Review: On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill by Gertrude Himmelfarb

Geiger, George R. The Antioch Review 33, no. 2. 1975.

Abstract:

Mill’s “On Liberty” has been, in many ways, the most provocative and influential essay in the entire area of individual freedom. The opening sentence itself, with its flat assertion that “one very simple principle [is] entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual,” is prickly enough, and the rest of the paragraph makes clear he means what he says; which is “that the sole end for which man- kind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection.”