Quotation
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“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race.”
John Stuart Mill · Liberalism · Modern · 1859
What does it mean?
The peculiar evil of silencing an opinion is that it robs the human race, posterity as well as the living, and the dissenters even more than the holders, because they lose the chance of exchanging error for truth. A rival reading says 'the human race' is rhetoric, and that a local harm of speech can outweigh a distant epistemic good. He thinks the robbery is the specific wrong, different from the offence of hearing something you hate. If the opinion is false, he still thinks the living are robbed of the livelier grasp of truth that comes from contest.
Did John Stuart Mill really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Mill's English. The sentence goes on: posterity as well as the existing generation, those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. The card stops at the robbery. The continuation names who is robbed.
Where it comes from
On Liberty, chapter 2
Approximate date: 1859.
How to use it
A university society in Durham bans a speaker and calls the ban a protection. Mill asks who is robbed. If the honest answer is only that the audience would be upset, he thinks you have not yet described the evil he is naming. Upset can still be real. It is a different argument from the one in this sentence, and it has to be made in its own words.
A mindset reading
The continuation matters. He says those who dissent are robbed still more than those who hold the opinion. A defence of free speech that protects only the people already agreed with has inverted the sentence.
Understand the philosophy
This is the same chapter as the mankind-minus-one sentence. Together they are his case that discussion is not a courtesy but a condition of knowing. The case can fail for a given harm. It should fail in the open.
- freedom
- knowledge
- society
FAQ
What does it mean?
The peculiar evil of silencing an opinion is that it robs the human race, posterity as well as the living, and the dissenters even more than the holders, because they lose the chance of exchanging error for truth. A rival reading says 'the human race' is rhetoric, and that a local harm of speech can outweigh a distant epistemic good. He thinks the robbery is the specific wrong, different from the offence of hearing something you hate. If the opinion is false, he still thinks the living are robbed of the livelier grasp of truth that comes from contest.
Did John Stuart Mill really say this?
Well attested. Mill's English. The sentence goes on: posterity as well as the existing generation, those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. The card stops at the robbery. The continuation names who is robbed.
Which work is it in?
On Liberty, chapter 2 Approximate date: 1859.