Hi guys, welcome back! Your comments last week were super interesting and I hope to incorporate your thoughts and ideas within my project going forward. As for this week, I spent most of time continuing to read through On Liberty, attempting to understand the complex principles and arguments that Mill brings up throughout the book. Last week, I focused heavily on chapter 2, so to keep it more consistent, I'll go through the basic ideas that Mill brings up in chapters 1 and 3.
Chapter 1 serves as Mill's overall introduction to the book and his overall argument, pretty straight forward. First, he states that the focus of his book is on civil liberties, as seen in my explanation of chapter 2 last week. He goes into what he believes the word "liberty" actually means, and he uses the definition that ancient Greece and Rome used, and that is protection from the tyranny of governments and rulers. He talks about how to avoid this issue, and the main solution to it is by allowing for as many civil liberties as possible without the possibility of them harming others within a society. So as long as other individuals' liberties are protected, then you are free to carry out your own liberties. He then concludes the chapter by separating liberty into three general areas, the liberty of individual thought and opinion, the liberty of personal pursuit, and the liberty to unite with other consenting individuals.
In Chapter 3, Mill distinguishes between actions and opinions. Although opinions may not be as limited in a society, for they are not directly harmful to others in most cases, actions can be, and should be limited, such as with murder, an obvious example. He also places a very large role on individuality, for many of the societies of his time were trending towards conformist ideals. He believes society can learn from individual spontaneity.
A lot of these concepts can be analogous to the topic of knowledge. For example, we could postulate that knowledge is acceptable so long as it does not do harm onto others, or how what we could deem as "lesser" forms of knowledge is something actually worth learning from and could turn out to be more valuable than we originally thought.
Anyways, that's all for this week! I can't wait to read your thoughts in the comments!
Thanks for clarifying that liberty is freedom from government oppression; it's often easy to mix up liberty and freedom. Which area of liberty was most helpful to your analysis of knowledge? I also really liked the point about knowledge being acceptable as long as it does not harm anyone.
ReplyDeleteHi Liam! I like that you explained the connection between the topic of Mill's book, civil liberties, and the pursuit of knowledge. Your research seems to be directing you in the direction of the belief that all forms of knowledge should be available to be learned in schools. Do you think that all forms of knowledge are equal, or that some, like math and science, should still be stressed over others? Good luck in the rest of your research!
ReplyDeleteHey Liam! It's pretty neat to think about how society defined as group requires the focus on individual and self-discipline. Can't wait to read more about your research in the future.
ReplyDeleteHi Liam! What exactly did Mill imply when he said that societies can learn from individual spontaneity? I'm looking forward to the future posts.
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty interesting Liam! Do you think there is an exception for dangerous knowledge for the sake of preventing or even just knowing?
ReplyDeleteHey Liam! It's good to see your still going strong. I'm still not entirely sold on whether opinions are not dangerous. Keep up the good work!
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