To borrow a phrase from the techies, free speech is the ‘killer app’ of civilisation, the core value on which the success of the whole system depends. It is so all-fired important that every other right or claim should have to get in line behind it. Freedom of thought and of speech is a key part of what makes us unique as modern humans. Free speech is the link connecting the individual and society. It is the voice of the morally autonomous adult, nobody’s slave or puppet, who is free to make his or her own choices. That is why free speech as we know it could only truly develop in the Enlightenment, when the spirit of the age of modernity was on full volume. It was first captured 350 years ago by the likes of Spinoza, who challenged the political and religious intolerance that dominated the old Europe and set the standard for a new world by declaring that ‘In a free state, every man may think what he likes, and say what he thinks’.
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Spinoza is a bad example – as he was a determinist, i.e. someone who holds that what we say (and what we do) is predetermined – preprogrammed.
I trust we will not get into the Medieval effort (all those vast numbers of words) to try and reconcile moral responsibility (agency – free will) with determinism – as these efforts were based on a desire to defend the theology of Augustine.
This theologian-philosophers had to do or risk harsh punishment as heretics – God predestined who was to be saved and who was to go to Hell at the start of time (the “Big Bang” in modern language) and everything was a consequence of this.
Which makes God the author of every sin, and makes the idea of moral choice (the basis of moral responsibility) meaningless – to say things that might have got me burnt to death.
What is not called “compatiblism” (i.e. having your cake and eating it – or this-square-circle) was refuted long before Augustine by Alexander “The Commentator” in his work “On Fate” (refuting the position of some Stoics and others on the matter).
“Ah but Paul – Spinoza is referring to political freedom, not philosophical freedom”.
Firstly political freedom without “philosophical freedom” is an absurdity.
What is the point of the state (or private criminals) not aggressing against flesh robots whose every word and action is predetermined?
To talk of the “freedom” of these flesh robots is like talking of the freedom of wall of water after a dam has been blown up.
It is not a moral freedom, it has no value – indeed it is a destructive force.
Define “freedom” in the way Thomas Hobbes does, and the logical position is to OPPOSE it (which he did).
Nor do I believe that Spinoza really believed in even political freedom.
He believed that he should not be punished for saying unpopular things – yes indeed.
But property rights against the state and a theory of resistance of the state?
I am open to correction, but I do not associate these things with Spinoza.
Still – turning to free speech itself.
It has a strange (but valuable) history in this land – and elsewhere.
When Henry VIII broke with Rome there was no more freedom of speech than there was before – say or write stuff the rulers did not like and you could be executed.
However, in the time of his daughter Elizabeth the idea gradually gained strength that as the different factions of Protestants could not agree perhaps they should agree-to-disagree (rather than call upon the ruler to punish their rivals – as Christians had been doing since the time of Augustine – yes him again).
By logical extension this was applied (by some people) even to Roman Catholics – and not just in England.
Some (not all – some) Protestants felt uncomfortable in killing Catholics for their opinions – as they were very aware that Protestants did not even agree among themselves.
In many ways such Anglicans as Richard Hooker and John Locke were “scholastics” but they were not quite Roman Catholic scholastics – the Archbishop of C. (or the King) did not have quite the position in their thinking that the Pope had for Roman Catholics.
For example it was possible (in the thinking of someone like Richard Hooker or John Locke) that a King of England could be MISTAKEN in basic matters of theology.
This was not an option open to Catholic philosophy theologians (no matter how wise and intelligent they were – and some were very wise and very intelligent) in relation to the Pope – some tried, but it did not go well for them.
If one contrasts how Catholics were treated in Holland with how Protestants were treated in the Spanish Netherlands (what became Belgium) one sees two things – Catholics were treated badly in Holland, and Protestants were treated horrifically in the Spanish rules part of the Low Countries (there was a difference).
Ditto in the Free Cities of Germany – or even in Prussia (the “army that became a state”)
Also the great interest in the texts (and the history) of the ancient world had an effect.
The second book to printed after the Bible was “On Obligations” (or “On Duties”) by Cicero – the great defender of the Republic against the rising tyranny.
The interest in Aristotle in the Middle Ages meant that the works of “the Commentator” upon him (Alexander) were never forgotten – even if their meaning had to be explained away in order to fit with Church doctrine.
Nor were the writings of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius forgotten.
The “Meditations” explicitly defends “the freedom of the governed” has the highest duty of even “Kingly” government (Aristotle’s distinction between a monarchy and a tyranny or despotism).
Including “equal freedom of speech”.
And the Christian Emperor Valentinian the First did the same even with theology.
