IB Philosophy 10.12 on Liberty – John Stuart Mill Key Definitions

Euthanasia is the deliberate ending of a person's life to relieve suffering. Active euthanasia involves a direct act (such as administering a lethal dose), while passive euthanasia involves withdrawing life-sustaining treatment.

Existential angst (also called anguish or anxiety) is a profound feeling of dread that arises from awareness of one's own radical freedom, the absence of a predetermined essence, and the inescapable responsibility for creating oneself through one's choices.

Experiments in living is Mill's term for the diverse approaches to life that individuals adopt when free from social conformity. Mill argues that such experiments benefit society by revealing which modes of living are most conducive to human flourishing.

Falsificationism is the view, developed by Karl Popper, that a theory is scientific if and only if it makes predictions that could, in principle, be shown to be false through observation or experiment.

expression targeting individuals or groups on the basis of race, religion, gender, or sexuality, which may incite hostility or violence. Whether hate speech constitutes "harm" in Mill's sense is one of the most contested questions in contemporary free speech debates.

in Mill's philosophy, the cultivation of one's distinctive character, talents, and judgement through free experimentation with different modes of living. Mill treats individuality not merely as a personal preference but as a moral ideal essential to human well-being and social progress.

Informed consent is a foundational principle of research ethics requiring that participants voluntarily agree to take part in a study after receiving clear information about its nature, risks, and purpose. Established by the Nuremberg Code (1947), it affirms that the autonomy and dignity of research subjects must be respected regardless of the potential benefits.

In Mill's framework, limited government is the principle that state authority is justified only when exercised to prevent harm to others or to provide essential public goods, and any exercise of power beyond these functions is illegitimate.

In Mill's philosophy, moral autonomy is the capacity of individuals to determine their own moral principles through independent reflection and rational deliberation, rather than accepting moral rules imposed by custom, tradition, or external authority.

Natural rights are rights that individuals possess by virtue of their humanity, prior to and independent of any legal system or political institution. John Locke argued that the rights to life, liberty, and property are natural and inalienable, and a government that violates them forfeits its legitimacy.

In Mill's framework, progressive civilisation is the historical process by which societies advance from custom-bound conformity to rational self-governance, through the gradual expansion of knowledge, moral sensibility, and respect for individual liberty.

Self-regarding actions are those that affect primarily the individual agent and do not directly harm the interests of others. By contrast, other-regarding actions have consequences for others and may therefore be legitimately regulated by society or the state.

For de Beauvoir, situated freedom is the recognition that human freedom is never abstract or unlimited but always exercised from within a particular social, historical, and bodily situation that shapes its possibilities.

The harm principle is John Stuart Mill's central claim in On Liberty (1859) that the only legitimate reason for exercising power over an individual against their will is to prevent harm to others.

The marketplace of ideas is a metaphor derived from Mill's arguments in Chapter II of On Liberty for the process by which truth emerges through open competition among opinions, since suppressing any opinion deprives humanity of the chance to exchange error for truth.

In Mill's philosophy, the rational self is the conception of human beings as fundamentally capable of reason, self-improvement, and moral growth through free inquiry and the progressive development of their intellectual faculties.

The tyranny of the majority is Mill's term for the tendency of democratic societies to impose the opinions and customs of the numerical majority through both legal coercion and social pressure to enforce conformity.