The Harm Principle In John Stuart Mill's On Liberty

A treatise on liberty and freedom of speech, John Stuart Mill’s 1859 book On Liberty employs philosophical thought to discuss the importance of liberty and when it is or is not right and proper for a government to limit it. In discussing liberty, Mill propositions the “harm principle,” a concept used throughout On Liberty to assess what rights and liberties mankind has, and when they ought to and ought not be curtailed by either the government or societal majorities, with which Mill is more concerned. The harm principle goes roughly as such: mankind has all liberties and privileges up to and not exceeding the ability to override or curtail the freedom of others. This includes the right to act in a manner not consistent with safety, morality, or any other general public concept of what is “good,” as long as the palpable negative consequences of one’s behavior are not assigned to or shared with another person unwillingly, but harms the actor only. The word “palpable” is key here, as Mill goes out of his way to clarify what exactly harm is, defining it as the consequence of an action taken by a given individual that causes realistic damage or injury to another individual, such as that the second person is measurably worse off than …show more content…
The harm principle has been employed above in examining the use of alcohol and when it can be rightly regulated by society. This issue, though, is fairly straightforward when compared to others, such as the regulation of speech, but serves as a model of how we can address more complex issues using Mill as a guide. An example that perhaps allows for the careful analysis of when speech can and cannot be rightly regulated occurred recently at the University of