Yesterday, May 20th, marks 212 years since the birth of John Stuart Mill, one of the most important English philosophers of all time, a founding member of the co-operative, utilitarian justification of the ideas of freedom.

Mill, among other things, strongly defended freedom of speech, women’s rights, and the limited state. One of his most important contributions to the cause of freedom has been the making of the harm principle: the concept that interference with the private sphere, freedom and self-determination of a person is justified only if that person harms the corresponding freedoms of another – not when one is behaving in a way that presumably harms only himself.

The harm principle is one of the strongest arguments that liberals invoke in every case where the state justifies the forced control of human action. For Mill’s important contribution to the defense of individual freedoms and self-determination, freedom lovers, even those who disagree with his utilitarian approach, are grateful to him.

Read a very interesting article by Aristides Chatzis, where he defends freedom of speech by utilizing Mill’s harm principle here.

Read more about Mill’s life and work here.