JOHN STAURT MILL ON LIBERTY

On Liberty is one of Mill’s most famous works and remains the one most
read today. In this book, Mill expounds his concept of individual freedom
within the context of his ideas on history and the state. On Liberty depends on
the idea that society progresses from lower to higher stages and that this
progress culminates in the emergence of a system of representative democracy.
It is within the context of this form of government that Mill envisions the
growth and development of liberty.
While rejecting the idea of a social contract, Mill writes that since people
receive the protection of society, they owe certain conduct in return. Individuals
must not injure those interests of other people that should be considered rights.
Individuals must fairly share the burden of defending society and its members
from injury. Finally, individuals may be censured by opinion, though not by law,
for harming others while not violating their rights. Thus, society has jurisdiction
over any aspect of human behavior that "affects prejudicially the interests of
others." However, society does not have an interest in those aspects of life that
affect no one but the person acting, or only affects people by their consent. Mill
writes that such behavior should be both legally permitted and socially
accepted. People should encourage others to make full use of their faculties.
They should not, however, try to keep a person from doing with his life what he
wishes. Mill justifies this position by observing that anybody else's interests in
or knowledge about a particular person's wellbeing is "trifling" compared to the
individual's own interest and knowledge.
According to Mill liberty is essential to ensure subsequent progress, both
of the individual and society, particularly when society becomes more important
than the state. This state of affairs would be attained in a representative
democracy in which the opposition between the rulers and the ruled disappears,
in that the rulers only represent the interests of the ruled. Such a democracy
would make the liberty of the individual possible, but it would not guarantee it.
When society becomes free of the constraints of government, it begins to
entrench the interests of a select and powerful few, which threatens individual
liberty in a new way. Mill grapples with the problem of envisioning society
progressing in such a way as to prevent the repression of the individual by the
ever more powerful and confident majority. Social progress can only take place
if limits are placed on individual liberty, but it also necessitates the freeing of
the individual from such limits.
 Mill sidesteps this dilemma by delving into moral theory, where the only
important thing is the happiness of the individual, and such happiness may only
be attained in a civilized society, in which people are free to engage in their own
interests, with all their skills and capabilities, which they have developed and
honed in a good system of education. Thus, Mill stresses the fundamental value
of individuality, of personal development, both for the individual and society for
future progress. For Mill, a civilized person is the one who acts on what he or
she understands and who does everything in his or her power to understand.
Mill holds this model out to all people, not just the specially gifted, and
advocates individual initiative over social control. He asserts that things done by
individuals are done better than those done by governments. Moreover,
individual action advances the mental education of that individual, something
that government action cannot ever do, and for government action always poses
a threat to liberty and must be carefully watched.
Mill attempts to delineate when the authority of society can rightly limit
individuality and the "sovereignty of the individual over himself." Mill's answer
is that society and the individual should each receive control over that part of
human life that it is particularly interested in. While rejecting the idea of a social
contract, Mill writes that since people receive the protection of society, they
owe certain conduct in return. Individuals must not injure those interests of
other people that should be considered rights. Individuals must fairly share the
burden of defending society and its members from injury. Finally, individuals
may be censured by opinion, though not by law, for harming others while not
violating their rights. Thus, society has jurisdiction over any aspect of human
behaviour that "affects prejudicially the interests of others."
However, society does not have an interest in those aspects of life that
affect no one but the person acting, or only affects people by their consent. Mill
writes that such behaviour should be both legally permitted and socially
accepted. People should encourage others to make full use of their faculties.
They should not, however, try to keep a person from doing with his life what he
wishes. Mill justifies this position by observing that anybody else's interests in
or knowledge about a particular person's wellbeing is "trifling" compared to the
individual's own interest and knowledge.

Mill says that he does not mean that people should not be allowed to point out
what they see as faults in other people's behaviour. In addition, he is not
proscribing avoiding a person or warning others about that person. These
"penalties" are acceptable because they are natural reactions to some
behaviour--they are not intended to punish a person. However, People do not
have the right to express moral reprobation, and they should not try to make the
person uncomfortable. He should not be treated with anger or resentment, or
seen as an enemy if he engages in unpopular activities that only affect himself.
Mill then addresses potential criticism of his argument. How "can any part of
the conduct of a member of society be a matter of indifference to the other
members?" No human is fully isolated, and actions can create bad examples,
hurt those who depend on the person and diminish community resources.
Furthermore, why can't society interfere on behalf of mature people incapable of
"self- government?"
Mill agrees that some behaviour may affect the "sympathies" and interests of
others, and hurt the well-being of society at large. When an action violates a
person's obligations then it does not only affect himself, and he can be properly
face moral reprobation (rejected) for breaking those obligations. Mill forwards
the example of a person who is unable to pay debts because of extravagant
living. He says that such behaviour is subject to punishment because the person
fails to fulfil a duty to his creditors. However, the person should not be punished
for the extravagance itself--that is a personal decision that must be respected.
Criticism:
Mill's essay has been criticized for being overly vague about the limits of
liberty, for placing too much of an emphasis on the individual, and for not
making a useful distinction between actions that only harm oneself, and actions
that harm others. That said, the essay does provide an impassioned defence of
nonconformity as a positive good for society, and an equally impassioned
reminder that no one can be completely sure that his or her way of life is the
best or the only way to live.
He believed himself to have grasped the principles of the new science of
man, and was firmly convinced that any man educated in the light of it, brought
up as a rational being by other rational beings, would thereby be preserved from
ignorance and weakness, the two great sources of unreason in thought and
action, which were alone responsible for the miseries and vices of mankind.
“Mill had scarcely any prophetic gift. Unlike his contemporaries, Marx,
Burckhardt, Tocqueville, he had no vision of what the twentieth century would
bring, neither of the political and social consequences of industrialization, nor
of the discovery of the strength of irrational and unconscious factors in human
behaviour, nor of the terrifying techniques to which this knowledge has led and
is leading. The transformation of society which has resulted— the rise of
dominant secular ideologies and the wars between them, the awakening of
Africa and Asia, the peculiar combination of nationalism and socialism in our
day—these were outside Mill’s horizon. But if he was not sensitive to the
contours of the future, he was acutely aware of the destructive factors at work in
his own world. He detested and feared standardization. He perceived that in the
name of philanthropy, democracy, and equality a society was being created in
which human objectives were artificially made narrower and smaller and the
majority of men were being converted, to use his admired friend Tocqueville’s
phrase, into mere ‘industrious sheep’, in which, in his own words, ‘collective
mediocrity’ was gradually strangling originality and individual gifts”(Isiah
Berlin).

Note: Mill attempts to establish standards for relationship between authority and
liberty. He emphasizes the importance of individuality which he conceived as the
prerequisite to the higher pleasure the highest good of utilitarianism.
Furthermore, Mill criticizes the errors of the past attempts to defend
individuality where, for example where democratic ideals resulted in tyranny of
majority.