Political Theory

Question 1

Mill on the danger of democracy and the “tyranny of the majority”

Answer 1

“The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people, the majority”

Question 2

Mill’s harm principle

Answer 2

“Sole purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.”

Applies to moral coercion as well as legal

Question 3

Mill in defence of freedom of speech

Answer 3

 “If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error”

Question 4

Mill in support of deliberative (democracy?)

Answer 4

There is no fundamental quality of truth that means it will prevail without the deliberative proccess

“Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it”

Question 5

Fitzjames Stephen’s critisism of Mill’s self-regarding vs other-regarding distinction

Answer 5

“like an attempt to distinguish between acts which happen in time and acts which happen in space”