John Stuart Mill Research Paper

Through out history, many philosophers have discussed the rights of mankind such as existence, liberty and especially property. In the work “The Second Treatise of Civil Government” written by John Locke, mankind’s natural rights are critically examined one by one. This essay aims to discuss whether John Stuart Mill’s harm principle that he mentions in “On Liberty” can be exercised while not violating the natural rights of mankind or not.
First of all, in order to find out the consistency of Mill’s harm principle with Locke’s natural rights, briefly one should examine Locke’s definitions of state of nature and state of war. For Locke, when men live together reasonably and have right to judge each other, without a common authority such as a government it is called state of nature. For Locke, state of nature is a reasonable state that mankind live peacefully. And when men use force, or assert a design of force over other men and threat their lives, where also no common authority is present it is called state of war. Apart from the state of nature, in the state of war, Locke says that “every man hath a
Consequently, because of living in state of war, men could not make use of their natural rights such as right