Summary
John Stuart Mill: On Liberty
The subject of this essay is not so-called liberty of the will, which so unhappily resists the misnamed doctrine of philosophical necessity, but civil or social liberty, the nature and limits of the power which society may lawfully exercise over the individual. The question was rarely asked and almost never considered, in a general sense, but by its latent presence it profoundly influenced the practical disputes of the age and will probably soon contribute to its acceptance as a vital question in the future. Far from being a new issue, that is, in a certain sense, it has divided the human race, almost from the earliest times, but at the level that the more civilized parts of the species have reached at the moment, it arises only in new circumstances and requires a different and much more thorough solution. The struggle between liberty and power is the most striking feature in those parts of history with which we are first introduced, especially in the history of Greece, Rome, and England. However, in ancient times this conflict took place between the subjects, or a certain class of subjects, and the government. Freedom meant protection from the tyranny of political rulers. Rulers (with the exception of some popular governments of Greece) were thought to be inevitably in an antagonistic position towards the people they ruled.
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