John Stuart Mill Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

John Stuart Mill - Essay Example John Stuart Mill was educated by his father, James Mill, who was cold and rigid. From then Mill understood the undergrounds of liberty and saw the mistakes from his father's rigid system of education: "Mill recognized , in later life, that his father's system had the fault of appealing to the intellect only and that the culture of his practical and emotional life had been neglected".(John Stuart Mill, Life and writings) John Stuart Mill, in his essay "On liberty", mentioned liberty and the relationships between freedom and state. The goal of state is to build a social system that respects and defends human rights and liberties. State can interfere against any individual, if he harms the other one's interests.1 This is the only case when Mill accepts the intervention of the state. There are cases when state rejects the individual's opinion .But that does not mean the point of view is wrong or false. Neither the belief of state, nor the individual' s opinion are totally false, they might contain a certain truth, so they must not be rejected. If this happens, the decision of the state becomes preconception and effects the man's liberty. Mill saw human being as an individual free to think, to speak , to feel. These rights are unquestionable on all the subjects: "()his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign" (qtd. John Stuart Mill' Essay on liberty, p.13) In thi In this relation, man-state, the latter can impose unlimited control, thing that cannot be acceptable. For Mill, education is primordial and it makes the differences between people , so the freedom of speech , of thinking is the most important. Mill speaks about the tyranny of the majority when the state wants to have the unlimited control, to entice the majority: ()There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion withindividual independence , and to find that limit, and maintain it againstencroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs asprotection against political despotism.(qtd. John Stuart Mill's Essay on liberty) The tyranny of the majority often appears in bureaucratic countries. In the case of democratic countries the things go not so bad, because many individuals know and understand the importance of the liberty in all its aspects. Also, in the case of democratic countries and of developed ones, educated people are more and cannot be ruled by a man or a group. So, the danger of tyranny of majority is less. Liberty of speech , sustained by Mill, is indeed a very important right. In some periods the human being was restrained by people who wanted to had the supreme control(a kind of tyranny of the society). For example, the slavery, in the South of America, reserved man from various freedoms: the physical one, the conscience liberty, and maybe the most important one, the freedom of speech. The slaves were revolted mainly because they were treated like animals, they hadn't the right to write, to read or to express their feelings and desires. We can extend here, seeing in these liberties the differences