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Compare And Contrast John Lock And Stuart Mill

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In the following essay I will compare and contrast how John Lock, Jean Jacques Rousseau and John Stuart Mill deal with the issue of balancing authority with individual liberty differently in their respective theories.
According to John Locke, there were two laws of nature – preservation of self and the preservation of mankind. He believed that natural liberty meant to be free from all superior powers and only be subject to the laws of nature. However, when all individuals come together to form a government for the preservation of their life, liberty and property, the freedom of men under the government is different from natural liberty as freedom of men means having “a standing rule to live by, common to all, made by legislative power consented …show more content…

He contradicts Rousseau’s ide of general will by saying that “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 72). Thus, the general will “practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority” (Mill 72) and this majority tends to suppress the minority. Here, Mill contracts Locke’s idea of rule by majority by talks about how a tyrannical majority can be dangerous because it tends to interfere with individual rights and has the power to enslave the individual soul. Where on one hand Rousseau and Locke believe that individual will is a lesser priority as compared to the society, Mill believes that “In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” (Mill 78). Mill uses the utilitarianism argument to say that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will, is to prevent harm to others” (Mill 78) or to ensure equal contribution to society’s commons like defense, taxation etc. Apart from this, Mill believes that there exists no other justification for the infringement of individual liberty by the society. Contrary to Rousseau’s and Locke’s views on slavery and self-harm, Mill strongly believes that even if the individual is willing to perform an action that might harm him, the least society can do is to warn, persuade, convince or avoid him. It cannot force him to do something that it thinks is ‘good’ for

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