JOHN STUART MİLL

JOHN STUART MİLL

 John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873), usually cited as J. S.

Mill, was a British philosopher, political economist, and civil servant.

 WORKS:

Two Letters on the Measure of Value«

Questions of Population«

A Few Words on Non-intervention

Considerations on Representative Government

Utilitarianism

Herschel's 1830 publication of A Preliminary Discourse on the study of Natural Philosophy, which incorporated inductive reasoning from the known to the unknown, discovering general laws in specific facts and verifying these laws

empirically. William Whewell expanded on this in his 1837 History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Time followed in 1840 by The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon their History, presenting induction as the mind superimposing concepts on facts. Laws were self-evident truths, which could be known without need for empirical verification. Mill countered this in 1843 in A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the

Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. In Mill's

Methods of induction, like Herschel's, laws were discovered through observation and induction, and required empirical verification (Shermer, Michael (15 August 2002). In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A

Biographical Study on the Psychology of History. Oxford University Press. p. 212.)

 Mill's On Liberty addresses the nature and limits of the power that can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. However Mill is clear that his concern for liberty does not extend to all individuals and all societies. He states that "Despotism is a legitimate mode of

government in dealing with barbarians. (On Liberty by John Stuart Mill.

10 January 2011 – via www.gutenberg.org.)

 Mill states that it is not a crime to harm oneself as long as the person doing so is not harming others. He favors the harm principle: "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.«

(Mill, John Stuart "On Liberty" Penguin Classics, 2006)

John Stuart Mill's view on liberty, which was influenced by Joseph

Priestley and Josiah Warren, is that the individual ought to be free to do

as she/he wishes unless she/he harms others. Individuals are rational

enough to make decisions about their well being. Government should

interfere when it is for the protection of society. (Mill, On Liberty, p. 13)

 The belief that the freedom of speech will advance the society was

formed with trust of the public's ability to filter. If any argument is really wrong or harmful, the public will judge it as wrong or harmful, and then those arguments cannot be sustained and will be excluded. Mill argued that even any arguments which are used in justifying murder or rebellion against the government shouldn't be politically suppressed or socially persecuted. According to him, if rebellion is really necessary, people

should rebel; if murder is truly proper, it should be allowed. But, the way to express those arguments should be a public speech or writing, not in a way that causes actual harm to others. This is the harm principle.

(John Stuart Mill. (1863 [1859]). On Liberty. Ticknor and Fields. p. 23)