Kant and Rawls on Free Speech in Autocracies

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 615-640 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Niesen
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Core Area ◽  
Law Of Peoples ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Core Feature ◽  
Democratic Societies ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Important Extension

AbstractIn the works of Kant and Rawls, we find an acute sensibility to the pre-eminent importance of freedom of speech. Both authors defend free speech in democratic societies as a private and as a public entitlement, but their conceptions markedly differ when applied to non-liberal and non-democratic societies. The difference is that freedom of speech, for Kant, is a universal claim that can serve as a test of legitimacy of all legal orders, while for Rawls, some legal orders are owed full recognition even if they do not in principle guarantee freedom of speech. I explain Kant’s account of free political speech and argue that the defence of individual rights should be seen as its core feature, both in republican and in autocratic states. I then argue that a much-overlooked shift in Rawls’s development to Political Liberalism likewise ties his account of free speech in democratic societies to issues concerning rights and justice. In a next step, I discuss Rawls’s perspective on some non-democratic regimes in his Law of Peoples, regimes that he understands as well-ordered but which do not guarantee freedom of speech. I criticize Rawls’s account from Kant’s perspective and suggest to introduce a ‘module’ from Kant’s pre-republican thought into Rawls’s conception, aiming to secure a core area of rights- and justice-related speech. My claim is that under Kant’s view of autocratic legitimacy, an important extension of speech rights is called for even in non-liberal, non-democratic states, and that a Rawlsian account should and can adopt it.

Is Indian sedition law colonial? J. F. Stephen and the jurisprudence on free speech

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 477-504
Author(s):  
Sunny Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Constitutive Relation ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Colonial Governance ◽  
Alternative Understanding

This article critically evaluates the characterisation of sedition law as colonial by analysing the arguments made by J. F. Stephen in opposing such a claim. While Stephen obfuscated the close links between the sedition law and the requirements of colonial governance, he made a persuasive case for how the sedition law was completely consistent with British ideas of liberty, utility, and the rule of law. Stephen’s arguments about legitimate limits to political liberties, particularly his critique of J. S. Mill in this regard, offer us an opportunity to question the presumed antithesis between colonial and metropolitan jurisprudence and trace their shared origins in British political thought. To that end, with Stephen as an interlocutor, this article critically analyses themes such as the defence of empire, colonialism, and the idea of improvement within a wider set of writings by British political philosophers, to arrive at an alternative understanding of British political liberalism. My article concludes that rather than ‘colonial difference’, the constitutive relation between sedition law and liberal jurisprudence better explains the prevalence of similar authoritarian laws within democratic regimes across the globe.

scholarly journals Economic Perspectives on Free Speech

2021 ◽  
pp. 117-136
Author(s):  
Daniel Hemel
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Law And Economics ◽  
Information Economics ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Marketplace Of Ideas ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Economic Perspectives

This chapter explores the potential for economic analysis to illuminate freedom of speech. For early scholars of law and economics, the similarities and differences between the metaphorical marketplace for ideas and literal markets for goods and services were subjects of much attention. The chapter then argues that information economics has the potential to explain failures in the ‘marketplace of ideas’. Just as information asymmetry in the market for goods and services allows low quality goods and services to drive high quality goods and services out of the marketplace, there is reason to think that ‘bad speech’ will tend to drive out the ‘good’. For good information to compete in the market, readers and listeners must be able to tell the difference between good and bad information—an idea with particular resonance in the age of ‘fake news’, and with potential implications for the design of free-speech laws.

Free Speech and the Duty of Civility

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Bonotti
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Legal Enforcement

This chapter critically examines which arguments for free speech may be consistent with Rawls’s political liberalism, in order to establish whether there are good reasons, within political liberalism, for rejecting the legal implementation of the duty of civility. Among the various arguments for freedom of speech, the chapter argues, only those from democracy and political legitimacy seem to justify Rawls’s opposition to the legal enforcement of the duty of civility. However, the chapter concludes, since Rawls’s own conception of political legitimacy is not merely procedural but grounded in the ideas of public justification and public reason, political liberalism is in principle consistent with some restrictions on free speech, including those which would result from the legal enforcement of the duty of civility.