This was remembered – examples that could be restored – and built upon…..
Of course a cynic would say the history of Freedom of Speech in England starts in 1695 with the end of press censorship and ends in the 1730s with the introduction of censorship of the theatre (“licensing” much like radio and television “licensing” today).
But I hope I have explained that things are much more complicated than an “accidental” end of press censorship.
Indeed, by and large, Freedom of Speech (and publication) was a central principle of the West into modern times.
Of course the Frankfurt School of Marxism (under its modern names of P.C. or “Critical Theory” and such things as the statute of 1965 and all the other statutes around the West) is destroying Freedom of Speech now – even in the United States (where the First Amendment remains) Freedom of Speech is under savage attack.
But one must not make the mistake of thinking that Freedom of Speech never existed in the West or was not important.
It was, by and large, very in effect for centuries and very important – producing massive economic, scientific and (yes) cultural improvement.
We must avoid the error attacked in the old Russian saying “first they smash your face in – then they say you were always ugly”.
Freedom of speech did (by and large) exist in this land and some other Western lands for a long period of time – and it was at the root of our progress.
Now Freedom of Speech is dying – and this is very unfortunate.
May we have a wee Jacobi inversion here?
The “Killer App” is probably not “free speech.”
Rather, the Killer App in a social order is the sufficient commonality of the recognition, acknowledgement, acceptance and performance of the obligation not to interfere with another’s communications as (e.g.)speech; that constraint (qualified, of course)on conduct which “establishes” and maintains the freedom or right – and its qualifications.
There can be many disputes over the values of expressions of thought; but are there any over the value of the performance of the obligations which support (and encourage) those expressions?
Edmund Burke defined a key requirement of liberty as being that “… a simple citizen may decently express his sentiments upon public affairs … even though against a predominant and fashionable opinion…” without fear of death, imprisonment, confiscation, exile, etc. In more recent time, the US Supreme Court has treated “a chilling effect” on free speech as a first-amendment issue.
Slightly rephrasing RRS’ comment above, I’d say the killer app is indeed “free speech” but I (and many others?) use the term to mean precisely this absence of (rational) fear when dissenting from a fashionable opinion (or – moving closer to RRS’ way of saying it – those acts, habits and laws that make up a culture where there is this absence of fear).
Paul and I would debate historical details at length, but I think I agree with what may be a fundamental point of his comments: a key part of the actual history of getting free speech was first experiencing failure in determined, prolonged efforts of various Christian churches to make everyone agree their particular analysis was the right one. Why did this failure lead to free speech in a Christian culture, not elsewhere? After all, both attempts and failures in areas religious and secular were hardly unknown before or after. I think it was _not_ because Christianity was wholly unique in making outnumbered minority sects put up a fanatical resistance to whoever was dominant in their locale; that was very important in why the attempts failed, and Christianity is certainly up with the leaders in inspiring that, but it is not unique in that respect. Was it because the contrast between what Christ taught and what the persecutors had to do was especially marked? Here I think we _do_ get closer to what was unique about the history that gave birth to free speech. (But “history is an argument without end” and others will think of other aspects – I would myself, if that were the main topic of the this thread.)
I think the main topic of this thread is free speech today. Paul says “Free speech is dying”. It is certainly looking distressingly unwell. History tells us that the discovery of the value of free speech can arise from experiencing failure when trying to kill it, so its re-discovery may need the same. Minorities that refused to yield even to very frightening odds were a key part of that failure, and so will need to be a key part of any upcoming failure.
Fun thoughts, eh? 🙁
Free speech seems to mean different things to different people. I think it should mean that you or I could express an opinion, and not need the government to censor us beforehand. However, it has never meant that you would not suffer consequences for speaking freely. Giving away government secrets should carry some penalty, surely? If I were to falsely assert that Alisa and Julie were really Nigerian scam artists working on a long-term hoax and just trying to gain our trust, they might be inclined to sue me, and shouldn’t they have that right? (For a 10% share in the profits, I’ll keep quiet!)
Paul Marks,
How did Alexander refute compatibilism in “On Fate”? Have you read it?
Do you define freedom of speech as the right to exercise speech without prior restraint or as the extent to which individuals in society actually exercise freedom of speech or as the degree to which society maintains an environment that actively embraces the right to exercise speech to advance unpopular opinion?
Perhaps your conception of free speech is some combination thereof or maybe none of these three definitions suffices.
Regardless of how you define freedom of speech, I’m curious – how exactly do you think freedom of speech produce massive economic, scientific, or cultural improvements?
