two classic texts, plus Mill's posthumous Chapters on Socialism, his somewhat neglected examination of the strengths and weaknesses of various forms of Socialism. The Editor's substantial Introduction places these three works in the context both of Mill's life and of nineteenth-century intellectual and political history, and assesses their continuing relevance.
328 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1989
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About the author
John Stuart Mill
1,998 books1,942 followersJohn Stuart Mill, English philosopher, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century. He was an exponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
April 6, 2018
J S Mills wrote such incredible book and i recommend this book to all philosophy lovers.
February 20, 2022
Pretty defining essay on modern concepts of liberty (modern day libertarians will find a lot to like here) but also limits the bounds of that liberty to 1) when you impact the wellbeing of others and 2) fail to listen to the minority and their needs when expressing power. One of the seminal texts for modern liberalism, it propounds looking after each other and protecting the liberties of all when practicing your own.
The Subjection of Women, radically for its time, advocates the practice of total equality of the sexes in society. On Socialism paints a picture of the modern nation state within socialist principles. Don't misinterpret that word within the distortions of modern political discourse. Mill never mentions Marx. He does, however, within the light of the destitution unleashed by the Industrial Revolution, adocate that the nation that prospers by the work of its poorest laborers should also bring the apparatus and resources of the government to bear in remedying and alleviating their suffering and squalor.
Erudite but also sometimes dry, these essays are influential to modern day political liberalism as well as a more progressive reaction within a very reactionary Victorian age.
The Subjection of Women, radically for its time, advocates the practice of total equality of the sexes in society. On Socialism paints a picture of the modern nation state within socialist principles. Don't misinterpret that word within the distortions of modern political discourse. Mill never mentions Marx. He does, however, within the light of the destitution unleashed by the Industrial Revolution, adocate that the nation that prospers by the work of its poorest laborers should also bring the apparatus and resources of the government to bear in remedying and alleviating their suffering and squalor.
Erudite but also sometimes dry, these essays are influential to modern day political liberalism as well as a more progressive reaction within a very reactionary Victorian age.
June 15, 2012
Mill's tract, published in 1859, remains one of the most important and influential of all writings on "Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be exercised by society over the individual" (5). Mill attempts to define those limits as narrowly as possible, and leave as much freedom to individual thought and action as possible. As such On Liberty remains a founding text of liberalism and one of the most powerful affirmations of individuality written in any language.
Where the individual's conduct affects only himself, "his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign" (13). Because of Mill's place in political theory his target is often taken to be the state, yet in fact he is far more concerned with the relationship of society to the individual, and the various ways social constraints are used to check individualism, ways which are far more powerful and pervasive than those available to government. His doctrine is therefore a theory not only of politics, but of society and culture. This is clear when he declares that "[t]here is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism" (9).
Liberty so conceived encompasses far more than the individual's relationship to the state, for it encompasses far more than what that relationship involves. Liberty as Mill defines it includes "liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling"; freedom of opinion regarding scientific, moral, theological, and other speculative matters; and, perhaps most important, freedom to "fram[e] the plan of our life to suit our own character" (15).
Mill's strictures against "the tyranny of the majority" (8) are best known through his denunciations of its effect on freedom of thought. Many of his most famous phrases and passages come from the second chapter of On Liberty, "On the liberty of thought and discussion." Thus he remarks that if all mankind but one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing the holdout "than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind" (20). To claim this right to silence discussion "is an assumption of infallibility," something which men can never possess (21).
Mill's endorsement of freedom of thought and discussion can only be understood as part of his broader critique of mid-Victorian society. A society which would permit opinion and thought to be squelched must become an ugly place, and that is what Victorian England has become through its attempts to stamp out dissent and difference. "[I]t is the opinions men entertain, and the feelings they cherish, respecting those who disown the beliefs they deem important, which makes this country not a place of mental freedom. For a long time past, the chief mischief of the legal penalties is that they strengthen the social stigma" (33-4). Such intolerance kills no one, but exacts a heavy toll in terms of the deceit and disguise imposed on those who must mask their true opinions in the face of social disapproval. This may preserve a veneer of social peace, "[b]ut the price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification, is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind" (34-5).
