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." Finally published in 1859, On Liberty was one of Mill's two most influential books (the other being Utilitarianism).

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 (i.e. small population and constant war), it was forced to accept rule "by a master." 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." In conclusion to this analysis of past governments, Mill proposes a single standard for which a person's liberty may be restricted:

<blockquote>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.</blockquote>

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.

  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 (provided they do no harm to others), 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 [i.e. false belief] 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: