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Title: On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, David Bromwich, George Kateb, Jean Bethke Elshtain ISBN: 0-300-09608-9 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: February, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.08 (12 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Limits of Liberty and Society
Comment: John Stuart Mill, author of On Liberty, defines the nature of civil liberty, and most importantly, the harm principl. He aims to give readers a better understanding of the nature and limits of power that can be exercised by society over individuals. The purpose of this book is to inform interested individuals about the rights of individuals and the limitations of the government. This book of philosophy was written almost 150 years ago. By reading the book, the reader is able to apply Mill's message and examples to our lives in America today. The ahead-of-the-times ideas that are in On Liberty can be related to our world because it discusses controversies that are still seen in our courtrooms today. Mill is able to accomplish his purpose because he uses many examples, thoughts, and theories about individual and social rights. He works through each of his ideas, looking at both sides of the issue to enable the reader to make their own informed decision about each matter. This book has a practical meaning because it allows the reader to develop and reason ideas about government power and when that power should be exercised over the people. Unfortunately, this book does have one draw back. Mill was a very educated man and wrote very well for his time. Yet today, our style and writing techniques are not the same as they were in the nineteenth century. This makes On Liberty a difficult book to read. His book is very decriptive, yet his wording is not easily understadable and some paragraphs have to be read two or three times to fully understand what he is writing about. Aside from his writing style, John Stuart Mill has put together an essay full of educated ideas about society and individuals. John Stuart Mill wrote an informative book geared towards an educated audience. He has achieved his purpose for the essay through the use of situations and examples that can be applied to real life cases still today. He managed to keep the readers interested and I look forward to reading other books he has written.
Rating: 5
Summary: Why isn't this book society's instruction manual?
Comment: J.S. Mill has written the best promulgation of classical liberalism in his book "On Liberty" (OL). Although a socialist himself, many of the ideas in OL are actually tenets of modern libertarianism (also called classical liberalism). Mill states that the only reason that force can be used on any man is to prevent harm to others. I consider "focre" to be either social or economic. Mill saw it as only social, which explains his socialism.
Not to detract from Mill or OL, the book is a resounding defense of civil-liberties. OL completes modern democratic theory as promulgated by John Locke in his "Two Treatises of Government." While Locke argues for some kind of democracy reminiscent of Athens, Mill qualifies Locke's point by protecting the minority from the majority. This book should be read by Americans who want to know more about freedom, and by our elected officials.
Sadly, it's our elected oficials who probably won't get it.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Bright Star of Secular Humanist Dogma
Comment: JSM's On Liberty certainly stands among the classic works of the Age of Reason. Mill's encyclical is a perfect example of the tendency of the Enlightenment to believe something to be reasonable if it is couched in the proper language.
Mill walks a tenuous path between Locke & Bentham, taking up a defense of liberty, but unwilling to risk his utilitarian street cred. Thus, we have beautiful assertions such as "the unchallenged idea is that which is in most danger", along side a perverse and logically twisted injection of "duty" into what is otherwise a syllogistic approach.
Mill insists on a Lockian sphere of rights approach, then qualifies it in the cases of children (up to whatever age the law defines them), as well as in those societies that aren't developed enough for liberty (by Mill's definition?). Liberty is also to be restricted in such cases as a man might "sin by omission" and "fail to help his Brother." These wonderful sentiments are followed by more cognitive dissonance, various ad hominem attacks on Christianity (particularly those sinister Catholics), and a lot of hand-waving about polygamy.
As an aside, I imagine that G.K. Chesteron had Mill in mind when he wrote "The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgements; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard"
Throughout the work, Mill's passions and prejudices skew his arguments. It is a fascinating display of intellectual agility, to watch him extolling freedom while restraining it; to see him preach tolerance, and even go so far as to tolerate intolerance. Note that this last feat reminds me of the Kobyashi Maru Strategy - win the unwinnable game by changing the rules. The typical cultural relativist will divide by zero when approached with the self-contradiction of the tolerant society. Mill side-steps the issue and goes along his merry way, proclaiming not a full page later that "there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides." It's refreshing to hear a champion of responsible liberty who's ready to practice coercion.
Ultimately, Mill produces a monumental work that speaks volumes about more than its subject. His observations are supremely valuable, even when they are irrational, but most of the time he manages to define a system in which the interests of the state and the interests of the individual are balanced to his particular tastes.
As a final note, unlike the introduction for Clausewitz' On War (another Penguin Classic), the Introduction here has value. Gertrude Himmelfarb thoroughly ties together Mill, his physical and intellectual parents, Mill's wife, his society, and peers, and manages to wrap the whole thing up in 42 pages.
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Title: The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Maurice Cranston ISBN: 0140442014 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1968 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
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Title: Leviathan (Penguin Classics) by Thomas Hobbes, T. Hobbs, C. B. MacPherson ISBN: 0140431950 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: June, 1982 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Martin Edward Malia ISBN: 0451527100 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli ISBN: 0553212788 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 August, 1984 List Price(USD): $4.50 |
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Title: Second Treatise of Government by John Locke ISBN: 0915144867 Publisher: Hackett Pub Co Pub. Date: June, 1980 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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