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How Does John Stuart Mill Tell Me Liberty And The Pursuit Of Happiness

Decent Essays

Connor O’Neill
12/2/2016
Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness Paper

"The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self protection. 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." (J. S. Mill, On Liberty)

The harm principle, created by John Stuart Mill and explained in On Liberty, is simply and idea giving an individual every ounce of freedom possible, except for when that individual exercising their freedom(s) puts another individual’s freedoms or self in harms way. Mill then states that it is only acceptable for the state to exercise ones power over another …show more content…

To understand what harm is we first have to understand the difference between harm and offense. And offense is something that for lack of a better term ‘hurts our feelings’. To clear this up offenses are something that makes some one else unhappy but to another it has no effect, hence offenses are not to just a black and white idea.

“...the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct is not the agent’s own happiness but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.”(MILLS, Utilitarism)

Utilitarianism, from which the harm principle was derived, states the you should only do things that bring the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people. Essentially if there are two choices pick the one that makes the most people happy in the end. Now please understand the difference between this and egoism because they are fairly similar. The difference is that utilitarianism looks at all individuals (beings/objects) equally while egoism puts your happiness above

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