‘Le Penseur’ a copy of the famous sculpture by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), in the Plaza de Nuestra Señora del Pilar, Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain. Mill set freedom of thought at the head of his list of liberties, but he immediately connected it with freedom of speech. Mill had no time for those who claimed that people have a right not to be contradicted or offended, or that we should suppress opinions or reports just because we think they are groundless. See The Decencies of Debate.
Part 1 of 2
THIS, then, is the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises, first, the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. The liberty of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual which concerns other people; but, being almost of as much importance as the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same reasons, is practically inseparable from it.*
Secondly, the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow; without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them — even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong.
* Mill does not enlarge on this here. But it seems evident, that if a man cannot speak according to conscience lest someone hear him and be offended, he also cannot act according to conscience lest someone see him and be offended; and a man who cannot act according to conscience does not have liberty of conscience in any recognisable sense. See also Ralph Waldo Emerson on No Offence.
Précis
John Stuart Mill, the eminent Victorian philosopher, laid out three aspects of the principle of liberty. The first was liberty of conscience, in which he included freedom of speech. The second was liberty of tastes, to live our life however we please even if others are offended by it, so long as we extend to the same courtesy to them. (60 / 60 words)
Part Two
Detail from ‘The Anti-Slavery Society Convention, 1840’ by Benjamin Haydon (1786–1846), showing Henry Beckford, emancipated slave and abolitionist, among the delegates gathered in Exeter Hall, London, on June 12th–23rd, 1840. The meeting is being addressed by Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), a prime mover in the campaign to end slavery throughout the British Empire, crowned with success seven years earlier. “A liberated slave, now a delegate,” wrote Haydon later “is looking up to Clarkson with deep interest ... this is the point of interest in the picture, and illustrative of the object in painting it, the African sitting by the intellectual European, in equality and intelligence”. Freedom to associate with like-minded people was the third of Mill’s principles of liberty.
THIRDLY, from this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty, within the same limits, of combination among individuals; freedom to unite, for any purpose not involving harm to others: the persons combining being supposed to be of full age, and not forced or deceived.
No society in which these liberties are not, on the whole, respected, is free, whatever may be its form of government and none is completely free in which they do not exist absolute and unqualified. The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.*
* “Talk nonsense,” Razumihin bursts out to Pulcheria Alexandrovna in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866), “but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s. In the first case you are a man, in the second you’re no better than a bird.”
Précis
Mill’s third liberty was liberty of association, the freedom to mix (or not) with whomsoever we wish. No state in which these three liberties are denied or curtailed is truly free, said Mill, and our common life benefits far more by agreeing to live and let live than by letting one caste mould the rest in their own image. (59 / 60 words)
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