That so many are willing to pay that price Mill finds disgraceful, and so his most devastating criticism is aimed directly at that those qualities which have become such an integral part of the caricature Victorian society has become: its narrow-mindedness, its complacency, its bourgeois stolidity. Almost inevitably, then, Mill must challenge the complex of Christianity and morality that his compatriots espouse. Even those of them who are not, he asserts, adhere to a kind of generic Calvinism and therefore have a view of human nature as benighted and corrupt. It doesn't matter if they don't subscribe to the theological assumptions; hewing to a Calvinist view can only produce a view of human nature that is negative, that sees it as something that must be limited and controlled. "In some such insidious form there is at present a strong tendency to this narrow theory of life, and to the pinched and hidebound type of human character that it patronizes" (62).
This pinched and hidebound character will produce a stunted society, one that goes nowhere. It cannot, because the hostility to individuality ensures it will remain at a standstill. Echoing his great predecessor Joseph Priestley, who in his Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768, 1771) said much the same thing, Mill announces that individuality is the key to progress: "The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that disposition to aim at something better than customary, which is called, according to circumstances, the spirit of liberty, or that of progress or improvement" (70). England's greatness, if at present it has any, is all collective, Mill states. Individuals have shrunk; they have become "lost in the crowd" (66). What England ought to do is nurture individuals, especially those who march to their own drummer, those who are different, those who stand out from the crowd. In Mill's estimation, too few Englishmen dare do so today. "That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time" (67).
(Just as Mill echoes Priestley, readers familiar with both will find in Mill several anticipations of Matthew Arnold. Mill’s criticisms of a narrow religious devotion to custom can with little difficulty be translated into Arnold's criticism of Hebraism and the fixation on "machinery" in Culture and Anarchy (1869). Nor does it take much imagination to see Arnold’s Philistines as the source of Mill’s consternation. That Arnold was skeptical of individualism, on the grounds that it undermined the prospects for society to attain a high level of culture, is, though, perhaps more important than any commonality.)
Naturally, Mill confines interference with the individual to a narrow sphere. He rejects out of hand the possibility of limiting behavior which some find obnoxious on religious or other grounds but which otherwise has no broader impact on society or the complainant. Such attempts to dictate conduct must fail. Others must mind their own business. "This is precisely what should be said to every government and every public, who have the pretension that no person shall enjoy any pleasure which they think wrong" (87). He is adamant that a sense of moral offense conveys no authority to extirpate the source of offense. Mill consequently rejects all notion of "social rights." (He uses the example of an imagined social right not to be affronted by someone else’s consumption of alcohol.) He fulminates against this idea in what may be the strongest language in the whole book:
"A theory of 'social rights', the like of which probably never before found its way into distinct language: being nothing short of this – that it is the absolute social right of every individual, that every other individual shall act in every respect exactly as he ought; that whosoever fails thereof in the smallest particular, violates my social right, and entitles me to demand from the legislature the removal of the grievance. So monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty; there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify; it acknowledges no right to freedom whatever, except perhaps to that of holding opinions in secret, without ever disclosing them: for, the moment an opinion which I consider noxious passes any one’s lips, it invades all the 'social right' attributed to me by the Alliance. The doctrine ascribes to all mankind a vested interest in each other’s moral, intellectual, and even physical perfection, to be defined by each claimant according to his own standard." (89-90)
To believe in "social rights" is to believe that any one can interfere in any other's life according to what the one doing the interfering believes is the ideal plan of life. It is a license for tyranny and social disorder. It is the clarion of the busy-body, the improver, the do-gooder. Of everything, that is, that Mill reviled and that continues to give the Victorian age its peculiar cast of moral opprobrium and officiousness.
Mill circumscribes the sphere within which state and society can act, and draws it to a narrow compass indeed. But one area where he insists on state intervention is in education. Priestley, true to his Dissenting and Nonconformist roots, repudiated any notion of state involvement in education; the very thought was anathema. Mill, on the other hand, states that when it comes to their children, too many of his countrymen harbor an overweening jealousy of their prerogative to raise their children as they see fit. Such "misapplied notions of liberty," he writes, "are a real obstacle to the fulfilment by the State of its duties" (105).
