If you are currently going through college, you might have encountered John Stuart Mill’s famous Harm Principle. In his treatise On Liberty, Mill says, “That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” This principle has been absorbed into the modern psyche as, “You can do whatever you want to do in life as long as it does not hurt other people.” Today this philosophy ends up being the defining moral assumption of college students. I often hear from students that they are free to do as they please as long as they do not impinge upon others.

I believe the reason why college students like the harm principle is because it professes to be self-evident. This principle implies we can all see what is good and bad, and therefore, we need no particular history, heritage, or religious assumption to navigate moral choices. This falls in line with a greater American cultural assumption that says that real knowledge and values are impossible to hold onto. The principle works well until we realize that we all mean different things when it comes to “harming others.” What one person defines as harm is rejected by another. One college student thinks looking at pornography in their dorm room does no harm to others, while another individual will insist that, in fact, it does do harm because it changes the viewer's view towards the opposite sex by objectifying and commercializing the human body. Whose definition of harm do we go by? Who gets to say what it means to hurt others?  In other words, what is supposed to be self-evident ends up falling apart.