Mill On Liberty

On Liberty is one of Mill’s most famous works and remains the one most read today. In this book, Mill expounds his concept of individual freedom within the context of his ideas on history and the state. On Liberty depends on the idea that society progresses from lower to higher stages and that this progress culminates in the emergence of a system of representative democracy. It is within the context of this form of government that Mill envisions the growth and development of liberty.
Chapter I defines civil liberty as the limit that must be set on society’s power over each individual. Mill undertakes a historical review of the concept of liberty, beginning with ancient Greece and Rome and proceeding to England. In the past, liberty meant primarily
In this one brief text, Descartes turns many Aristotelian doctrines upside down and frames many of the questions that are still being debated in philosophy today. Among other things, Descartes breaks down the Aristotelian notion that all knowledge comes via the senses and that mental states must in some way resemble what they are about. In so doing, he develops an entirely new conception of mind, matter, ideas, and a great deal else besides.
We might understand the philosophical outlook that Descartes develops to be marked and defined by the skepticism he employs in the First Meditation. He begins by asking how he can be certain of anything and then develops all sorts of inventive and outlandish reasons as to why he ought to mistrust his senses. Philosophy ever since has been marked a constant skepticism toward knowledge claims, and the very question of how we can come to know anything with certainty has been much
Descartes develops a conception of the mind where the senses and the imagination are also mental faculties. Further, he argues that we are essentially thinking things that can know our minds clearly and distinctly, but must work much harder to come to an understanding of our bodies. Most important, he draws a very sharp distinction between mind and body. Mind is essentially thinking and body is essentially extended, so the two have nothing at all in common. Ever since, philosophers have striven to understand how mind and body can interact and relate with one another.
Skepticism and mind-body dualism have combined to create an understanding of the human mind as being locked away inside a body and separated off from the world. How this mind can come to know anything at all about the world is a mystery, and the certainty of this knowledge is sharply questioned. This conception of mind is so natural to us that it is sometimes difficult to understand that the pre- Cartesian world had a far less skeptical outlook toward knowledge and sensory