Mill posits that it is a "self-evident axiom" that the state must require of its citizens a certain level of education. Mill recognizes that state-sponsored education is likely to be "a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another," and that the mold is likely to be whatever most pleases the dominant forces in society (106). As such, he sees state education as a kind of control which will set a basis by which all the other experiments in rearing the next generation can be measured. The care of the next generation must be a special concern, for society and its members, for bringing new beings into existence "is one of the most responsible actions in the range of human life" (108). Few things can be more important or have a greater influence on society than the creation of its future. As such, it is incumbent upon everyone to ensure that the newest members of society gain the requisite training and knowledge to become not only productive members of society, but moral beings in their own right.
The individual is paramount in Mill’s theory. But that is not to say this supremacy is unlimited. Mill concedes that there are legitimate limits which may be placed on the individual. He describes those limits in a famous passage early in the book: "the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection." Only "to prevent harm to others" may an individual be compelled against his will to do something he does not wish to do, or be restrained from doing what he wishes to do. "His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant" (13).
But what constitutes "harm"? The chief flaw of Mill's theory is that he offers now definition of harm, no rule by which to determine when one's good melds with another. As he admits, there is "no recognised principle” to determine when interference is proper and when it is not. "People decide according to their personal preferences" (12). The great scope Mill leaves to individual autonomy, therefore, can be eroded, as we have seen, by broader and more intrusive encroachments justified by more and more expansive notions of harm and self-protection. On this ground, at least, Mill falls short of his predecessor, Benjamin Constant, who in Principles of Politics (1815) defines sovereignty itself as limited. "Sovereignty," the great Swiss progenitor of liberalism writes, "has only a limited and relative existence. At the point where independence and individual existence begin, the jurisdiction of sovereignty ends." Sovereignty must be limited; if it is not, "there is no means of sheltering individuals from government." Rather than vague notions of harm, Constant simply defines a sphere of existence into which no power may intrude.
Mill's conception has its limits. It remains nonetheless powerful, as much so in our day as in his. Perhaps even more powerful in our day, which has seen the reach and scope of government, and the power of social coercion, burgeon in ways Mill could scarcely have contemplated. "The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it" (115). The worth of those individuals, now as then, depends on the sort of state they are willing to inhabit. As they forge the state, so too shall they forge themselves.
published: Friday, 15 June 2012
Where the individual's conduct affects only himself, "his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign" (13). Because of Mill's place in political theory his target is often taken to be the state, yet in fact he is far more concerned with the relationship of society to the individual, and the various ways social constraints are used to check individualism, ways which are far more powerful and pervasive than those available to government. His doctrine is therefore a theory not only of politics, but of society and culture. This is clear when he declares that "[t]here is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism" (9).
Liberty so conceived encompasses far more than the individual's relationship to the state, for it encompasses far more than what that relationship involves. Liberty as Mill defines it includes "liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling"; freedom of opinion regarding scientific, moral, theological, and other speculative matters; and, perhaps most important, freedom to "fram[e] the plan of our life to suit our own character" (15).
Mill's strictures against "the tyranny of the majority" (8) are best known through his denunciations of its effect on freedom of thought. Many of his most famous phrases and passages come from the second chapter of On Liberty, "On the liberty of thought and discussion." Thus he remarks that if all mankind but one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing the holdout "than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind" (20). To claim this right to silence discussion "is an assumption of infallibility," something which men can never possess (21).
Mill's endorsement of freedom of thought and discussion can only be understood as part of his broader critique of mid-Victorian society. A society which would permit opinion and thought to be squelched must become an ugly place, and that is what Victorian England has become through its attempts to stamp out dissent and difference. "[I]t is the opinions men entertain, and the feelings they cherish, respecting those who disown the beliefs they deem important, which makes this country not a place of mental freedom. For a long time past, the chief mischief of the legal penalties is that they strengthen the social stigma" (33-4). Such intolerance kills no one, but exacts a heavy toll in terms of the deceit and disguise imposed on those who must mask their true opinions in the face of social disapproval. This may preserve a veneer of social peace, "[b]ut the price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification, is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind" (34-5).
