Despite its extreme difference in historical setting and urgency, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" mirrors many of the sentiments expressed in On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. In fact, this paper will demonstrate how King and Mill, separated by a century, shared a remarkably similar philosophy on injustice by revealing how the ideas in On Liberty are present in King's letter. While King's prose is more colorful and rhetorical than Mill's methodical philosophic style, both writers view individuals' rights as the centerpiece of a just society with relatively minor distinctions. Both also draw on similar sources to inspire their beliefs.
The crux of On Liberty is the relationship between the society and the individual. Mill focuses first on the individual. He writes, "the individual is not accountable to society for his actions insofar as these concern the interests of no person but himself" (Mill, 156). Nevertheless, when one's actions begin to affect others in a negative way, society has a right to intervene and protest as it sees fit. Reasonable self-interest, therefore, is the guiding light for moral interaction with others.
Under these guidelines, Mill casts an unjust state as one that does not allow for the flourishing of individuality. He writes, "Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as Individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism" (Mill 128). The great debate for Mill is how tyrannical governments can serve the interests of their own rulers when they should be balancing between "individual independence and social control" (Mill 76). He is aware of the dominance of white people in America (Mill 130); thus, King would have been especially aware of his writings.
While Mill recognizes the theoretical injustice in a state that does not look after the rights of the minority, King writes on the actuality of such a situation within the ...