Rereading Power and Freedom in J. S. Mill. By Bruce Baum. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. 360p. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Extract

This is a rich and rewarding book, weaving familiar themes in the literature on John Stuart Mill into a discussion of Mill's conception of power. Bruce Baum convincingly shows that Mill's liberalism requires more than toleration and individualism and invites a broader understanding of liberalism, one which goes beyond noninterference, rights, and neutral procedures. Meaning to show the “emancipatory possibilities of liberal political theory,” the author argues that Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, and Robert Nozick focus too narrowly on negative freedom and do not sufficiently probe how power and freedom are related (p. 15). In contrast, Baum's liberalism aims at the self-development and self-governance of each member of a liberal society.