John Stuart Mill and the Philosophy of Free Speech

John Stuart Mill and the Philosophy of Free Speech

In 1859, John Stuart Mill published his short but profoundly significant book On Liberty. Its arguments make for perhaps the most influential defence of free speech in the English language. We’ll take an especially close look at chapter 2, in which Mill connects freedom of expression with the growth of knowledge and societal development. This will help us see that freedom of speech, for Mill, is not simply a licence to say whatever one pleases, but is accompanied by a general obligation to pursue the truth. This includes an obligation to genuinely defend – rather than merely proclaim – one’s position, and engage in constructive disagreement with others when called upon to do so. We’ll also ask why we might continue to take something from Mill’s writings today, given that our world – and particularly the technological means through which speech now circulates – is almost unrecognisable compared to Mill’s England of more than 150 years ago.

Daniel Halliday teaches political philosophy at the University of Melbourne. In addition to various journal articles and book chapters, he is the author of The Inheritance of Wealth (2018) and, with John Thrasher, The Ethics of Capitalism: An Introduction (2020), both with Oxford University Press. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Stanford University.