Liberty Individuality And The Suicide Of Liberty

In his much quoted, seminal work, On Liberty, John Stuart Mill attempts to establish standards for the relationship between authority and liberty. He emphasizes the importance of individuality which he conceived as a prerequisite to the higher pleasures-the summum bonum of Utilitarianism. Published in 1859, On Liberty presents one of the most eloquent defenses of individual freedom and is perhaps the most widely-read liberal argument in support of the value of liberty.

Differentiated book- It has a historical context with research of the timeIn an essay on freedom, the first is the clear definition of what is meant by freedom and what it refers to. For freedom, and already on the first line of the first page, Stuart Mill defines "social or civil liberty, that is, the nature and limits of the power that society can legitimately exercise over the individual." In other words, the right of the individual to dissent from the collective and the obligation of this collective to defend the right to discrepancy. Stuart Mill denounces "the tyranny of the majority" among the evils, against which society must be put on guard. (...) or if he dictates them (the decrees) with regard to things in which he should not mix, he exercises a more formidable social tyranny than many political oppressions, ... he leaves less means to escape from it, for he penetrates much more into the details of life and comes to chain the soul ".And what things should not be mixed society, according to Stuart Mill? On the thought, on the expression, on the decisions of individual life, on any aspect that limits the individuality. In short, the individual must be free to decide who he wants to pray, if he wants to pray; who wants to love, if he wants to love; whom you admire, if you want to admire; against who or what to fight, if he wants to fight. The only limit Stuart Mill finds to freedom is harm to another. The only limit that governments and society can impose on an individual is precisely that this freedom is aimed at harming other members of society. Thus, the individual can shout for the death of the members of the government, without this having to intervene, until the moment that this or another individual takes direct actions to carry out this idea, that is, the death of the members of the government .

This book presents an atheistic case against the legalization of assisted suicide. Critical of both sides of the argument, it questions the assumptions behind the discussion. Yuill shows that our attitudes towards suicide – not euthanasia – are most important to our attitudes towards assisted suicide.

Proponents of assisted suicide argue that terminally ill patients who are suffering extreme pain should be allowed to request help in ending their lives. Others insist that therole of physicians, family members, and friends is to make the terminally ill as comfortable as possible while they die -- not to help them end their lives. Chapters include: Is Assisted Suicide Ethical? Should Physician-Assisted Suicide Be Legalized? Is Assisted Suicide a Constitutional Right? How Would Assisted Suicide Affect Individual's Rights? Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Views from a range of disciplines, including bioethics, law, medicine and religion this book draws attention to the variety of questions to be addressed.