Week 3: Mill’s On Liberty

Essay question

Is Mill’s harm principle a clear and plausible basis for evaluating the community’s efforts to restrict individual freedom?

Key readings

• John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, London, 1859.
• John Rees, A re-reading of Mill on liberty, Political Studies, vol. 8, no. 2 (June, 1960), pp. 113–129.
• John Gray, Mill on Liberty: A Defence, 2nd. ed., London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 48-69.

Further reading

• Isaiah Berlin, John Stuart Mill and the ends of life, in Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 218-251.
• John Gray & G. W. Smith, J. S. Mill, On Liberty in Focus, London: Routledge, 1991.
• John Gray & Zbigniew Pelczynski (eds.), Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984, chapter on Mill.
• Andrew Levine, Engaging Political Philosophy: From Hobbes to Rawls, Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2002, chapter on Mill.
• Alan Ryan, The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, 2nd ed. 1998, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1998, ch. 12.
• Alan Ryan, J.S. Mill, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974.
• C. L. Ten, Mill on Liberty, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.
• Jeremy Waldron, Mill and the value of moral distress, Political Studies, vol. 35, no. 3 (September, 1987), pp. 410-423.

Exam questions

• How persuasive is Mill’s defence of freedom of expression?
• What place does ‘rationality’ have in Mill’s theory of liberty?
• Does Mill make a compelling case against state paternalism?
• Does Mill's celebration of individuality subvert the needs of citizenship?
• Does Mill’s argument in On Liberty rest upon a negative or a positive view of freedom?