On Liberty is a work by John Stuart Mill, which is focused on proving that liberty is valuable to the individual, and society as a whole. By granting certain individual rights and freedoms, it would ensure citizens the opportunity to fully maximize their own self-development. This self-development would also have wide ranging social benefits. Although his supposition introduces many interesting ideas they are only theoretical they could not be applied in a practical ideology. He does not attempt to surrect any working model of what he believes the political structure of a society should be, if the society were to achieve the theoretical ideals, goals, and values, he sets forth in On Liberty .
Mill proposed that liberty provided a medium between anarchy and autocracy. The medium (liberty) would ensure people freedoms that they could not recognize at either extreme of the political spectrum. Mill wanted all citizens in society to be granted: freedom of opinion, freedom to plan one s own life, and the freedom to associate with whomever one chose. If a person is afforded all of these rights then they have essentially been contracted the freedom to be an individual.
Individuality, as seen by Mill, is the only way to allow a person to truly self-develop. He is very critical of government intervention in people s affairs. No government structure allows people the necessary freedoms to achieve individuality, including democracy, which he ascertains is not the will of the people but simply the will of the majority of the active governed people. This type of tyranny, tyranny of the majority, is just as evil as any other type of political despotism. The freedoms Mill would grant to people would protect against the tyranny of prevailing opinion. An individual is more capable of making appropriate decisions concerning the actions they take in their life s course, than any government is.
The Essay on Freedom: John Stuart Mill
... be legitimately exercised by society over the individual’ (Mill, 6). Mill’s view of freedom, as he writes in his book On Liberty, is that “Over himself, ... anything prohibited and to avoid positive freedom, giving people the power to do things, which allows people to be absent from coercion, as ...
Mill believes that people within a private sphere with no intervention will achieve the greatest happiness; this allows individuals to effectively pursue their interests. The public sphere is where intervention is possible, but only based on utilitarian grounds. Mill does place limitations on the personal freedom that he proposes. A person s autonomy should not be respected when they prove to be putting others in danger with their actions. It is at this point that the government may intervene. Although this limitation on a person s autonomy is theoretically attractive, it is not realistic. It is to hard to determine what actions society should guard against, the fact is that no act is strictly isolated there is always some sort of ramification. Although Mill specifies that it is only acts that are harmful to society that should become public issues, it is very hard to determine exactly what harm is, since it comes in so many different forms including psychological.
A problem in Mill s theory arises when trying to separate the public and private sphere of authority. Such issues as abortion and euthanasia fall within a grey area that is not easily decipherable. Although Mill believes that the individual should have as much decision making power as possible, it could be argued that these sort of issues are potentially harmful to other people. For instance some people may consider the fetus a person, so for someone to abort a baby could be considered harmful, and the government could take action against them in the public sphere. Although designating public and private spheres is a good idea to ensure that a person is able to be as independent as they please, it is not practical because of all the indistinguishable matters that will be deemed public or private sphere based on the principles of different individuals.
The Essay on Mass Society Mills Media Public
On The Way to the Mass Society In C. Wright Mills! |s article, ! SSThe Mass Society!" , he says our society that will eventually become a mass society, which Mills states that the society today is still public, but the! SS transformation of public into mass is particular concern to us, for it provides an important clue to the meaning of the power elite!" (23). According to Mills! |s article that ...
Democracies are subtler than tyrannical governments in their influence, but are more complete in their infiltration in society, Mill contends. It appears that people are making their own rules, but it is easier for them to follow along, subscribing to a false sense of empowerment. The active political members of society can dictate what is best for all, and the majority s decision is rendered as law. Within the political structure, Mill ascertains, that no opinion should be discounted. The majority opinion is not guaranteed to be correct; the fallibility of majority opinions is exemplified by looking at past history. Past popular opinion has often been rejected by present-day society, and there is no guarantee that present popular opinion won t also be disregarded in the future. Both popular and opposing opinions are rarely completely right and a balance between the two should be reached in order for the real (or better) truth to be found. When freedom of opinion is used in correspondence with a political structure that enables all peoples opinions to be heard it will result in greater knowledge for all those who are part of the society.
