Essays on John Stuart Mill

In John Stuart Mill’s essay “On Liberty”, he explores the question of whether society has a right to suppress an individual’s expression and opinions. Mill’s states, “if all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one...

In John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty,” the idea of liberty is examined through a lens that is applicable regardless of form of government. John Mill, son of James Mill, the father of utilitarianism, had a rough childhood that heavily influenced his political ideologies. His harshly...

Mill’s “On Liberty” is an academic work examining the presence of –and desire for- liberty in human nature and behavior, as well as the limits imposed upon such. Mill writes this text from a bias of utilitarianism and fallibilism, as he simultaneously believes that: (1)...

In John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty, Mill states that individual liberty may be limited by only one thing: the self-preservation of society and other individuals. To that end, man must retain the liberty to act and think as he so chooses, without the suppression...

Human nature is the term used to refer to that conventionally accepted as what is uniquely and distinctly human. While few deny that such a quality exists, the origins and extent of this quality have yet to be conclusively defined. The following essay will explain...

In his essays “Considerations on Representative Government” and “On Liberty”, John Stuart Mill makes a convincing argument in favor of representative democracy. The system he proposes strikes the necessary balance between the “philosopher kings” advocated by Plato and the directly democratic rule by the “general...

The freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are the guiding moral principles of the U.S., as is the view that every man or woman is created equal. We may buttress these claims with John Stuart Mill’s “harm principle” from On Liberty as...

Bringing a child into this world is a choice many people choose to make, for the ones who, do parenting can bring out many characteristics they never knew they had. Although many parenting characteristics are positives, there are possibilities for negatives. The specific case I...

Mill describes how utilities are the basis for morality. He describes this as the greatest happiness principle, saying that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong in proportion as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Mill 5). By...

“John Stuart Mill Wouldn’t Let This Happen ” Nineteenth century British economist John Stuart Mill is primarily recognized in modern economics and philosophy for two reasons. He polished the Utilitarian principles established by Jeremy Bentham and he reemphasized the priority of individual liberty and self-determination...

At what point does it become ethically sanctioned to take an innocent person’s life? To what extent do people’s moral institutions compose their apprehension of what is right or wrong? This paper will evaluate how the “trolley problem” is assessed by utilitarian and deontological philosophical...

John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher that was very much so interested in political views and being a civil servant. His views consisted of a mixture of many philosophers in the past, yet with his own complexity that made it Mill’s. He took ideas...

Economic inequality is a political problem as it is the outcome of ineffective governance of a capitalistic institutional mechanism that has led to an unequal distribution of wealth. With capitalism placing emphasis on profit, the production of wealth has been more prioritized over the distribution....

In Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill advances the “greatest happiness principle,” which “holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to produce happiness…[and] by happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.” [1] Mill supplements the “greatest happiness principle” with the argument in...

The state of nature and the emergence of the human capacity to reason has been a common interest for writers throughout history. John Stuart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke, all address these issues in their works, “On Liberty” , “Discourse On The Origins of...

Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren once said, “Mere unorthodoxy or dissent from the prevailing norms is not to be condemned. The absence of such voices would be a symptom of grave illness in our society.” This message combined with the government position of...

There are two different ways of considering the nature of moral truth and duty. A contingent truth is a truth which is dependent on the way that the world is. For example, “it is snowing” is a contingent truth because it may be snowing (making...

Introduction Both Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill studied the concept of morality for, sort of, future goodness of the society. Even though they both, overall, studied for the same aim, their ways of study were different. For Immanuel Kant, key to achieve future goodness...