[MD] Mill: Quality philosopher

[Michael Hamilton]

SA,

> Could you please expand on what this 'genuine liberty'
> is?

I doubt it - Arlo's done an excellent job already. Mill might be able
to provide some good  reinforcement, though. The following passage
from Mill is interesting because it shows a degree of influence from
the ancient Greek concept of 'eudaimonia' (which Matt mentioned
recently with regard to the 4th level), often translated nowadays as
'human flourishing':

--------------------------
"He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of
life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one
of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his
faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to
foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to
decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to
his deliberate decision. And these qualities he requires and exercises
exactly in proportion as the part of his conduct which he determines
according to his own judgment and feelings is a large one. It is
possible that he might be guided in some good path, and kept out of
harm's way, without any of these things. But what will be his
comparative worth as a human being? It really is of importance, not
only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it.
Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in
perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely is man
himself. Supposing it were possible to get houses built, corn grown,
battles fought, causes tried, and even churches erected and prayers
said, by machinery — by automatons in human form — it would be a
considerable loss to exchange for these automatons even the men and
women who at present inhabit the more civilized parts of the world,
and who assuredly are but starved specimens of what nature can and
will produce. Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model,
and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which
requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the
tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing."
--------------------------

I've been a bit naughty so far by not giving references. Probably
easiest to just link to this public-domain text of 'On Liberty':
http://www.constitution.org/jsm/liberty.htm