On Liberty is often criticised, both in its own time and ours, as being a somehow cold vision of the world, as an attempt to promote an atomised society of isolated individuals, with no responsibilities to each other, whose only relationship to humanity is through the mediation of the harm principle. But that is not so. The harm principle was merely there to protect each individual against unwanted interference by others. The central argument of the book was not for any particular form of society. It was simply that people truly chose their lives, rather than have it chosen for them.
