Study On John Mill's Individual Freedom

Mill's theory of liberalism which plays an important role in history of western political thought is good for knowing the transformation of western ideology comprehensively.Firstly,Mill inherits and surpasses classical liberalism,which has two expression.For definition of liberty,Mill defended for individual liberty from society perspective and didn't emphasize political liberty advocated by classical liberalists.For governmental powers,he thought,in order to be great kindness,government should intervene to prevent passive consequence from unlimited liberty.It means Mill disagreed to let individual behavior go freely.Secondly,Mill's theory of liberalism exceeds utilitarian theories of Bentham because Mill related individual liberty with social welfare effectively,making a progress in side of coordination of individual and society.There are four parts in the paper.The first part involves factors of individual liberty,including thought and speech liberty,personality liberty and related liberty between individual.In Mill's opinion,all these basic liberties that were of great significance should be owned by citizen.People could know the truth by thought and speech liberty,at the same time,the society was promoted by personality liberty.Some individual freedom of constraints are recommended in the second part.In the age of mass democracy,although people have got rid of the constraints of authoritarian governments and realized political liberty,some new factors appear which are customs or public opinion threatening individual liberty.These opinions not only efface personality development,but also impede the progress of human society.So Mill thought boundary that reconciled society intervention with individual freedom should be drawn between society and individual by the principles of non-intervention.The third part recommends the ways of realizing individual freedom.In this part,to realize personality freedom better,Mill considered system guarantee was necessary.He wanted to realize individual freedom by government intervention moderate,the expansion of the suffrage and multiple votes.The last part is about enlightenment of Mill's individual freedom thought.According to Mill's thought,we should deal with the four pairs of relations:main thought and diversification,personality freedom and collective interests,individual freedom and society as well as government and individual freedom and so on.