The freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are the guiding moral principles of the U.S., as is the view that every man or woman is created equal. We may buttress these claims with John Stuart Mill's "harm principle" from On...

Although Mill's On Liberty and Plato's The Republic both advocate the abolishment of gender roles, their respective justifications and resulting ideologies differ saliently. The inception of these differences arises from the basic moral premises...

In his essays "Considerations on Representative Government" and "On Liberty", John Stuart Mill makes a convincing argument in favor of representative democracy. The system he proposes strikes the necessary balance between the "philosopher kings"...

In his book On Liberty John Stuart Mill argues the importance of individual freedoms for the betterment of all of society and for the individual himself. This individuality creates a dynamic for society to adapt itself towards truth and is only...

In John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty, Mill states that individual liberty may be limited by only one thing: the self-preservation of society and other individuals. To that end, man must retain the liberty to act and think as he so chooses,...

Mill’s “On Liberty” is an academic work examining the presence of –and desire for- liberty in human nature and behavior, as well as the limits imposed upon such. Mill writes this text from a bias of utilitarianism and fallibilism, as he...

Human nature is the term used to refer to that conventionally accepted as what is uniquely and distinctly human. While few deny that such a quality exists, the origins and extent of this quality have yet to be conclusively defined. The following...

In her Slouching Towards Bethlehem essay, Joan Didion vividly constructs her view on the hippie movement in San Francisco through her anecdotal experience in 1967. Her belief captures a strong disliking of this social movement, as her experience...

The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and first published in 1848 [1], precedes the writing of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty by more than a decade. Although Mill and Marx were both living in England by the time On...

In John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty,” the idea of liberty is examined through a lens that is applicable regardless of form of government. John Mill, son of James Mill, the father of utilitarianism, had a rough childhood that heavily influenced his...

The state of nature and the emergence of the human capacity to reason has been a common interest for writers throughout history. John Stuart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke, all address these issues in their works, "On Liberty" ,...

The idea of pleasing the majority of a population has long been engrained into our decision-making processes. In the United States of America (US), the government itself is built on a platform that gives the power to the majority. The essay “On...

The 19th century was a period of turmoil and significant change. The century consisted of revolutions and various ideas of what philosophy should be used in an effort to alter the lives of people for the better. The century began in a time of...

The issue regarding right vs. wrong is arguably the oldest debate in the history of humanity. Over the years, philosophers have developed different ethical theories in an attempt to address this question. In light of this development, the central...

Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill represent two opposing schools of ethical thought. From Mill’s utilitarian perspective, the ethical value of anything can be determined based on its consequences, regardless of intent. For Kant, the consequences...

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole...

Immanuel Kant’s deontological ethical theory, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, can be viewed from many different perspectives. As it is based on duty operating as a final good, the theory of utilitarianism (a moral theory concerned...

In Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill advances the “greatest happiness principle,” which “holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to produce happiness…[and] by happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.” [1] Mill...

It is widely accepted that Utilitarianism, as a discipline, is not as unifying or as straightforward a moral theory as it might at first appear; as Crisp highlights, there are, in fact, 'many variations, some of them subtle, others quite radical,...

In an attempt to amend the traditional Benthamite hedonic calculus in which simply the quantity of pain or pleasure is considered, Mill, within his Utilitarianism, postulates an additional qualitative distinction resulting in the notion of a...

Aristotle, Kant, Mill, and Plato: All influential philosophers with differing opinions on what it means to be marked by morality. One situation in which the opinions of these philosophers could be used to evaluate the morality of a person is in...

In the mind of John Stuart Mill, free education for children is one of the major duties of society in order to maximize not only happiness but a higher form of pleasure. In fact, John Stuart Mill’s version of utilitarianism was the basis of most...

The Victorian Age was a time of great changes in English society, economically, industriously, and intellectually. This era brought about prosperity and growth for some citizens, while bringing severe desolation to others. In the midst of these...