Nicholas Gray/RRS,
Consequences incurred for speaking freely are virtually always more subtle than such a heavy hand as a stringently enforced penalty! Think of the myriad forms of social ostracism that occur on a daily basis in manners extreme and mild and on matters serious and frivolous! And social ostracism, by the way, tends to far more effectively deter one from freely engaging in certain speech than such a crass thing as a penalty!
In any case, social ostracism serves an essential function in binding society together by enforcing a common set of values, which encompass what are often referred to in the vernacular as common sense, though often are actually irrational sacred cows.
So, while RRS is correct that the lack of prior constraint on speech according to the letter of the law is not the Killer App but that the extent to which society maintains an environment for the free exercise of free speech is the Killer App – insofar as there can/should be a pro-freedom Killer App undergirding liberties in society – this discussion has thus far largely overlooked the highly important, perhaps even sacred role played by the social restraints placed on freedom of speech by society not according to written law but according to (the often far more potent) unwritten cultural norms.
Niall Kilmartin,
Believe it or not, it’s not just the Western world that has experienced freedom of speech and even (gasp!) developed the social norms required for individuals to partake in vibrant and intense intellectual debate. Shocking!
The idea that freedom of speech is unique to the Western world is absurd.
The assumption that freedom of speech has primarily/only ever originated in a Christian/Western culture is simply false.
For one, you know, example: the Hundred Schools of Thought period, which lasted for centuries, was an incredibly vibrant period of intellectual debate, featuring a staggering array of philosophical schools of thought, comprising one of the most diverse such arrays in human history. It really makes the so-called Enlightenment look a bit, um, narrow-minded. Seriously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Schools_of_Thought
I disagree with RRS’s comment that the “killer app” is “the obligation not to interfere with another’s communications.” There is no such “obligation” as applied to individuals, and especially not with respect to their own property (our gracious host here has no obligation to permit comments in this site which offend his sensibilities); it applies only to governments (or other political authorities, which in other eras or cultures included religions institutions).
I especially liked this paragraph in the cited article: “The right to be offensive is above all about having the liberty to question everything; to accept no conventional wisdom at face value; to challenge, criticise, rubbish or ridicule anybody else’s opinion or beliefs (in the certain knowledge that they have the right to return the compliment to you).” This is why concepts such as “hate speech”, “trigger warnings”, “no more passive tolerance”, etc., are so odious. Paul thinks that freedom of speech is dying. I fear that he is correct, and it portends the end of our civilization.
FWIW, I claim no expertise on Spinoza, but he does seem to be an appropriate example of the importance of freedom of speech. The specifics of his philosophy are irrelevant to this point; he certainly challenged the reigning orthodoxy of his time and culture, and argued that everyone had that right. He even got himself excommunicated* for his writings, and it’s difficult to think of stronger evidence of his commitment to free speech than that.
* Spinoza was a Jew, and I hadn’t even known it was possible to be excommunicated from Judaism. But somehow he managed it.
Laird,
I can’t speak for RRS, but it seems to me that insofar as there can/should be a Killer App for the liberty afforded by civilization, that it is the degree to which society maintains an environment for the free exercise of free speech. This is because if the disincentives for exercising unpopular speech are too strong then unpopular speech will not be exercised and individual rights enshrined in law are lost when not adequately exercised for too long.
Agreed.
I trust you realize that the extent to which the effort to reconcile moral responsibility with determinism encounters difficulty is a function of several matters, including one’s understanding/stance on the mind-body problem. It’s complex.
Failing that, I trust you realize that the extent of success achieved by efforts to reconcile moral responsibility with determinism should be judged without reference to the desires motivating said efforts.
Failing that, I trust you realize that the credibility of an argument is not necessarily inversely correlated to the number of words employed in service of said argument.
Perhaps I trust too much!
“England’s Birth-right justified” and “The Legal Fundamental Liberties of the People of England Revived, Asserted, and Vindicated,” by John Lilburne and John Milton’s “Areopagitica,” are earlier and better than Spinoza – freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, was so important to Prots that their craziness elsewhere is of little or no significance.
To save the world is the simplest thing in the world – all you need to do is think, and that freedom came back to the West thanks to Prots.
Oh good! Then we have nothing to worry about, because Rodin found a Thinker hiding in a lump of bronze, and since then they* have done just one thing all day every day, and that is to sit and Think.
*M. Rodin must have been pretty worried about the world, because he made several castings. Redundancy is the soul of Security.
Although it’s not entirely clear to me that The Thinker are a “Prot.” Are you sure they aren’t a Atheist?
