ON LIBERTY

Chapter III, On Individuality, As One of the components of Wellbeing

Chapter III, On Individuality, As One of the Elements of Wellbeing

Introduction

Individuality is absolutely vital to the cultivation of the self. A basic difficulty that Mill sees with humanity is that one-by-one spontaneity is not respected as having any good in itself, and is not glimpsed as absolutely vital to well-being. Rather, the most thinks that its ways should be good sufficient for everybody. Mill argues that while persons should be trained as children in the built up information of human know-how, they should also have the flexibility as mature persons to understand that experience as they see fit. He locations great lesson focus on the method of making alternatives, and not easily acknowledging culture without questions: only people who make alternatives are utilizing all of their human faculties. Mill then connects yearns and impulses reflected in individuality with the development of character: One whose yearns and impulses are not his own, has no feature, no more than a vapor engine has feature (Mill, 1859).

Mills is trying to explain that every person becomes more valuable to himself, in proportion to the development of his individuality, and is, therefore, capable of being more valuable to others.

In this chapter, Mill endeavors to display that individuality and nonconformity are precious both on the level of the individual and on the grade of society. Mill believes that humanity naturally favors conformity, and that this preference is exacerbated by democratization and the command of society by the masses.

Mill's anxiety with the stifling of individuality expands to both lawful and communal realms. He accepts as true that in the face of public force to conform and the institutionalized power of over-reaching regulations, the individual is obstructed from an proficiency to make meaningful alternatives, and therefore from individual ...