Mill On Liberty

Hanin Abbas

Elizabeth Brule

Democracy, The State, and Freedom of Expression

Thursday, November 6th, 2014

Article Review #1: Chapter 1 On Liberty by John Stuart Mill The introduction by Mill is the fundamental structure of his argument and it is also indispensable to our understanding of today's society. He discusses how much power a society can exercise over an individual. In his discussion of liberty and authority, he is describing the struggle between society and the individual and which one of the two should have control over the individual's thinking and actions. He perceives the world as a society in which the majority's opinions has control over an individual's thoughts and beliefs. Mill rejects this status and his main argument is

An encouragement for all the citizens to live an autonomous life highlights Mill's belief on utilitarianism. This idea of utilitarianism states every individual having the right to increase their own utility as long as it does not cause trouble to others. A thought-provoking point Mill makes in this chapter is the idea of self-government. He is concerned about people creating their own government and decisions. Mill strongly believes that this kind of individual decision-making is more dangerous than an authoritarian government. Mill further states that this kind of self-government is more problematic because it silently makes citizens follow along by giving them a false sense of empowerment (7). To support his notion, Mill talks about decision-making in the hands of people who have power and aren't necessarily affected by that power; he says, "The "people" who exercise the power are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised; and the "self-government" spoken of is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means, the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority"

He states that usually citizens from the higher class are given the authority to have an influence on the well-being of the country or state. Most of the time, these higher class citizen's interests are made the rules and laws (8). Mill also relates this concept of majority to religious tolerance. He believes there is really no complete religious freedom. Although there is religious tolerance, there is still no adjustment for people who want to practice their own religion openly (16). I agree with this assertion made by Mill because taking Canada's multicultural society as an example, majority of the people 'tolerate' other people's religions but don't 'accept' other people's right to practice religious