Harm principle

The principle that coercive power may be exercised against a person only to prevent harm to others. John Stuart Mill presents it as a limit on interference with individual liberty.

On Liberty: John Stuart Mill’s 1859 essay defending individual liberty against social and political coercion. Mill states and defends the harm principle in this essay.
Self-regarding action: Conduct that directly affects the person acting, or others only with their free and informed consent. Mill treats this domain as protected from coercion based on the actor’s own good.
Legal paternalism: The use of law to restrict people’s choices for their own protection or welfare. It permits a kind of coercion Mill’s principle generally rules out.
Drug prohibition: Laws that ban or restrict the production, possession, or use of particular drugs. It tests whether preventing self-regarding risk can justify criminal penalties.
John Stuart Mill: A nineteenth-century British philosopher, political economist, and Member of Parliament. Mill formulated the principle as a defense of individual liberty.
Individual liberty: A person’s freedom to make choices and act without undue restraint. The principle sets a boundary around coercion that limits personal freedom.
Other-regarding action: Conduct that affects other people’s interests without their consent. Its harmful effects can supply grounds for restraint under the principle.
John Rawls: An American political philosopher whose work includes a theory of justice and political liberalism. Rawls develops liberal limits on state power while treating Mill’s framework critically.
Hate speech: Expression that attacks or demeans people on grounds such as race, religion, or ethnicity. Debates ask whether its harms justify restrictions on expression.
Harriet Taylor Mill: A British philosopher and women’s rights advocate whose intellectual partnership with John Stuart Mill shaped his work. Her influence is central to accounts of the ideas behind Mill’s writings on liberty.

Linked from 14 pages