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The Harm Principle

The Harm Principle is an idea that was developed by John Stuart Mill in regard to his essay On Liberty. Mill created this writing to establish the separation between authority and liberty. He also discussed the ways people harm others and what he classifies as harm. In his essay, Mill states that harm is the setback of a person’s interests.

There are two main types of harm: physical and emotional.

Physical harm affects the physical body i.e. bodily wounds, malnourishment, illness, disfigurement.

Emotional harm could be taken in any direction, but for this case, emotional harm is considered to be the mistreatment of someone’s emotional state caused by another persons’ action or behavior.

In Mill’s principle, he didn’t consider emotional harm to be an actual harm rather more like an offense. He didn’t consider hate speech to be any type of harm either since it didn’t hurt one’s physical being. Mill had said that it is our freedom to offend people. But in modern terms, we as a society can obviously see that hate speech does inflict harm.

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, hate speech is protected by the first amendment under free speech, but there are obvious examples of hate speech that are unacceptable and malicious. Today, we see several examples of hate speech in our every day lives. Many notable examples come from the president of the United States, Donald Trump.

In his 2016 presidential campaign, he ridiculed Mexicans in several ways by calling them rapists, murders and drug dealers. But less we forget that some are good people. Would we not consider this to be harm, especially since it is coming from a political figure and it attacks the liberty of a massive group of people?

Unlike the current president, there is one political group that uses Mill’s principle in a modern aspect. This group is known as the Libertarian Party. Their platform includes the protection of its citizens’ privacy and also the idea that government shouldn’t be involved in their citizen’s private matters. The Libertarian Party also believes in the idea of Pro-Choice. To some, this could be considered another aspect of harm which could be violating the principle, but the Libertarian Party considered it to be harmful for the government to be involved in a woman’s choice of her body and also between the woman and her significant other.

Although Mill’s idea of the harm principle seems to be outdated. It’s evident that this principle is still being used today, but there needs to be a more diverse and representative model of the Harm Principle. People have access to the entire world just at their fingertips, so it might seem easier to attack one’s being, which we have seen causes harm. Yes, people should be able to express their freedom’s the way they wish, but there has to be some restriction as to what you can say. People might see it as a restriction of freedom but with the advancement of the world around us and the access to such negativity, reprehensions should be made.


QUIZ:
1. What essay did John Stuart Mill write that contained The Harm Principle?
2. What did Mill perceive emotional harm to be?
3. How does Mill say harm affects somebody?
4. How has the Libertarian Party included the Harm Principle into their platform?

DQ:
- would you consider hate speech to be harm?
- Considering the words of the president elect, should political officials be held accountable to their demeaning words just as normal people are in everyday life?
- Looking at the provided chart of Trump's hate speech crimes, could we then consider hate speech to be more than just an emotional harm or an offense as Mill puts it?
- If you could, what kind of modern example of the Harm Principle would you create? Would be beneficial only to you or to the citizens of this country and of this world?