How Did John Stuart Mill On Liberty Be Censored?

The issue of censorship of unpopular opinions is a sensitive one that stirs significant debate. In a general sense, utilitarians are interested in analyzing the balance between happiness and unhappiness – in this case, the balance between the conflicting feelings of those who would prefer censorship and those who would be censored. In his essay On Liberty, utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill settles this balance with the assertion that, no matter how unpopular a certain opinion is, censorship of any opinion is unjustified – indeed, “no more justified … than [one man] would be justified in silencing [all of] mankind.” My thesis is that, though there are serious objections to Mill’s conclusions, Mill successfully defends his arguments from these objections and constructs a compelling case in favor of freedom of speech. I will begin with an introduction of the philosophy Mill builds his argument off of: utilitarianism.
He challenges the romantic notion that persecution will always yield to truth, and that society should therefore be allowed to censor who it pleases since the truth will win out regardless. He challenges this notion by citing several successful eradications of religious groups in Europe as examples of persecutions that never yielded. While Mill’s examples are insufficiently varied to completely prove his point, they bring to mind other cases of persecution of thought that round out his case. I offer the example of Ignaz Semmelweis, the Hungarian physician ostracized from his trade and eventually committed to an asylum for his suggestion that doctors should wash their hands. In this case, persecution was only defeated by the groundbreaking work of other men, countless deaths later; such groundbreaking work cannot be relied upon to save the day when everyday persecution stifles the