We lost the freedom to think and had to give our conscience over to others who had us running around all day commemorating the literally insane behaviour of saints.
Prots gave us back our conscience and the freedom to become atheists once again – and for that I am very grateful.
I agree with Nicholas that free speech “has never meant that you would not suffer consequences for speaking freely”. The quakers and similar dissenting sects who played so large a role in starting the industrial revolution certainly suffered consequences – none of them were going to become prime minister, for example. But they could start their enterprises secure in the knowledge that they would not be executed or imprisoned or have their property confiscated or be driven abroad, or be victimised by power in other lesser ways that could have frustrated their attempts to do business.
(This was not because people did not have strong opinions about such things. I instance a contemporary example from the life of Dr Johnson: Johnson saw a friend of his collecting the slugs in his garden and tossing them into his neighbour’s garden. Johnston reproved him for this unneighbourly behaviour. “My neighbour, Sir, is a dissenter!”, explained the friend. “Oh, in that case, toss away, my dear Sir”, replied Johnson, “Toss away.”
Shlomo, I don’t think the hundred schools period will bear comparison with free speech. That an elite of philosophers gets to write various things during a period of political disunity is more like the “can vote with feet” situation of mediaeval Europe. I would not give much for the chances of a 221BC Chinese peasant who indulged free speech about the local ‘Duke’, and even one of the hundred philosophers might have had to vote with his feet running if he suddenly realised that “the mandarin’s stern words were not intended as a jest”. ( I appreciate the word ‘mandarin’ is probably an anachronism in this context – IIRC mandarins as such arrive with the subsequent “purge of dissent” that put an end to the whole thing.) There was much more free speech under the Tsars than under Stalin, and there was more during the ‘hundred schools’ than after the ‘purge of dissent’. We do not however usually quote Tsarist Russia as an example of a free speech culture, though it had its novelists, and I don’t see ancient China as an example either, though it had its philosophers. It was very long ago, and the book-burining of the purge of dissent did not help, so I will not claim to _know_ – but my estimate is as stated.
You might find the U-Toob [“UT.com”] of Sir Anthony Kenny talking about Mediæval philosophy and philosophers interesting. A series of five videos, totaling around 50 minutes. For the first of them, type in
UT.com then copy & paste /watch?v=RfS1VFdZk7o
@Niall K.
“
”
That sounds like something to explain how and why the “sufficient commonalities” coalesce around particular obligations (and their qualified characteristics) that constrain conduct and “require” conduct in a specific social context.
@ Laird:
As you are trained in Law, I don’t think you disagree (totally, at least)if you observe what was stated:
In the view stated, the constraint does not apply only to governments or other “political” authorities; although consensus (commonality) may establish that the mechanisms of governments or the powers of public authorities can not override an obligation that is sufficiently commonly held and performed by the members of a society. I.e., governments (and their operatives) can not be used to do what the members of a society determine (with qualifications)the members should not do.
Given the drift of the comments, it might be in order to consider what has been happening to the sufficiency of commonalities that frame those obligations which are necessary to confirm the rights and (especially) the entitlements now so broadly claimed in our Western societies.
The expansions of qualifications upon the previously established obligations are continuing to qualify what have been regarded as “rights.”
The ongoing and increasing political and compulsory “assignments” of obligations to create or support entitlements appear to displace the voluntary establishment of commonalities of obligations – and to diminish the role of previous commonalities.
Interesting comments.
As for what S.M. asks.
I should have said “what is now” (not what is not) called “compatiblism”.
A typo – one of many, my apologies.
As for why a square circle (such as pretending that determinism is “compatible” with moral responsibility – freedom of choice) I could try explaining the obvious.
However, that would be a bit like explaining why A is A – people who deny A is A are not, in fact, worth having a long conversation with.
Just as people who clam to support liberty and then turn out to support state despotism (a government of will not of law) are not worth having a long conversation with.
There are people who believe that Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke and Chief Justice Sir John Holt were wrong and that Sir Francis Bacon and his servant Thomas Hobbes were correct.
There are indeed people who believe the state (being it a King or a Parliament) should have unlimited and arbitrary power – as Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes believed.
But such people are not worth having a long conversation with.
Just as people who pretend that one can have one’s cake and eat it as well, or that circles are square, or that one can have determinism and moral responsibility are worth having long conversations with.
What PM notes of Hobbes, Bacon (and others) is their assertion that recognition and performance of obligations is so essential to the “cives” that there must be ultimate authority to impose and enforce the necessary obligations.
The rise of individual liberty in social orders has come from the same recognition and performance generated as a result of those human interactions which produce sufficient commonalities in a society concerning those obligations.
