John Stuart Mill and Progressive Retrogression
On Liberty, one of the principle works of esteemed English author and philosopher John Stuart Mill, attempts to illustrate how “the struggle between Liberty and Authority” has been a recurring theme in civilizations for millennia, explicitly stating its presence in the historical cities of Greece, Rome, and England (Mill 2). Mill continues on to make the assertion that, while the current state of society was largely shaped due to historically threatening conditions, mankind must effectively retrogress past this developed tolerance of devastating societal interference in order to achieve a more substantive form of existence. In this way, the struggle between Liberty and Authority can be resolved, …show more content…
Essentially, Mill is under the belief that the modern state of governance and law is no longer necessary as it once was to benefit society. Instead, society (largely through mass mentality) is now disadvantaged by this current manifestation of tyrannical rule. In order to combat this dilemma, Mill asserts that society must effectively progress (or regress) away from mass institutionalization, which promotes the notion of uniformity and discourages the notion of individual expression. In several of his subsequent notions, Mill is certainly correct. For example, it must be necessary to respect the individual rights of the minority in order to achieve true fulfillment of democratic values. In this way, individual rights would be respected despite the majority, and many contemporary issues would be treated as basic rights such as access to women’s health facilities, recreational drug use, as well as other controversial issues which have attempted to be controlled by society. In such a society, Mill hypothesizes that citizens will benefit from further freedoms, while being actively discouraged to commit harmful acts. In modern civilization, there are certainly those who empathize with many of Mill’s perceptions of mass society, but only time will tell whether or not any of Mill’s prescribed treatments will be
On Liberty, one of the principle works of esteemed English author and philosopher John Stuart Mill, attempts to illustrate how “the struggle between Liberty and Authority” has been a recurring theme in civilizations for millennia, explicitly stating its presence in the historical cities of Greece, Rome, and England (Mill 2). Mill continues on to make the assertion that, while the current state of society was largely shaped due to historically threatening conditions, mankind must effectively retrogress past this developed tolerance of devastating societal interference in order to achieve a more substantive form of existence. In this way, the struggle between Liberty and Authority can be resolved, …show more content…
Essentially, Mill is under the belief that the modern state of governance and law is no longer necessary as it once was to benefit society. Instead, society (largely through mass mentality) is now disadvantaged by this current manifestation of tyrannical rule. In order to combat this dilemma, Mill asserts that society must effectively progress (or regress) away from mass institutionalization, which promotes the notion of uniformity and discourages the notion of individual expression. In several of his subsequent notions, Mill is certainly correct. For example, it must be necessary to respect the individual rights of the minority in order to achieve true fulfillment of democratic values. In this way, individual rights would be respected despite the majority, and many contemporary issues would be treated as basic rights such as access to women’s health facilities, recreational drug use, as well as other controversial issues which have attempted to be controlled by society. In such a society, Mill hypothesizes that citizens will benefit from further freedoms, while being actively discouraged to commit harmful acts. In modern civilization, there are certainly those who empathize with many of Mill’s perceptions of mass society, but only time will tell whether or not any of Mill’s prescribed treatments will be