Abstract
John Stuart Mill’s “liberty of thought and discussion” (On Liberty, 1859) is both broader and narrower than some current understandings of free speech. On the one hand, Mill is not concerned only with state censorship: he argues against all attempts, official or otherwise, to restrict the range of opinion and public discussion. On the other hand, he seeks to defend uninhibited discussion of general topics, such as those to do with science, morality, religion, and politics. Thus, he opposes a social environment of orthodoxies and heresies, but he does not defend (for example) defamatory falsehoods or incitements to violence. Mill’s approach is subtle and philosophically rewarding; it is worth revisiting, updating, and pondering for its implications at a time of contention over free speech issues.
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Notes
- 1.
J.S. Mill, On Liberty (London: Penguin, 1974), 62. (Orig. pub. 1859.)
- 2.
Mill, On Liberty, 63.
- 3.
Mill, On Liberty, 77.
- 4.
See generally Joshua Greene, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap between Us and Them (New York: Penguin, 2013).
- 5.
Mill, On Liberty, 70.
- 6.
Mill, On Liberty, 75.
- 7.
Frederick Schauer, Free Speech: A Philosophical Inquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 81.
- 8.
Mill, On Liberty, 98.
- 9.
Mill, On Liberty, 129.
- 10.
Again, this is not Mill’s only argument that is relevant to free speech. Recall, for instance, his acknowledgment of freedom of the press as a bulwark against tyrannical or corrupt government.
- 11.
Mill, On Liberty, 76.
- 12.
Mill, On Liberty, 108.
- 13.
For an analysis of what should count as harm in this context, see Russell Blackford, Freedom of Religion and the Secular State (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 73–78.
- 14.
Mill’s more general arguments throughout On Liberty can also be deployed to defend artistic freedom and much else. Liberal-minded thinkers will find much assistance from Chapter III, which relates to the value of individuality as a source of well-being.
- 15.
See K.C. O’Rourke, John Stuart Mill and Freedom of Expression: The Genesis of a Theory (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 35.
- 16.
Again, Mill acknowledges this, although it is not his main line of argument in On Liberty.
- 17.
See, for example, Owen M. Fiss, Liberalism Divided: Freedom of Speech and the Many Uses of State Power (Boulder, CO, and London: Westview Press, 1996), 50.
- 18.
Herbert Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” in Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, Jr., and Herbert Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969), 133. (Orig. pub. 1965.)
- 19.
Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” 96.
- 20.
Mill, On Liberty, 73. The McCarthy hearings of the 1940s and 1950s arose at one such moment of panic in the United States.
- 21.
Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” 123.
- 22.
Mill, On Liberty, 119.
- 23.
Mill does not elaborate on when formal, official punishment is justifiable. We might assume that this would be a matter for general utilitarian calculation.
- 24.
For example, the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa, or ruling on Islamic law, against the novelist Salman Rushdie in February 1989—in effect, a long-range death sentence.
- 25.
John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), 49–51. (Orig. pub. 1689.)
- 26.
Mill, On Liberty, 91–92.
- 27.
David Livingstone Smith, Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others (New York: St. Martins Press, 2011), 13.
- 28.
Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” 114.
- 29.
Related to the issue of hate speech, there is a more general question that I cannot explore satisfactorily here. How far should we tolerate the intolerant, that is, political opponents who would introduce totalitarian regimes and end liberal tolerance if they ever came to power? This is the “paradox of tolerance,” most famously discussed by Karl Popper. See The Open Society and its Enemies (Oxford: Routledge, 2011), 581–82 (orig. pub. 1945). Popper suggests that intolerant, would-be prosecutorial movements should be placed outside the law, which would seem to entail banning at least the most blatantly Nazi or fascist organizations. Assuming, questionably, that this could be supported in principle and would not be counterproductive, we would need to resist the temptation to stigmatize a wide range of our opponents as Nazis or fascists.
- 30.
Mill, On Liberty, 116.
- 31.
Alan Haworth, Free Speech (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 24–29.
- 32.
Mill, On Liberty, 117.
- 33.
Mill, On Liberty, 117.
- 34.
Mill, On Liberty, 117.
- 35.
Mill, On Liberty, 118.
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Blackford, R. (2018). The Liberty of Thought and Discussion: Restatement and Implications. In: Boonin, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93907-0_24
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