Self-Regarding Actions

According to John Stuart Mill, all individuals within a state are entitled to have freedom of action. This means that these individuals have the right to engage in any action that they want, regardless of if it is harmful to them or not, this is one of the definitions for Mill’s harm principle. These actions can be known as self-regarding and other regarding actions, a self regarding action is known to be an action which only affects the involved persons, whereas other regarding actions are defined as any action which causes harm to others (Garner, Ferdinand, Lawson, 2016, page 100). My argument for this essay is that the state should not intervene to prohibit self-regarding actions. This is due to the fact that the state does not have the
Will you see any animals where male is to male and female is to female?...The animals are better. They know how to distinguish male from female. If we approve of male on male, female on female, then man is worse than animals.” (Murphy, 2016). It is due to statements like these that the state may feel compelled to intervene to prohibit these actions to prevent individuals such as Pacquiao from being uncomfortable within society. In addition, until 1967, homosexuality was considered an illegal act and was also considered a mental illness until 1987 (Burton, 2015, Psychology Today). This is due to the fact that being in a same-sex relationship was not part of the norm at the time, therefore society had the shared belief that if an individual was a homosexual then either their mental health is deteriorating or they deserve to be in prison. Despite this, the state had no right to intervene and prevent same-sex relationships from occurring as it is the individual’s right to engage in the action and most of the time it is not the individual’s choice to be homosexual. For example, an article in The Independent in 2015 stated that between 2014-2015 the number of hate crimes against gays and lesbians in England and Wales was 5,597, which was an increase of 22% when compared to the previous year (Morris, 2015). Therefore, this implies that it is not the individual’s choice to be
Due to this behaviour being so deviated from the social norms of ‘civilized’ societies, the state feels obliged to intervene to prohibit and in most cases prevent the action of cannibalism from occurring. Despite this, one can still argue that since an individual has freedom of action, they have the right to engage in cannibalism as long as it does not cause harm to others. Even though it may seem questionable as to whether or not cannibalism causes harm to others, if an individual consent to being eaten by another then they still have the right to do so and the state is in no position to interfere. For example, in the case of Armin Meiwes and Bernd Brandes, the latter had responded to an advertisement on a cannibalism website made by the former which consisted of finding an individual that would consent to being eaten. Consequently, Brandes had consented to being eaten by Meiwes and died due to his injuries. Meiwes was charged with manslaughter before being retried with murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2006 (O’Connor, 2016). In this case the state had no right to intervene as both individuals had the right to engage in this action, regardless of the fact that the action is considered a taboo. Although, if Brandes had not succumb to his injuries