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On Liberty
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On Liberty is John Stuart Mill's 1859 essay on the limits of the power that society and government may legitimately exercise over the individual, best known for what has come to be called the harm principle: that the only justification for interfering with an individual's liberty of action is to prevent harm to others, and that a person's own good, physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.
Facts
Key ProvisionSets out the harm principle, that the only legitimate ground for exercising power over an individual against their will is to prevent harm to others, and defends freedom of thought and discussion on the ground that even a false opinion may contain a portion of truth suppressed nowhere else. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
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Mill published On Liberty in 1859, developed jointly with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill and published shortly after her death.
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