Freedom of opinion encourages a marketplace of ideas. With so many different ideas it allows people to become more informed, and therefore more knowledgeable about issues of interest and importance. With the increased knowledge, and the acceptance of ideas (not just the majorities) the real truth will become prevalent. Truth should help society progress to a stage that is unattainable by democracy alone. It will allow people to plan their own lives using truth that is only achievable when there is a marketplace of ideas.
The conviction that all ideas must be included in any sort of decision, instead of just what the majority deems as the correct idea, is a very interesting assertion by Mill. Even if all of mankind minus one person was of the same opinion, mankind would not be justified in silencing that one person, their opinion should be heard. The problem is the practicality of the idea. In democratic societies we have special interest groups and professional lobbyers that voice the ideas and concerns of major groups of people and organizations. The problem is that in such a large society it would be very difficult to consider the ideas of every single solitary person (no matter how eccentric their idea or opinion).
The Essay on Oedipus Truth King People
There is nothing wrong with Oedipus committing into searching who killed the King Laius. Oedipus behave as the king and it was the best thing to do to show his authority to his population. As story goes, the purpose to search the murder changes. Oedipus ignoring each advises that warn him about risk to know the truth have gradually become selfish. At the end, everything is uncovered, letting ...
To do so would take an inordinate amount of time. This would raise the concern of how long society would need to deliberate on any given decision-in the attempt of finding the real truth-for the decision to be validated.
Mill s justification of a balance of liberal rights is based on the theory of utility. Utilitarianism holds that actions are right in proportion to how they promote happiness, and wrong as they produce the opposite of happiness. The goal of society should be to maximize the sum total of happiness within society.
This raises the dilemmas of how happiness can be determined, and how to achieve the maximum utility a society is capable of. There is qualitative happiness, which accounts for the number of people who are happy. And there is quantitative happiness, which determines the amount of pleasure a particular person is feeling. Although qualitative happiness may be relatively easy to measure, it is almost impossible to truly measure the quality of someone s happiness. Even if qualitative happiness could be measured the problem would still exist as to which is more important, qualitative or quantitative happiness. It could be argued that it would be better for fewer people to be happy if their happiness was far greater than the happiness that could be felt by a larger number of people. Mill does not specify which type of happiness is more important he just wants decisions to be made in the best interests of man as a progressive being.
In essence, liberty is the promotion of particular freedoms; these freedoms encourage individuality; individuality combined with an effective political structure-that allows for a marketplace of ideas-will result in greater knowledge; knowledge will then assist in the formation of greater truths; truths will help with the progression of humanity to a level that cannot be achieved in an anarchical or authoritarian system. The progression of humanity as a whole and an individuals ability to achieve self-fulfillment through the freedoms granted to them will lead to greater human happiness. The reason liberty is valuable is because the end result, Mill believes, will be happiness.
The Essay on John Stewart Mill’s Idea of Utilitarianism
It was in this article where Stewart was able to stray away from some of his god fathers ideas on utilitarianism he did not agree with, and really revolutionize the ways in which utilitarianism should be used. The period in which Stewart did his major writings during was the industrial revolution. This is important as it was Stewart’s hope that a utilitarian society would help society, as a whole, ...
Mill s makes a direct link between discovering truths and attaining happiness. This link is weak because it could be argued that it is not happiness that will be discovered in truth, but misery. Perhaps truth is sometimes to hard for a person or a society to bear. It may collapse the infrastructure and dissolve the bonds of society. It could be that it is not the truth of an idea that is beneficial to society, but the utility that is of importance. We can only hypothesize that ignorance is bliss, until we discover new truths. In the future truth may reveal that it is not happiness that should be the prospective goal of members in society.
Mill brings to light numerous flaws within current governmental structures that should be examined carefully. For instance, that democracy is really just tyranny of the majority imposing their will on the rest of society. He bases his own theoretical ideas on the assumption that happiness can best be achieved through individuality. For a person to be autonomous there must be a government in place that does not impose itself on an individual s private sphere. He introduces many ideas on how truth should be discovered, how people can attain happiness, and how the harming of other individuals can be prevented. The end result of his theories is that he is able to convincingly relate liberty to happiness. Although his ideologies are not practical they can be used to form the foundation of practical political ideologies.
