Textual Analysis - Essay Example

Mill’s theory as demonstrated in the book is not a social contract theory, and Mill has no hypothesis about the state of natural rights and nature (Mill 1978, 23-34). On the contrary, he states that his theory is justified by his moral theory and utilitarianism. Mill’s own political writings justify his belief that interaction with conflicting ideas and opinions is important to any comprehensive knowledge and to liberty itself. In fact, as revealed by Elizabeth Rapaport, one of the most prominent themes in the book is the significance of allowing unorthodox thought, to act as one of the guarantors necessary for freedom (Rapaport 1978, 9-12).

According to Rapaport, John Stuart Mill calls the silencing of expression a weird evil, and demands that everybody should be allowed to speak and think freely, even if those in power do not agree with them (Mill 2008, 56-66). The words” political liberation” have been used mostly in the recent times by politicians, historians, philosophers and many others. The core principle of political liberalism was largely made current by Locke’s “Second treatise of Government” (1690) (Locke 2010, 12-15).

The rule of law, individual liberty, the right to private property and government by consent of the people are just some of the issues taken for granted as fundamental to the human condition in the current world. As a source of their ideas, most liberal theorists today base their arguments on Locke’s concepts of governance (Locke 2010, 78-80). To some; post modernism, religious fundamentalism and socialism remain the ideological threats to liberalism. If this stands out to be a fact, then these ideologies attacks on the ideas that Locke, compared to any other, was influential in making the universal vocabulary of political discourse (Locke 2010, 132-150).

The ideas of Locke and Mill with regards to political governance are quite similar. It is therefore a right argument that in his book “The Second Treatise of Government” Locke supported the idea of political liberty as indicated on Mill’s book “On Liberty”. John Locke sets out to explain how political society emerged, how political society emerged, how the government or state has both the legitimacy and limits to political society, and how natural rights is a common reality to everyone (Locke 2010, 39-56).

Locke starts by focusing on the idea that at the beginning, human being lived in perfect liberty, an anarchistic and stateless society. According to him, everybody enjoyed the full advantage of liberty during that time. However, this extensive liberty resulted to others abusing the liberty of others. For this reason, he argues that people came together to form a state and therefore the state was formed under social contract having specific obligations (Locke 2010, 156-169). If the state exceeds those obligations, and becomes an institution that oppresses the natural rights of individuals, then its authenticity is definitely lost, and can be rightly removed from power, so that the social contract can be established.

The book, The Second Treatise of Government has been of great influential since its publication. It has been a foundation for social contract theory which outlines the legitimacy and the limits of governance in regards to individual liberty (Locke 2010, 67-78). On his part, Mill claims that most of humankind is mediocre. Therefore, everyone should be encouraged to grow and develop his mind because the progress of humanity is