John Stuart Mill
Thinker · 1806-1873 · Politics, stage 3: Meet the thinkers
Set one limit on what may be done to an adult against their will: the prevention of harm to others.
Overview
John Stuart Mill was raised on a rigorous programme designed by his father and Jeremy Bentham, worked for the East India Company for thirty-five years, and sat briefly in Parliament. On Liberty argues for what he calls one very simple principle: that power may rightfully be exercised over a member of a civilised community against his will only to prevent harm to others. He defends free discussion on the ground that even a true opinion held without challenge decays into dead dogma, and he is as concerned with the pressure of public opinion as with the law. The Subjection of Women, written with Harriet Taylor Mill, argues that the legal subordination of women is wrong in itself and that nobody can know what women are capable of while the present arrangements hold. Considerations on Representative Government sets out his institutional views, including proportional representation and, less defensibly to modern readers, extra votes for the better educated. In later editions of his Principles of Political Economy and in the unfinished Chapters on Socialism he moved toward accepting cooperative ownership and a larger public role in distribution. His writings on British rule in India, which exempted colonised populations from the harm principle, remain a standing objection to his liberalism.
Where to start reading
On Liberty 1859
The harm principle, the case for free discussion, and the argument that social pressure can restrict freedom as effectively as law.
Considerations on Representative Government 1861
His institutional design: what representative government is for, how it fails, and which electoral arrangements he thought would improve it.
The Subjection of Women 1869
An argument that the legal inequality of the sexes is a survival from an older order, harmful to both, and indefensible on the evidence available.
Part of
Sources
- John Stuart Mill Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- John Stuart Mill Wikipedia
