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Nietzsche And Mill 's Ideas Of Freedom

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Free to Disagree A primary objective of identifying common ground between Nietzsche and Mill’s ideas of freedom is to define freedom adequately so that it can be used as a basis for comparison. Each theorist’s opinion on what freedom is, however, appears to be fairly distinct. Mill might describe freedom as the absence of constraints to original, individual thought, whereas Nietzsche conceptualizes freedom as continual self-overcoming to evolve a more actualized self. Freedom for Nietzsche is overcoming wrong beliefs and creating one’s own values, whereas for Mill, freedom is having the leeway to discover one’s own values. In effect, Mill focuses on the structural protections or necessities that allow creativity to flourish, and Nietzsche wants to deconstruct those structures that impede that flourishing. Mill emphasizes optimizing the political and social realms, which in theory then provide a safe haven for Nietzsche’s intrapsychic or spiritual struggle. Thus, Mill 's definition could be described as political whereas Nietzsche 's could be understood as transformational. Both strive toward achieving the highest level of individual potential, and both want to support discovery of one’s most individualized beliefs. Given that each theorist has such distinct views on the definition itself, however, one needs to extrapolate the essence of what each would consider freedom to be. So for the purposes of describing how Mill and Nietzsche intersect, this approximation of a

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