John Stuart Mill's Harm Principle Essay

John Stuart Mill’s ‘Harm Principle’ states that the only limitation that should be placed on the actions of an individual are restrictions preventing harm being done to others. In other words, everyone should be left to do whatever they please as long as their actions do not pose any real harm or risks to others, or infringe upon their rights in any way. According to Mill, “no one should be forcibly prevented from acting in any way he chooses provided his acts are not invasive of the free acts of others”. Actions only affecting the self should be left as a private matter, and general society, including government, media, law enforcement, etc., would be unable to halt their activities. Therefore, the only regulation on behaviour would be behaviours …show more content…
As a result, this allows for a high degree of personal freedom, albeit at the cost of harms done to the person under the guise of simply ‘offences’. As Mill writes, “Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign”. Paradoxically, this includes harms such as dangerous stunts or sports, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, or taking drugs, many of which are deemed unsafe in our modern society. While I tend to agree with Mill’s ‘Harm Principle’ as a concept, however, logically I do not think it could be successfully applied. Although funded on the realistic basis that the individual should be unrestricted from choosing actions to take in his or her own life, ultimately I believe that the harm principle would be unable to be applied in the way he intended in a democracy such as Canada. Arguably, Mill’s interpretation of ‘harms’ as only being speech and actions leading directly towards physical harm are extremely limited in the actions that they cover. In a country such as Canada, with a long standing Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms, personal rights and freedoms are taken incredibly