Politics
1806 to 1873, London
Liberty, utility, and the tyranny of the majority.
Start learning John →Mill’s refined utilitarianism: that the right action is the one producing the most happiness - but with a crucial distinction between higher and lower pleasures.
Mill’s one simple rule for the limits of liberty: society may interfere with your freedom only to prevent harm to others - never for your own good.
Mill’s argument that we must protect even opinions we are certain are false - because silencing them robs everyone, and our certainty is never as safe as it feels.
Mill’s warning that the gravest threat to freedom in a democracy is not the tyrant but the crushing pressure of mass opinion to make everyone the same.
Mill’s radical argument, generations ahead of its time, that the inequality of women is a relic of barbarism and that we cannot even know women’s ‘nature’ under oppression.
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