Political Liberalism, Constructivism, and Global Justice

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 621-644
Author(s):  
Alexander Kaufman
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Resource Distribution ◽  
Difference Principle ◽  
Law Of Peoples ◽  
Distribution Principle ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Difference

In The Law of Peoples, John Rawls develops a theory of global justice whose scope and ambitions are quite modest. Far from justifying a global resource distribution principle modeled on the difference principle, Rawls’s theory does not argue for significant redistribution among peoples. This paper focuses on Rawls’s claim that the character and scope of his account of global justice are determined by the constructivist method that he employs to extend political liberalism’s project from the domestic to the global sphere. The principles of an acceptable law of peoples, he argues, are simply those principles that would be selected by rational representatives of peoples from the standpoint of a suitably characterized fair choice position. This paper argues that Rawls’s constructivist method in fact provides support for an account of global justice of greater scope and ambition than Rawls’s Law of Peoples.

The Logic of ‘But’: Quarrels, Literature and Democracy

Paragraph ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-130
Author(s):  
Thomas Docherty
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
The Way

This paper looks at intrinsic disputation within proposition, and specifically within propositions that offer a moderated version of the freedom of speech and expression. It begins from a consideration of what is at stake in Othello's ‘Rude am I in my speech’, a rhetorical gesture that frames an act of great eloquence, and in which the eloquence serves to formulate a quarrel by ostensibly resolving it. This example reveals that there is a conflict between empirical quarrel and articulated spoken resolution. This leads the essay to explore the way in which diplomacy works, whereby we establish the pretence that there is peace between disputatious positions through the power of the logic of ‘but’, thus: ‘I agree with you, but …’. Finally, this is extended to a consideration of the limits of and/or on free speech: ‘I defend free speech, but …’, where the ‘but’ is a gesture in which the defence of free speech is modified to the point of being obliterated.

Integrity and the Case for Restraint

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christie Hartley
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Moral Ideal ◽  
Democratic Societies

This chapter discusses the concern that exclusive accounts of public reason threaten or undermine the integrity of some religiously oriented citizens in democratic societies. It discusses various notions of integrity that might be claimed to ground such a concern. It is argued that purely formal accounts of integrity that do not distinguish between the integrity of reasonable and unreasonable persons, as specified within political liberalism, cannot underwrite integrity challenges that should concern political liberals. It is further argued that if the inquiry is limited to conceptions of integrity that distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable persons, the supposed burdens persons of faith face are not burdens different from those that all citizens face equally. It is claimed the concern is best understood as a challenge to the account of public justification and the account of public reason as a moral ideal.

PERSECUTION AND THE ART OF FREEDOM: ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE ON THE IMPORTANCE OF FREE PRESS AND FREE SPEECH IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-208
Author(s):  
Khalil M. Habib
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Freedom Of The Press ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Free Society ◽  
Free Press ◽  
Constituent Element ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Right ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractAccording to Tocqueville, the freedom of the press, which he treats as an extension of the freedom of speech, is a primary constituent element of liberty. Tocqueville treats the freedom of the press in relation to and as an extension of the right to assemble and govern one’s own affairs, both of which he argues are essential to preserving liberty in a free society. Although scholars acknowledge the importance of civil associations to liberty in Tocqueville’s political thought, they routinely ignore the importance he places on the freedom of the press and speech. His reflections on the importance of the free press and speech may help to shed light on the dangers of recent attempts to censor the press and speech.

Positive Free Speech: A Democratic Freedom

2021 ◽  
pp. 230-248
Author(s):  
Andrew T. Kenyon
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Media Freedom ◽  
Public Speech ◽  
Positive Freedom ◽  
Negative Liberty ◽  
Structural Dimensions ◽  
Democratic Freedom ◽  
Legal Right

This chapter explores the positive structural dimensions of the freedom of speech by using a democratic free speech rationale. While far from the only aspect of positive free speech, it offers a useful example of the freedom’s positive dimensions. The chapter focuses on legal conditions underlying public speech and their links to democratic constitutional arrangements. It outlines the general approach before drawing brief comparisons with two well-known US approaches to free speech and media freedom. The chapter then highlights two of the multiple ways in which ‘positive’ can be used in relation to free speech. Positive may concern positive freedom, the idea that freedom is not only a negative liberty but requires support or enablement. It can also be used in terms of a positive right, typically a legal right enforced through courts.

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