Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
- Source
- On Liberty
- Date
- 1859
Meaning of “Over himself, over his own body and mind,…”
Mill draws a boundary around mature individual self-government: social power requires justification when it coerces a person in matters that principally concern that person rather than preventing harm to others.
Where does it come from?
On Liberty, Chapter I, Project Gutenberg #34901. This sentence follows Mill’s harm-principle formulation and belongs to a political-philosophical argument about the legitimate limits of social and legal interference. It is not a claim that every private action has no effects or obligations toward other people.
