John Stuart Mill's Concept Of The Harm Principle

Within Of Liberty by John Stuart Mill, the concept of the Harm Principle is explained clearly as, “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” The concept is essentially that an individual should not have their liberties restricted unless those liberties cause harm to others. If an individual's action only affects themselves then there is nothing that society or the state should do to prevent that action. The concept places so much value on the freedom of people to pursue their own desires that it is believed to be better to allow a person to live in a perceived wrongful way than to force that person to change their way of life. For example,
This 18th century idea was widely popular amongst philosophers during that time. Moreover, John Stuart Mill was no exception writing that, “Human beings owe to each other help to distinguish the better from the worse, and encouragement to choose the former and avoid the latter.” This implies that through cooperation, people are capable of giving up some degree of self-love in order to help one another in ways that lead to establishing ideas of what is positive and negative behavior and actions. Consequently, selfless acts seem to fit this principle and Mill believed that through this practice, those who helped each other would elevate their higher faculties leading to an increase in overall
It is easier to distinguish what kind of actions are punishable by either form by understanding what Mill considers to be a violation of constituted rights, the only rights that could cause punishment through the law. This would include acts such as physically attacking someone or robbing someone of their possessions, crimes that Mill would consider to directly harm an individual. Mill writes, “The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going the length of violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by opinion, though not by law.” What is not punishable by the law is nearly every other type of action with which people may take issue. For these, the conclusion is that there should be a form of opinion punishment. A clear example of what Mill would believe to be an action that could face opinion punishment would be speech perceived to be offensive to someone. This form of punishment falls short of harm according to Mill and is one that members of a society would be tasked with enforcing and could include actions such as ignoring the person causing offense, arguing non-violently, or simply warning others about the person’s speech. There is also an interesting perspective on the well being of someone who is punished through