That so many are willing to pay that price Mill finds disgraceful, and so his most devastating criticism is aimed directly at that those qualities which have become such an integral part of the caricature Victorian society has become: its narrow-mindedness, its complacency, its bourgeois stolidity. Almost inevitably, then, Mill must challenge the complex of Christianity and morality that his compatriots espouse. Even those of them who are not, he asserts, adhere to a kind of generic Calvinism and therefore have a view of human nature as benighted and corrupt. It doesn't matter if they don't subscribe to the theological assumptions; hewing to a Calvinist view can only produce a view of human nature that is negative, that sees it as something that must be limited and controlled. "In some such insidious form there is at present a strong tendency to this narrow theory of life, and to the pinched and hidebound type of human character that it patronizes" (62).
This pinched and hidebound character will produce a stunted society, one that goes nowhere. It cannot, because the hostility to individuality ensures it will remain at a standstill. Echoing his great predecessor Joseph Priestley, who in his Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768, 1771) said much the same thing, Mill announces that individuality is the key to progress: "The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that disposition to aim at something better than customary, which is called, according to circumstances, the spirit of liberty, or that of progress or improvement" (70). England's greatness, if at present it has any, is all collective, Mill states. Individuals have shrunk; they have become "lost in the crowd" (66). What England ought to do is nurture individuals, especially those who march to their own drummer, those who are different, those who stand out from the crowd. In Mill's estimation, too few Englishmen dare do so today. "That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time" (67).
(Just as Mill echoes Priestley, readers familiar with both will find in Mill several anticipations of Matthew Arnold. Mill’s criticisms of a narrow religious devotion to custom can with little difficulty be translated into Arnold's criticism of Hebraism and the fixation on "machinery" in Culture and Anarchy (1869). Nor does it take much imagination to see Arnold’s Philistines as the source of Mill’s consternation. That Arnold was skeptical of individualism, on the grounds that it undermined the prospects for society to attain a high level of culture, is, though, perhaps more important than any commonality.)
Naturally, Mill confines interference with the individual to a narrow sphere. He rejects out of hand the possibility of limiting behavior which some find obnoxious on religious or other grounds but which otherwise has no broader impact on society or the complainant. Such attempts to dictate conduct must fail. Others must mind their own business. "This is precisely what should be said to every government and every public, who have the pretension that no person shall enjoy any pleasure which they think wrong" (87). He is adamant that a sense of moral offense conveys no authority to extirpate the source of offense. Mill consequently rejects all notion of "social rights." (He uses the example of an imagined social right not to be affronted by someone else’s consumption of alcohol.) He fulminates against this idea in what may be the strongest language in the whole book:
"A theory of 'social rights', the like of which probably never before found its way into distinct language: being nothing short of this – that it is the absolute social right of every individual, that every other individual shall act in every respect exactly as he ought; that whosoever fails thereof in the smallest particular, violates my social right, and entitles me to demand from the legislature the removal of the grievance. So monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty; there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify; it acknowledges no right to freedom whatever, except perhaps to that of holding opinions in secret, without ever disclosing them: for, the moment an opinion which I consider noxious passes any one’s lips, it invades all the 'social right' attributed to me by the Alliance. The doctrine ascribes to all mankind a vested interest in each other’s moral, intellectual, and even physical perfection, to be defined by each claimant according to his own standard." (89-90)
To believe in "social rights" is to believe that any one can interfere in any other's life according to what the one doing the interfering believes is the ideal plan of life. It is a license for tyranny and social disorder. It is the clarion of the busy-body, the improver, the do-gooder. Of everything, that is, that Mill reviled and that continues to give the Victorian age its peculiar cast of moral opprobrium and officiousness.
