On Liberty

by John Stuart Mill

On Liberty (1859), of the most important documents of political liberalism,   appeared in the same year that Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published. On Liberty is a rational   justification of the freedom of the individual in opposition to the claims of   the state to impose unlimited control and is thus a defence of the rights of   the individual against the state. This work contained Mill’s principle that only self-protection can justify either the state’s tampering with the liberty   of the individual or any personal interference with another’s freedom — particularly   with respect to freedom of thought and discussion. (Eugene Lee, University Scholars Program,  National University of Singapore).

Published in 1859, John Stuart Mill s On Liberty presented one of the most eloquent defenses of individual freedom in nineteenth-century social and political philosophy and is today perhaps the most widely-read liberal argument in support of the value of liberty.  Mill s passionate advocacy of spontaneity, individuality, and diversity, along with his contempt for compulsory uniformity and the despotism of popular opinion, has attracted both admiration and condemnation.

About the Author:

John Stuart Mill was born in a suburb of London on May 20, 1806. By the age of ten he was reading classical authors in the original Greek and Latin, was proficient in history, algebra, and geometry, and soon after began to study logic, political economy, and law. He was elected to Parliament in 1865 and held the Radical seat for Westminster for the next three years.  Mill died in Avignon, France, on May 7, 1873.

John Stuart Mill Institut für Freiheitsforschung

http://www.victorianweb.org/philosophy/mill/liberty.html