On Liberty
by John Stuart Mill · first published 1859
47% recommend51% neutral2% critical
Why HN recommends it
Short, accessible defense of free speech and freedom of thought, including against social pressure and the tyranny of the majority, not just government. Suits anyone debating censorship, moderation, or individual rights.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Book digitized by Google from the library of the New York Public Library and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.
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…mainstream channels pretty much prevents the ideas from propagating in the mainstream. Actually, no it hasn't. And for anyone that holds such a viewpoint, I'd strongly suggest reading J. S. Mill's classic, On Liberty[1] -- a foundational document of Western political thought. [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm
on “YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke” ↗…The Courtier and the Heretic, Stewart (on Spinoza and Leibniz) Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Kant On Liberty, Mill "Modern Moral Philosophy", Anscombe "What is Capitalism?", Rand The Bounds of Sense, Strawson + "Rawls on Justice", Nagel "The Naturalists Return", Kitcher Sources of Normativity, Korsgaard…
on “Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?” ↗…Destiny! I'm not overly conservative or classically leaning when it comes to education but I think people who really want to expand their minds would benefit from trying some of the classics first. Mill, On Liberty. Accessible and incredibly important book for people who live in liberal democracies and want to understand where a lot of their own ideas come from. Plato's Republic. Not as accessible, but very important.…
on “Mind-expanding books” ↗The classic reference here is "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mills. http://www.bartleby.com/130/ He persuasively advocates that the line shouldn't be drawn based on the acceptability or reasonability of the opinion, but on whether the behavior…
on “Mozilla Moving Forward” ↗…The Republic, Plato - Second Treatise on Government, John Locke - The Law, Frederic Bastiat - Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes - Meditations, Marcus Aurelius - Democracy in America, Alexis de Toqueville - On Liberty, John Stuart Mill Fiction: - The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, Mark Twain - The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin - Metamorphoses, Franz Kafka - Candide, Voltaire - The Count of Monte…
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite books or essays written at least 100 years ago?” ↗-Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations by Ludvig Wittgenstein -The Open Society and its Enemies by Karl Popper -On Liberty John Stuart Mill -Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and their Computation by Machine by John McCarthy
on “Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?” ↗You should read John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty". It makes all my arguments for free political speech for me and in a much more elegant manner. It is self-evident that if you limit the amount of money that people can spend on advertising their political…
on “Remind HN: Vote” ↗• “On Liberty” (John Stuart Mill) for political enlightenment and an impeccable defence of [classical!] liberalism. It's packed with simple but enormously powerful ideas that are also timeless, thus applicable today…
on “Ask HN: Books you wish you had read earlier?” ↗…specific to the government, but free speech is a much broader normative concept. It is about cordoning off the market place of ideas from reprisals in meatspace. A canonical defense is John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" (available free online).
on “Why We Terminated Daily Stormer” ↗Shameless plug: anyone interested in reading On Liberty on their ereader should check out our free edition at Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/john-stuart-mill/on-libert... It's an excellent read, and is the foundation of a lot of quotes…
on “Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion (1869)” ↗…"Autobiography" by Benjamin Franklin, "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine, "Gespräche mit Goethe" by Johann Peter Eckermann, "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau, "The Old Regime and the Revolution" Alexis de Tocqueville, "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill, "A Treatise on Political Economy" by Jean-Baptiste Say, "The Man Versus the State" by Herbert Spencer, "The Revolt of the Masses" by José Ortega y Gasset, "Capitalism, Socialism…
on “Ask HN: What's one book that changed your life?” ↗…from reprisals in meat space. If you don't understand why this is important, and applies to individuals contemplating economic reprisals just as much as to government incarceration, you should read "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mills, the classic canonical defense of this. It's only 100 pages and available free. https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/mill/liber... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Liberty…
on “Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory” ↗…from Facebook will only foster a sense of persecution in white nationalists, which will likely strengthen their movement overall, while isolating them further from contrary opinions. John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" is essential reading for those who wish to silence speech they find offensive, especially corporations which may or may not have the right to regulate content on their all-but-universal, essential-to-modern-life…
on “Facebook to ban white nationalist content” ↗…reasoning tells that a law (the "criminal law") beats the Constitution by putting restrictions on a Constitutional right. There's a lot to parse in your post, but I would strongly suggest reading J.S. Mill's On Liberty[1]. In it, Mill describes (what is now known) as the Harm Principle[2]. This (or something like this), and not necessarily criminal law, is essentially what the Constitution is beholden to. It just so…
on “Supreme Court says state may enforce some restrictions on religious gatherings [pdf]” ↗…like an Ethics 101 course, I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy. I am intimately familiar with arguments on both sides, and I think you should read some John Stuart Mill, specifically his seminal On Liberty[1] (maybe not as engaging as a YouTube video course, though). Free speech absolutism is a pretty hardline position, but I think it's probably correct. [1] https://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlLbty.html
on “Chinese students at Cornell “taunt” Uyghur classmate” ↗