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1-Page Summary of On Liberty
Overall Summary
John Stuart Mill wanted to explore the question of how much power a society or government can rightly exert over individual lives. From time immemorial, human civilization has been characterized by the struggle between individual liberty and authority. Historically, some groups (including Americans) established representative governments with elected leaders that hold temporary positions and can be removed from office if society wills it.
Tyranny can be political and social. In a government that represents the will of the people, it only reflects the majority’s opinion on issues, which is forced upon everyone regardless of whether they agree or not. This is called tyranny by the majority. It can be applied to situations as well because if society has an opinion about what people should do or how they should behave, then there are ways to punish those who go against that norm. Therefore, society needs rules to protect individual liberty from overbearing public opinion; however neither government nor society has authority over what people do in private unless it affects others directly.
The government is right to interfere in individuals’ lives if doing so serves the greater good. This means that the government can interfere with an individual’s actions or decisions if those actions affect other people in some way. However, when it comes to individual conduct, people have absolute control over their decisions and actions (as long as they don’t infringe on someone else’s rights). Furthermore, this control only applies to reasonable adults—not minors. Society tries to control individuality by either legislating conformity or making nonconformists look bad through negative opinions. Mill acknowledges that liberty is a broad topic but will limit his discussion of liberty specifically to individuality—the power society has over individuals’ thoughts and actions as well as how much society should be able to influence those things.
John Stuart Mill believes that society has a duty to protect its citizens from the potentially harmful effects of free speech. Sometimes, it is necessary for society to silence an unpopular opinion and prevent people from adopting false opinions. However, this practice comes with risks because if an idea isn’t true then silencing it prevents people from discovering the truth about other ideas. If protecting the status quo was important enough to justify silencing certain opinions, then we should also be willing to hear arguments against that status quo in order to discover new truths and improve our lives.
Even though we have the freedom to discuss different opinions, some people are still punished for having them. These punishments aren’t as harsh as they used to be—nobody is executed for having a divergent opinion anymore—but Mill worries that these punishments might get worse due to religion’s popularity in society. When someone determines that an opinion is immoral, for example, the person who holds the opinion might face social stigma or even legal punishment for it. Unfortunately, this kind of punishment creates an environment where people stifle their own thoughts out of fear and therefore prevent themselves from sharing differing opinions that could benefit society in general. Ultimately, Mill rejects the idea that legal restraints should be placed on discussing opinions; however public opinion itself can condemn someone if they’re malicious about how they share their opinions with others.
After discussing the importance of freedom to express opinions, Mill turns his argument to the value of individuality. He believes that it’s important for people to be unique and different from one another, because when everyone is exactly alike they stop thinking independently. When people stop thinking for themselves, they gradually lose their ability to think at all.