There are different types of conceptions of compatibilism. Not all encompass a determinism that implies that all human action is “preprogrammed” as Paul Marks says. This is why I asked how Alexander refuted compatibilism.
As I said earlier, the extent to which the effort to reconcile moral responsibility with determinism encounters difficulty is a function of several matters, including one’s understanding/stance on the mind-body problem.
It’s complex and not a matter well suited to minds accustomed to simple, cut-and-dry libertarian theory where the answer is always perfectly clear.
This is an interesting mindset to have.
I have always been one to seek out and engage the most eccentric, repulsive, countercultural, and obscure intellectual perspectives on everything. It’s an innate attribute of my mind and one I am proud to possess.
What it must be like to surround one’s self with agreement, intellectual yes-men. A genuinely narrow, gentle mind must be required for such monotony.
With that said, I actually think that Paul Marks is one of the more wise and intelligent voices I have been able to find on the internet, which is why he has in the past been able & willing to engage with me to some extent. Good times.
RRS – no.
Say that the state ordered that all blond haired people be burned alive.
If one was not blond Thomas Hobbes would not see any reason to resist this order – indeed, to him, even blond people would only resist as a sort of conditioned reflex (choice not really existing).
Thomas Hobbes (like his master Francis Bacon) made it very clear that he did NOT believe in a theory of resistance to the state.
He made this clear, over and over again.
However, very intelligent and learned people (and I am not being sarcastic – I really mean intelligent and learned) keep trying to “explain” what Hobbes must have “really” meant.
No, no, no (at the risk of sounding like the late Mrs Thatcher).
Thomas Hobbes really did just mean what he, repeatedly said.
To Hobbes their are only two alternatives – despotism or chaos, and chaos (to him) is worse.
Ottoman Sultan?
Sure – Hobbes would have had no problem with that.
Neither would Martin Luther.
I know – because he said so.
SM – I am short tempered old cus, and I know it.
However, I am wary of conversations.
They too often devolve into sneering personal attacks and I am too tired for that (although I am as guilty of it as the next person).
Also the rules keep changing.
Even when I put something on Facebook and invite PUBLIC discussion I am told (too late) that something is private – and I am a bad guy for forgetting to edit it out.
I really am not interested in psychobabble – I do not pretend not to be interested in whilst really being interested in it.
Not that I am accusing you of it. I am not accusing you of that.
Just when I am talking about (say) the influence of Thomas Hobbes and his master Francis Bacon – that is exactly what I am dealing with.
On Spinoza.
If he does have a theory of resistance to the state (and he may – I may simply just not know of it) I have not heard of it.
Even if Spinoza had a theory of resistance (say to defend Freedom of Speech) how did he justify it?
After all…….
If determinism is correct, if all words and actions are predetermined, what is the point of fighting to defend Freedom of Speech?
And how can there be the freedom to decide to defend Freedom of Speech – if all choice is an illusion?
Although, I accept, Spinoza does have a twist that Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes did not have.
The universe is the divine thing.
If we are all part of the divine then I suppose all bets are off.
Although it does sound a bit like Eastern mysticism.
Not that I am sneering at that.
Freedom as an absence of external restraint.
No that does not work.
That is a wall of water after a dam has been blown up.
If that is what “freedom” is then Hobbes was correct to be against it.
Freedom is not this cup falling to the carpet when I drop it.
Freedom is me choosing to drop the cup – when I could choose otherwise (not to do so).
Still watching “The Simpsons” now.
Republicans (not Democrats) get the dead to vote – nice bit of “Projection” there you Harvard types.
Still I would vote for “Sideshow Bob”.
“Lower taxes, balance the budget, brutalise [i.e. actually punish] criminals…..”
Sounds like my sort of candidate.
Not so sure about the “rule like a King” though – unless he means in the Aristotelian sense.
If the cup is caught before it hits the floor its freedom has not been violated – the cup has no freedom, it is an inanimate object.
The catcher of the cup has exercised his (or her)freedom in CHOOSING to catch the cup.
Thomas Hobbes has forgotten (or rather is denying) the object-subject distinction.
To him there is no difference in fundamental type between a person (or rather flesh robot) and a cup.
It really is that bad.
The average educated person in the 17th or 18th centuries would have known this – and would have rejected Hobbes with contempt.
But, somehow, in the 19th century people start complicating what is not complicated.
It really is not.
People like Francis “The New Atlantis” Bacon with his lions UNDER the throne, and Thomas Tyranny Hobbes meant-what-they-said.