Mill and liberty

Mill’s harm principle
Source: Mill, On Liberty, pp.12–13

“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.”

What utilitarian grounding does Mill offer for the harm principle?

| Source: Mill, On Liberty, p.14

“I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being”

What are the two maxims that form the entire doctrine of On Liberty?

| Source: Mill, On Liberty, p.168 Ch.5

First: "the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself." Second: "for such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishments.”

What does Mill say about harm caused by inaction?

| Source: Mill, On Liberty, p.22

“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction”

Mill on the danger of majority will — why is 'self-government' a misleading phrase?

| Source: Mill, On Liberty, p.12

“The 'people' who exercise the power, are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised”

Mill on social tyranny — why is it more dangerous than legal oppression?

| Source: Mill, On Liberty, p.8

(“it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself”)

“Society can and does execute its own mandates… it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression”

What drives the moral opinions of society, according to Mill?

| Source: Mill, On Liberty, p.1

“Men's opinions on what is laudable or blameable are affected by all the multifarious causes which influence their wishes… a large portion of the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its feelings of class superiority”

What is the harm of silencing an opinion, even a false one?

| Source: Mill, On Liberty, p.33

“it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation… If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error”

Why does truth require free expression as a condition?

| Source: Mill, On Liberty, p.38

“Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action”

Mill's image of human nature as a tree, not a machine.

| Source: Mill, On Liberty, p.58

“Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly what work is prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing”

What happens to those who conform entirely to custom?

| Source: Mill, On Liberty, p.104

“they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved; they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own”

Mill's epigraph — what is the grand leading principle of On Liberty?

“is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity”

What forms of influence on others does Mill explicitly permit?

| Source: Mill, On Liberty, p.137

“Considerations to aid his judgment, exhortations to strengthen his will, may be offered to him, even obtruded on him, by others; but he himself is the final judge”

When does drunkenness become a matter for legal restriction?

| Source: Mill, On Liberty, p.175

“perfectly legitimate that a person, who had once been convicted of any act of violence to others under the influence of drink, should be placed under a special legal restriction”

The bridge example — when is intervention to prevent self-harm permitted?

| Source: Mill, On Liberty, Ch.5 (Paternalism)

“not a certainty, but only a danger of mischief… he ought, I conceive, to be only warned of the danger; not forcibly prevented from exposing himself to it”

Miller's summary of liberal vs republican freedom.

| Source: Miller, Introduction to Liberty, p.2

“Whereas the republican sees freedom as being realized through a certain kind of politics, the liberal tends to see freedom as beginning where politics ends, especially in various forms of private life”

Berlin on the distinctness of the two questions.

| Source: Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," p.34

“The answer to the question 'Who governs me?' is logically distinct from the question 'How far does government interfere with me?”

The "pike and minnows" image.

| Source: Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," citing R.H. Tawney

“Freedom for an Oxford don, others have been known to add, is a very different thing from freedom for an Egyptian peasant”

Berlin on freedom-to as potentially tyrannical.

| Source: Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," p.43

“represent as being, at times, no better than a specious disguise for brutal tyranny”

Berlin on the sleight of hand in positive liberty.

| Source: Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty"

(“It is one thing to say that I may be coerced for my own good, which I am too blind to see: this may, on occasion, be for my benefit; indeed, it may enlarge the scope of my liberty”)

“It is another to say that if it is my good, then I am not being coerced, for I have willed it, whether I know this or not”

MacCallum's triadic formula.

| Source: MacCallum, "Negative and Positive Freedom," p.102

“Taking the format 'x is (is not) free from y to do (not do, become, not become) z,' x ranges over agents, y ranges over such 'preventing conditions' as constraints, restrictions, interferences, and barriers, and z ranges over actions or conditions of character or circumstance”

MacCallum's conclusion on the utility of the triadic view.

| Source: MacCallum, "Negative and Positive Freedom," p.115

“far better off to insist that they all have the same concept of freedom…and inquire fruitfully into why, they identify differently what can serve as agent, preventing condition, and action or state of character”

Skinner on the neo-Roman conception — freedom restricted by dependence.

| Source: Skinner, "A Third Concept of Liberty," p.251

“The essence of the argument is that freedom is restricted by dependence. To be free as a citizen, therefore, requires that the actions of the state should reflect the will of all its citizens”

Skinner against MacCallum's triadic reduction.

| Source: Skinner, "A Third Concept of Liberty"

“Freedom is not being viewed as absence of constraint on action; it is being viewed as a pattern of action of a certain kind.”

Green on the wandering savage.

| Source: Green, "Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract"

“the wandering savage has no master, yet is not truly free, being enslaved to nature”

Miller's conclusion on the plurality of liberty.

| Source: Miller, Introduction to Liberty, p.20

“We should resist the idea that only one of these dimensions constitutes the 'real' meaning of freedom. Liberty is not a single thing, but a precious (and always precarious) human achievement of considerable intricacy”

Hirschmann on the limits of positive liberty for women.

| Source: Hirschmann, "Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom"

The negative liberty framework fails women because it draws too sharp a line between inner desires and outer constraints. When women's very desires and preferences are themselves products of patriarchal socialisation, removing external legal obstacles does not deliver genuine freedom

Positive liberty "risks paternalism and the erasure of women's genuine, if constrained, agency”