Examine J.S.Mill's nation of liberty in 500 words.

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John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), one of the best known intellectual figures of the nineteenth century, is especially revered by civil libertarians (as well as by Margaret Thatcher) for his essay On Liberty, published in 1859. Mill’s principal concern was to ensure that individual liberty was not swallowed up in the move toward popular sovereignty. The emergence of the United States as a democratic republic led him to conclude, “It was now perceived that such phrases as ‘self-government,’ and ‘the power of the people over themselves,’ do not express the true state of the case. The ‘people’ who exercise the power are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised; and the ‘self-government’ spoken of is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest.” Mill’s account of the need to PROTECT individual liberty from “the tyranny of the majority” has been highly influential—notably his defense of freedom of speech as a process of determining the truth; being “protected” from falsehood is the same as being “protected” from the possibility of knowing truth.The readings from Mill and from Boaz explore the meaning of individual liberty and responsibility for one’s own MORAL development, and the chapters by the distinguished jurist Bruno Leoni consider different meanings of freedom and constraint. Leoni parts company with Mill on the question of whether freedom should be construed principally as freedom from coercion by the state or as freedom from “social pressure” as well. Mill had argued in On Liberty that “protection … against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and PRACTICES as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.” Others, such as Bruno Leoni, have argued that liberty should not be confused with freedom from public opinion but should be limited to freedom from coercion, understood in terms of force or the threat of force.Milton Friedman, in the excerpt from Capitalism and Freedom, argues that private property and a capitalist economy are necessary prerequisites for individuality, freedom of speech, and Mill’s “experiments in living.” David Boaz, in the chapters from his book, CONSIDERS the dignity and worth of the individual human being and the possibility of the coexistence of individuals of different faiths, philosophies, and cultures in a free and open society.This module treats the issues of equal rights, especially with reference to the flourishing of individuality and pluralism in a free society. The grounding of the LIBERTARIAN view in individual rights, rather than in collective claims, provides important insights into the contemporary debate on “multiculturalism.”

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