Defining Mills Harm Principle Philosophy Essay

Defining Mills combat injury Principle Philosophy EssayThe only purpose for which power dope be rightfully exercised over any member of a cultivated community, against his will, is to prevent distress to others. John Stuart Mill. The above sentence has been the one fundamental belief as asserted by Mill in his noned On Liberty, commonly c onlyed the harm principle. Harm, in his context, means only steer harm, by means of actions and inaction, onto others. Harm that one done to others by harming himself does non count unless one has failed to fulfil some specific and concrete agreement that ought to be done initially. Interference should not be placed on someone as long as the things done do not harm others. Legal penalties and sanctions can only be justified if they atomic number 18 subvertd to prevent harm to others.Mill mentioned that the time where the society or the individual as a whole can impose influences on particular individual liberty is when it is for self-p rotection. If a person is placing himself in a position that is dangerous solely to him, society has no right to interfere. He believes that every individual is autonomous, nothing can be compelled upon him/her, for his/her protest expediency/welf be, as long as the thing done does not impose threats to others even though it is harming himself. This is what Mill meant from Over himself, over his own clay and mind, the individual is sovereign1. However, this does not apply to children and some backward states of society, who are not capable to take care of themselves and to make sensible decisions, such as the undeveloped races.Furthermore, Mill judgement that human liberty should compensate first, the inward domain of conscience, and liberty of thought and feeling. Second, the liberty of tastes and pursuances in mean ones own look and lastly, the liberty of individuals in uniting with other react collective groups for any purposes which do not harm others. He believed tha t a good society can only exist through the granting of all the liberties to the people in pursuing their own good lives in their own good ways.2In Mills works, they were inevitably such(prenominal) influenced by his thought on utilitarianism3. Obviously, in which he regarded utility as the ultimate pull in on all ethical questionsin the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man4Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, would be the permanent interests of mankind. This can be seen much clearer where he held that actions are right in proportion as they be given to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.5What did the level-headed theorists esteem?In an influential defence of the harm principle, Raz has challenged on the instruction on how the state should promote the well-being of people and in the pursuit of incorrupt ideas, how far, the state in coercing the society should be determined by the harm principle. He suggested that it is a perfectionist ideal which presupposes specific moral conceptions which are not indifferent towards criteria of moral worth or moral fair play6.Also, as we have seen, Mill ruled step forward the compulsion and witness of the state to prevent harmless wrongdoing although that could be what the state think is in the best interest of the society in obtaining pleasures and happiness. By playacting as a guiding principle in terms of semipolitical restraint, this will not lead Raz to non-perfectionist position7.Raz supported Mills harm principle not by his utilitarian path, still by the liberty principle. He claimed that the autonomy principle is an important ingredient for the state to chase a moral good and to promote a good life for the citizens in such societies. Autonomous life is valuable only if it is played out in the pursuit of acceptable and valuable projects and relationships.8Ultimately, Razs central claim is to brook the harm principle through the princi ple of autonomy for one primary reason The means used, coercive interference, violates the autonomy of its victim because it violates the condition of independence and expresses a relation of domination and an location of disrespect for the coerced individual and, compulsion by criminal penalties is a global and indiscriminate invasion of autonomy.9To substitute a personal autonomy, condition of independence10must be present, too. Slavery, moral censorship, sale of contraceptives11, etc could be the more common examples.Dan-Cohen has also come out with a similar structure of Razs arguments on the harm principle but a rather more different and inconsistent conclusion, in which he focused more on criminal law. He suggested that the harm principle should be replaced by the dignity principle12because dignity demands that our actions, practices, and institutions convey an attitude of respect to people.13He has made a hypothetical example of able slavery in contradicting with Razs ar gument on the independence is part and carve up of autonomy but his point is, a dignity principle on the whole independent of autonomy.14