Three Aspects of Liberty

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.

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.

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