Mill circumscribes the sphere within which state and society can act, and draws it to a narrow compass indeed. But one area where he insists on state intervention is in education. Priestley, true to his Dissenting and Nonconformist roots, repudiated any notion of state involvement in education; the very thought was anathema. Mill, on the other hand, states that when it comes to their children, too many of his countrymen harbor an overweening jealousy of their prerogative to raise their children as they see fit. Such "misapplied notions of liberty," he writes, "are a real obstacle to the fulfilment by the State of its duties" (105).
Mill posits that it is a "self-evident axiom" that the state must require of its citizens a certain level of education. Mill recognizes that state-sponsored education is likely to be "a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another," and that the mold is likely to be whatever most pleases the dominant forces in society (106). As such, he sees state education as a kind of control which will set a basis by which all the other experiments in rearing the next generation can be measured. The care of the next generation must be a special concern, for society and its members, for bringing new beings into existence "is one of the most responsible actions in the range of human life" (108). Few things can be more important or have a greater influence on society than the creation of its future. As such, it is incumbent upon everyone to ensure that the newest members of society gain the requisite training and knowledge to become not only productive members of society, but moral beings in their own right.
The individual is paramount in Mill’s theory. But that is not to say this supremacy is unlimited. Mill concedes that there are legitimate limits which may be placed on the individual. He describes those limits in a famous passage early in the book: "the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection." Only "to prevent harm to others" may an individual be compelled against his will to do something he does not wish to do, or be restrained from doing what he wishes to do. "His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant" (13).
But what constitutes "harm"? The chief flaw of Mill's theory is that he offers now definition of harm, no rule by which to determine when one's good melds with another. As he admits, there is "no recognised principle” to determine when interference is proper and when it is not. "People decide according to their personal preferences" (12). The great scope Mill leaves to individual autonomy, therefore, can be eroded, as we have seen, by broader and more intrusive encroachments justified by more and more expansive notions of harm and self-protection. On this ground, at least, Mill falls short of his predecessor, Benjamin Constant, who in Principles of Politics (1815) defines sovereignty itself as limited. "Sovereignty," the great Swiss progenitor of liberalism writes, "has only a limited and relative existence. At the point where independence and individual existence begin, the jurisdiction of sovereignty ends." Sovereignty must be limited; if it is not, "there is no means of sheltering individuals from government." Rather than vague notions of harm, Constant simply defines a sphere of existence into which no power may intrude.
Mill's conception has its limits. It remains nonetheless powerful, as much so in our day as in his. Perhaps even more powerful in our day, which has seen the reach and scope of government, and the power of social coercion, burgeon in ways Mill could scarcely have contemplated. "The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it" (115). The worth of those individuals, now as then, depends on the sort of state they are willing to inhabit. As they forge the state, so too shall they forge themselves.
published: Friday, 15 June 2012
July 19, 2012
Very totally badass political theory class. Mill has hope for the progress of mankind and believes in the capacity for each person to achieve rational moral autonomy. Outlying our duties to others which a political system can be instrumental in addressing, Mill's book is a powerful and inspirational account of the role of government. Wonderful passages on censorship, the freedom to act in a manner in which you please, the role of religion, and other topics as well.
Civil, of Social Liberty: the nature and limits of power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual…the aim, therefore, of patriots was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the community. 6
The tyranny of the majority…There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism. 9
The rules which obtain among themselves appear to them self-evident and self-justifying. This all but universal illusion is one of the examples of the magical influence of custom…the principal which guides them to their opinions on the regulation of human conduct, is the feeling in each person’s mind that everybody should be required to act as he. 9
“The only part of the conductof any one, for which he is amendable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” 13 Very important point, Mills one of first to say that the purpose of law is not to protect an individual from themselves but only from one another. State does not have a right to your personal decisions if they only impact you.
Society, as distinguished from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest; comprehending all that portion of a person’s life and conduct which affects only himself, or if it also affect others, only with their free, voluntary, and undeceived consent and participation. 15
This is the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises first, the inward domain of consciousness: demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects...secondly the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits…thirdly from this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty, within the same limits, of combination among individuals; freedom to unite. 16
The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of their, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, weather bodily, or mental and spiritual. 16
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. 20
In the case of a person whose judgment is deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was just, and expound to himself the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this. 24
Truth, in the great practical concerns of life, I so much a question of the reconciling and combining of opposites, that very few have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment with an approach to correctness. 49
Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than active; Innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good…it holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell…it gives to human morality an essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each man’s feelings of duty from the interests of his fellow-creatures…It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established. 51
He who lets the world, or his portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. 59
A man who has nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the existing of better men than himself.
