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Duncan Brack

John Stuart Mill symposium – Saturday 14 November, LSE, London

By Duncan Brack | Mon 26th October 2009 - 6:40 pm

One hundred and fifty years ago, in 1859, the great Liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill published his most important and enduring work, On Liberty. Used today as the symbol of office of the President of the Liberal Democrats, On Liberty emphatically vindicated individual moral autonomy and celebrated the importance of originality and dissent. It set out the principle, still acknowledged as universal and valid today, that only the threat of harm to others can justify interfering with an individual’s liberty of action.

Mill himself was not only a philosopher, but also an economist, journalist, political writer, social reformer, and, briefly, …

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Recent Comments

  • Matt (Bristol)
    Hmm, yes, but its a long way from an ideological principle to a set of policy prescriptions and not fair to set them up as inevitable and immutable....
  • Tristan Ward
    @ Matt The "liberal argument" - as I understand it - is that liberty for individuals is paramount, and (given that a state must exist if we are to avoid a...
  • Matt (Bristol)
    Pawel - there's always and only one single 'liberal' argument? Interesting......
  • Matt (Bristol)
    The whole agenda of many disparate elements of the right (not necessarily working in coordination) is to machinate a small boats 'crisis' where actually numbers...
  • Pawel Urbanski
    @Rose - Thank you. My sense is that urban seats want the liberal argument made in full, not a local version of the rural one. Housing costs, the case for being ...