3.5: The Boundaries of Civil Liberties
Read this overview of Mill's major works and their importance in continuing debates about liberty.
Watch this lecture from 32:55, where Szelényi discusses Mill's background and major contributions to political philosophy.
Read this text. Note the distinction Mill makes between freedom of the will and civil or social liberty. Mill's fundamental question is about the nature and limits of the power that society can legitimately exercise over the individual.
Read this text. Utilitarianism has its roots in 18th- and 19th-century classical philosophy, particularly in the writings of political theorist Jeremy Bentham (and Mill's father, James Mill). This moral theory is also known as the "greatest-happiness principle", which holds that one must always act so as to produce the greatest aggregate happiness among all human beings, within reason.
Answer these questions on the major themes in Mill's Utilitarianism and On Liberty.
3.5.1: Mill on Rights and Utility
Watch this lecture, which explains the tension between Mill's principle of liberty and his version of utilitarianism.
3.5.2: Problems with Neoclassical Utilitarianism
Watch this lecture, which demonstrates the contradictions and problems with the neoclassical utilitarian framework through theoretical examples and case studies.
3.5.3: Perfectionism in Mill's On Liberty
Read this article, which attempts to reconcile the tension between Mill's principle of liberty and his invocation of utilitarianism. The difficulty lies in that the principle of liberty disqualifies utility-promotion as a reason for restraint of liberty, unless such restraint also prevents harm to others. Yet at the same time, once the harm-to-others threshold presented by the principle of liberty is crossed and liberty-limitation is justifiable, it becomes justified according to the balance of restraint of liberty and prevention of harm as assessed by a utilitarian calculation. By appealing to perfectionist tendencies in Mill's thought, and particularly his notion of "the permanent interests of man as a progressive being," the principle of liberty can be seen less in the light of problems with regard to utilitarian calculation and more as an indispensable pillar for what Mill would have us aspire to be both as a tolerant society and as autonomous individuals.