It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds…their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. Now is this, or is it not, the desirable condition of human nature? 62
It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it and calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation. 63
I am not aware than any community has a right to force another to be civilized. 92
It is one of the most sacred duties of the parents, after summoning a human being into the world, to give to that being an education fitting him to perform his pat well in life towards others and himself. But while this is a unanimously declared to be the father’s duty, scarcely anybody, in this country, will bear to hear of obliging him to perform it…to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the offspring and against society; and that if the parent does not fulfill this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled, at the charge, as far as possible, of the parent. (sometimes pointed out as a contradiction in his arguments because he’s imposing an ethical code on others. I think it’s important to bear in mind he’s talking about a minor here, which is part cared for by the parents and part society until it reaches the age where it can make independent decisions) 105
Civil, of Social Liberty: the nature and limits of power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual…the aim, therefore, of patriots was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the community. 6
The tyranny of the majority…There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism. 9
The rules which obtain among themselves appear to them self-evident and self-justifying. This all but universal illusion is one of the examples of the magical influence of custom…the principal which guides them to their opinions on the regulation of human conduct, is the feeling in each person’s mind that everybody should be required to act as he. 9
“The only part of the conductof any one, for which he is amendable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” 13 Very important point, Mills one of first to say that the purpose of law is not to protect an individual from themselves but only from one another. State does not have a right to your personal decisions if they only impact you.
Society, as distinguished from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest; comprehending all that portion of a person’s life and conduct which affects only himself, or if it also affect others, only with their free, voluntary, and undeceived consent and participation. 15
This is the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises first, the inward domain of consciousness: demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects...secondly the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits…thirdly from this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty, within the same limits, of combination among individuals; freedom to unite. 16
The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of their, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, weather bodily, or mental and spiritual. 16
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. 20
In the case of a person whose judgment is deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was just, and expound to himself the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this. 24
Truth, in the great practical concerns of life, I so much a question of the reconciling and combining of opposites, that very few have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment with an approach to correctness. 49
Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than active; Innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good…it holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell…it gives to human morality an essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each man’s feelings of duty from the interests of his fellow-creatures…It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established. 51
He who lets the world, or his portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. 59
A man who has nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the existing of better men than himself.
It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds…their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. Now is this, or is it not, the desirable condition of human nature? 62
It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it and calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation. 63
I am not aware than any community has a right to force another to be civilized. 92
It is one of the most sacred duties of the parents, after summoning a human being into the world, to give to that being an education fitting him to perform his pat well in life towards others and himself. But while this is a unanimously declared to be the father’s duty, scarcely anybody, in this country, will bear to hear of obliging him to perform it…to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the offspring and against society; and that if the parent does not fulfill this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled, at the charge, as far as possible, of the parent. (sometimes pointed out as a contradiction in his arguments because he’s imposing an ethical code on others. I think it’s important to bear in mind he’s talking about a minor here, which is part cared for by the parents and part society until it reaches the age where it can make independent decisions) 105
May 10, 2019
There's a lot to love about Mill's On Liberty. His defense of dissident voices, his clear definition of liberty, his rational and considered approach to the left/right paradigm in politics. But be cautioned against his promotion of elite rule - Mill subscribing to something like Plato's philosopher kings. The included essay on women is both dated and often poorly reasoned (see his strange relationship with Harriet Taylor). And the chapters on socialism are fragmentary and inconclusive. His essay on Utilitarianism is not included in this collection.
