Finding Truth In John Stuart Mill's On Liberty

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Marmar Tavasol
Finding Truth
John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty argues that the retention of liberty by society is only justified when preventing harm to others. As long as a person’s actions do not result in harm to others, they have the right to retain full liberty in committing their actions. What Mill is imposing can result in a rather limited form of societal power; where people are not restricted in their speech or action, so long as their speech or actions do not violate another person's’ liberty. Moreover, what Mill considers as harmful does not include harm or criticism to ideas. Instead, Mill advocates for free speech and debate, so ideas can be criticised in a rational manner, leading to logical deduction that can allow for ideas to be closer to the truth. In chapter 2, Mill argues for freedom of speech and …show more content…
By protecting the speech and expression of all individuals, no matter how controversial their claims may be, society can be putting itself in the way of harm. Controversial topics may indeed be harmful, even if ideas are not physically harmful to any single individual. Speech can be harmful to individuals in different ways. This includes hate speech, speech that inspires violence, undermines society, etc. These examples show that free expression may indeed be harmful and not in accordance to the harm principle. Although society is doing all it must to protect the liberty of the individuals, the expression of ideas has proven to have the potential to be dangerous and harmful throughout history. This means that the harm principle is being violated in the case of full liberty of expression of ideas. Therefore, society must take measures to ensure that the safety of individuals is protected and prioritized before their freedom of speech and
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