When Liberty Should be Taken Away, According to John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill believes that we do not have to define morality through abstract and obscure philosophies but that, for the most part, when we talk about morality, we should talk about what is the most practical. To Mill, utility is the ultimate solution to all ethical questions and utility is what will advance mankind to a higher state of being or success.

The following is a summary of a section of John Stuart Mill’s 1859 essay, On Liberty. The majority of the reasoning found here can be found in the subsection titled “Of the Limits to the Authority of Society Over the Individual”.

One may ask: How then does Mill decide what the best action is for any individual at any given time? Mill responds that he believes that individuals are best at knowing what is best for them and best at knowing which actions to take that allow them to succeed in the world.

Telling people what to do creates resentment and unproductivity. Granting the ability for people to strive towards their goals unhindered, is the best way for individuals and society to succeed.

Mill, however, did not trust certain kinds of people to wield the power of liberty. He thought that children, for example, do not know what is best for themselves so they need adults to force them into complying with certain demands such as going to school and following instruction.

What is more concerning though, is that Mill thought this same kind of logic could apply to certain adult populations who he called “barbarians”.

According to Mill, Liberties must be restricted and people punished if they hurt other people or infringe on someone else’s key rights.

He describes three fundamental rights/liberties. The first is the freedom to have and share any opinion or thought. The second is the liberty to pursue whatever you may wish in life and the third is the freedom to unite with others. Mill states that these liberties, in particular, must not be infringed because, without them, a society is not free.

Mill devotes a great portion of On Liberty to defining what actually hurts people and when the law should punish people for it.

He concludes that people should be arrested even if they are indirectly hurting someone by their actions.

He does not believe the law should be involved with moral issues that do not actually hurt anyone.

Legally, we do not have to worry ourselves with every single moral misdoing an individual does. Most of these questions of morality that do not actually hurt other people or infringe on their rights are simply what he calls “tastes” or “preferences”.

While we are welcome to either guide them into what we consider moral or socially stigmatize them, we should not legally penalize them. We would have to adapt the logic of persecutors to actually legally penalize them for something that does no harm.

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