John Stuart Mills Harm Principle Essay

John Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle states, “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” (On Liberty, p. 9). That is to say, if a harmful action violates an individual’s rights, then such an action warrants state regulation. Mill applies the Harm Principle to many cases. For an instance, he considers offenses against decency, or the violation of good public manners. He states that the state can regulate public offensive conduct if it imposes harm on others by placing them in “undesirable states,” or sentiments of great disgust and discomfort. Furthermore, Mill states that while the state can restrict acts that are deemed as “disgusting” or causing

One of the most blatant examples of this conduct is Andrew Martinez, an activist who was once known as “the Naked Guy” as a male student who attended University of California, Berkeley while appearing naked on campus and frequently only wearing sandals and a backpack. While Martinez attempted to justify his actions based on personal and philosophical reasons stating that clothes were useless, his actions did place the other students as well as the faculty in undesirable states of discomfort. In the case of the Harm Principle, Mill states that the “…liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people” (On Liberty, p. 53). This is to say that we cannot perform any offensive acts that may impose harm on others. Thus, Mill would approve of the state regulation with the reasoning that Martinez’s actions placed the other students as well as the faculty in the undesirable states, causing the “nuisance” of having to witness his nudity. Mill’s reasoning of state regulation appears somewhat justifiable on the grounds that public nudity causes harm to others by causing them to feel undesirable