John Stuart Mill Social Coercion

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Social and legal powers aim at coercing the opinions and behaviors of individuals to conform to public opinion, which has resulted in the control of individual’s freedim.. Marx and Mill’s philosophical systems interpret freedom as a means to limit the power society has over an individual’s way of living. Their understanding is that the state and society, through its beliefs, has constructed the identity and social relations of individuals. In this essay, I intend to demonstrate the different interpretations of freedom, from the two, in order to determine which interpretation has provided a better understanding of freedom. First, this essay argues Mill’s understanding of freedom as the absence of social and legal coercion. In contrast, I will …show more content…

Mill believed that social coercion was dangerous to the liberty of individuals because it forced them to conform to public opinions. Conforming to common opinions deprived the individual of intellectual development because people would live their lives based on the beliefs of others and not their own. This supports his rejection of social conformity because denying an individual the liberty to their own opinions and behavior is denying them from pursuing happiness. This idea led to his understanding that a person’s freedom and happiness depended on limiting the power of the state and society. For Mill, interference of one’s liberty is justified only if it causes harms to others. This idea is introduced as “the harm principle,” which intends to explain when the interference of an individual’s liberty to opinions, associations, or actions is accepted. It’s unacceptable to use the interest of an individual’s own good, as a reason to interfere with their freedom. Instead, Mill argued that the use power over an individual was useful because it serves a greater good. He introduces utilitarianism through his argument that, authorizing the use of power to prevent harm to others serves their best …show more content…

This interpretation intends to recognize, that there are parts of someone’s life that shouldn’t be controlled by society, as this part only affects the individual. Human liberty is comprised of three different domains, which make up the part of a person’s life that is controlled by them. Mill goes on to describe the domains and their importance to freedom. First, he addresses in the domain of consciousness, which he refers to the liberty of thought and expression (Mill, Liberty). According to Mill, silencing and individual’s opinion is wrong because it robs “the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation.” He believes it’s dangerous to suppress differing opinions because it’s possible these opinions may have some truth to them. If we allow ourselves to suppress every differing opinion, we keep ourselves from knowing the truth and neglect their contribution to humankind’s development. For this reason, Mill rejects the public opinion’s tendency to secure on a single belief because they become a routine activity causing difficulty for people to consider new beliefs. In contrast, Mill also defends the protection of suppressing opinions that are false. If we suppress false opinions, the truth of a received opinion is accepted as a belief rather than the truth. This becomes harmful for the individual, because if we fail to educate

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