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Title: On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, Currin V. Shields ISBN: 0-672-60234-2 Publisher: MacMillan Publishing Company. Pub. Date: December, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4.08 (12 reviews)

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: 5
Summary: An excellent treatise.
Comment: This book deserves to be studied closely; I cannot praise too highly the man or his work. As Mill writes in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY, his education under his philosopher father James was perhaps the most tortuous experience imaginable for a young child, leaving the adolescent John with the impression that he was something of a facsimile of his father. Nevertheless, after much difficulty in assimilating what he was taught and defining who he was, the adult Mill respectfully stepped out from under his father's shadow and went on to make staggering intellectual contributions of his own. In this book, ON LIBERTY, Mill tackles the problem of "the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual." With some reflection, it can be seen how important this question is, for its implications touch every part of our social and private lives. Unfortunately, few recognize its importance, and the question is more often decided by unthinking custom or self-interest than reason. With scrupulous rigor, and impeccable intellectual honesty, Mill asserts the absolute necessity of dissenting opinions, of diversity in all things, and the dangers of concentrated power, be it in the form of a dictator or a democratic majority. The problems treated in this short book are just as relevant today as they were in Mill's time. Perennial political issues such as education reform, gun control, abortion, freedom of speech, taxation, the role of government, etc., are addressed either directly or indirectly; the book abounds with other, more personal, lessons on life as well, not the least of which was later encapsulated by Wittgenstein as: "If you want to improve the world, improve yourself."

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.