ABSTRACT
Liberal theorists writing after John Stuart Mill, such as the politician Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse and the economist John Atkinson Hobson, tried to resolve some of the difficulties of Mill’s text. The renewed interest in classical liberal principles that emerged in the final decades of the twentieth century drew heavily on Mill’s ideas. Although Mill’s definition of civil liberty—defended by the “harm principle” for keeping the state at bay—has become an integral part of liberal thought, the ideas offered in On Liberty create dilemmas for modern thinkers who want to apply Mill’s rules for guaranteeing freedom to society. On Liberty is providing food for liberal thought as modern scholars wrestle with the complex challenges of modern society. Mill’s arguments in On Liberty are used to test the models of social behavior used in economics and the social sciences. They are made more effective by adding the restrictions on individual choice Mill identified.