Mill was influenced by the Saint Simonians and his theory for ideological collapse as a result of lack of competitive friction is spot on. So here we are 20+ years after Fukuyama declares the end of history (in mimicry of Hegel - first as tragedy, then as farce, eh Marx?) and whaddyaknow Neo-liberalism and constitutional democracy are gasping for air. Mill would be offended by how we moderns use the word "diversity" to mean the opposite. Our version of diversity is a back-patting exercise that shows how inclusive we are. Mill wanted friction and fireworks. An impassioned apologetic of different beliefs each battling for its own survival. Neo-liberalism is now so ubiquitous that to us diversity really only means tolerance of different skin colours.
I've pulled so many quotes from On Liberty and it really is worth the time to move slowly and carefully through the stuffy and precise, 19th century text.
Mill was influenced by the Saint Simonians and his theory for ideological collapse as a result of lack of competitive friction is spot on. So here we are 20+ years after Fukuyama declares the end of history (in mimicry of Hegel - first as tragedy, then as farce, eh Marx?) and whaddyaknow Neo-liberalism and constitutional democracy are gasping for air. Mill would be offended by how we moderns use the word "diversity" to mean the opposite. Our version of diversity is a back-patting exercise that shows how inclusive we are. Mill wanted friction and fireworks. An impassioned apologetic of different beliefs each battling for its own survival. Neo-liberalism is now so ubiquitous that to us diversity really only means tolerance of different skin colours.
I've pulled so many quotes from On Liberty and it really is worth the time to move slowly and carefully through the stuffy and precise, 19th century text.
February 14, 2019
It took a while to get into the understanding of his 19th century writing style. I felt as though the book gets more readable as you go on. His essays were obviously important for their time, but I don't really love the approach to argue for every which way possible to get your point across. There are some arguments that just don't need to be made and can really push you down an ugly path of reasoning. What I mean by this is that Mill would allow his opposition a less than savory point and argue within the framework his opposition set forth to still prove them wrong, but he didn't need to allow them that point or framework in the first place, especially when the point is a nasty bigoted one.
Anyway, it was worth reading and I see its influence to this day.
Anyway, it was worth reading and I see its influence to this day.
July 31, 2019
This is one of the foundational books that will inform an ideological framework for evaluating political theories. I highly recommend taking the short time to read, and the long time to ponder this book.
November 14, 2025
Super insightful and thoughtful book, pondering about what freedoms people should have in America. The writing was impressive, and sometimes lengthy in a way that made me have to reread for better understanding.
October 22, 2025
Deadass love his prose such a good writer and orator.
December 26, 2025
A decent rundown on Mill's main ideas. Although very dense.
October 24, 2021
for school. pretty interesting though
May 7, 2008
One of my favorite quotes comes from this book. Filled with Libertarian principles our current government leaders could do well to read, or re-read. A must for anyone with an interest in political science.
The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
-John Stuart Mill (On Liberty, 1859)
The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
-John Stuart Mill (On Liberty, 1859)
May 11, 2016
I was surprised to find just how much I enjoyed Mill. He is incredibly thoughtful and attentive to issues that even contemporary liberals are not always sensitive to. His frank feminism is heartening, especially coming from a man of his era. He does not read like a stereotypical "utilitarian" or "liberal" at all - I strongly recommend this book to any scholars who think they've got either of those two schools of thought pegged.
January 21, 2011
Mill was one of the founders of the modern ideas of liberty and liberalism. While his language and some of his examples betray him as a product of his time, his arguments for the greatest possible personal liberty and also the limit on liberty necessary for a cohesive society remain cogent and pertinent.
April 29, 2016
An intelligent and mind baffling introduction to one of the early thinkers on liberty, and his thoughts on the importance of the individuals and his choices. The one critique would be that it seems a bit desultory at times, and the reasoning and its implied logic doesn't always make sense - at least to me...
April 6, 2007
It was understandable. i thank mill for that.
July 14, 2008
A must read for every poli sci student (and enthusiast).
September 8, 2008
The book that kicked off my love of political theory.
June 10, 2009
Homeboy.
August 15, 2009
the individual vs. society...coincidentally read within the same week as Jude the Obscure....nice pairing
July 6, 2022
cringe LOL
Read
May 11, 2007ON WHAT?
November 17, 2007
free will lets me justify even my stupidest decisions.
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