scholarly journals Speech, truth and liberty: Bentham to John Stuart Mill

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Niesen
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Degree Of Protection ◽  
Utilitarian Approach ◽  
Basic Distinction

Bentham’s Utilitarianism transforms earlier free speech doctrine in the service of the pursuit of truth and the control of government, preserving the distinction between statements of opinion and of fact and awarding the latter a lesser degree of protection. The work of James Mill and the early writings of John Stuart Mill retain this distinction, but their accounts are weighed down by the problems of a direct Utilitarian approach, in their consequentialist balancing of different values against each other, and in their dependence on a majoritarian epistemology and their commitment to a naive progressive optimism. Mill goes on in On Liberty to address and resolve these problems on the basis of a new justification for free speech as free deliberative thought. I argue that, contrary to most interpretations, his new justification leaves untouched the basic distinction between absolutely protected expressions of opinion and only functionally and contingently protected assertions of fact, leaving room for restrictions on factual statements, especially when untrue.

John Stuart Mill on free speech

2018 ◽  
pp. 71-87
Author(s):  
Daniel Halliday ◽  
Helen McCabe
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
John Stuart Mill

Justice, Freedom of Speech, and Other Higher Pleasures

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-118
Author(s):  
Elijah Millgram
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
The Press

John Stuart Mill constructed a utilitarian defence of freedom of speech and of the press that turned on his associationist psychology: without free speech, you will be bored literally out of your mind. He likewise constructed a utilitarian defence of justice, one that made justice out to be a higher pleasure, and provided an associationist account of the higher pleasures to underwrite the argument.

The benefits of free speech and expression

2021 ◽  
pp. 62-107
Author(s):  
Richard Sorabji
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Beneficial Effects ◽  
Legal Constraint ◽  
Better Than

Chapter 2 argues that John Stuart Mill supported free speech on the grounds of the beneficial effects it can have, in Chapter 2 of his On Liberty of 1859. But the history in chapter 1 suggests that this has been a recurrent view through the ages. If free speech is valued for its benefits, speech that frustrates those benefits suggests a clear boundary on free speech which should appeal voluntarily to its supporters. Their voluntary self-restraint in speech should normally be better than legal constraint for keeping speech beneficial. But self-restraint is not the only preserver of benefits. Speech that opens ears, to take an expression of Gandhi’s—in his case, the ears of powerful opponents—is also a preserver of benefits.

Reading John Stuart Mill in Turkey in 2017

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-232
Author(s):  
Ayşe Kadıoğlu
Keyword(s):  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Peaceful Resolution ◽  
Academic Debate ◽  
Coup Attempt

Academic freedom has eroded and continues to erode in an unprecedented magnitude in Turkey especially since the failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016. During this time, thousands of academics were purged from their positions including Academics for Peace who signed a petition calling for an end to the atrocities against Kurdish citizens and a peaceful resolution of the conflict in the southeastern provinces of Turkey. Such authoritarian backsliding was accompanied by a discourse that blurred the distinction between opinion and truth. Academics were increasingly ostracized and viewed as non-members of what came to be referred as New Turkey. A discourse of rejection replaced criticism and an unprecedented dissonance emerged between the current academic debate on free speech as well as academic freedom and the tragic reality faced by academics in Turkey making it impossible for them to continue their vocational existence.

Climate Change and the Free Marketplace of Ideas?

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 713-752
Author(s):  
Matthew Hodgetts ◽  
Kevin McGravey
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Current Approach ◽  
Marketplace Of Ideas ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Constitutional Protection ◽  
Climate Change Denial ◽  
The Us ◽  
Future Harm

Climate change poses a significant danger that requires intervention today; climate denial poses a key challenge to meaningful timely intervention. In this paper, we argue that current free speech jurisprudence in the US inadequately addresses the risk of climate change because it is overly permissive of 'professional' climate denial and underappreciates the need to address the future harm of climate change today. We begin by clarifying the risk posed by the Supreme Court's current approach to speech with respect to climate change and, relatedly, reviewing the philosophical foundations of the marketplace of ideas found in the work of John Stuart Mill. Following this, we examine three potential ways in which Supreme Court jurisprudence could be used to limit what we term 'professional climate change denial' while permitting a degree of 'private' scepticism. Largely setting aside the return to earlier free speech jurisprudence and the extension of libel law, we offer a novel solution to the problem that suggests that 'professional' climate denial could be treated as a categorical exception under free speech jurisprudence and thus afforded a lower level of constitutional protection than other expression.

The Classic Arguments for Free Speech 1644–1927

2021 ◽  
pp. 19-43
Author(s):  
Vincent Blasi
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Oliver Wendell Holmes ◽  
Free Inquiry ◽  
Democratic Character

This chapter examines the classic arguments for freedom of speech. It traces the first comprehensive argument for freedom of speech as a limiting principle of government to John Milton’s Areopagitica, a polemic against censorship by a requirement of prior licensing in which Milton develops an argument for the pursuit of truth through exposure to false and heretical ideas rather than the passive reception of orthodoxy. Despite Milton’s belief in the advancement of understanding through free inquiry, he was far from liberal in the modern sense of that term and he did not, for instance, extend the tolerance he advocated to Catholic religious texts. The chapter then assesses what James Madison had to say about the role of public opinion as a crucial element in the creation of political authority and the preservation of rights, and considers Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr’s opinions about the freedom of speech. It also looks at how the celebrated federal judge Learned Hand conceives of the freedom of speech as a majority-creating procedure rather than an individual right, while Justice Louis Brandeis understood the freedom of speech to be an individual liberty important as such but especially important for its contribution to democratic character. Ultimately, the most widely-read of the classic arguments for free speech is that developed by John Stuart Mill in his Essay On Liberty.

Utilitarianism and Moral Rights

1982 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.B. Brandt
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Special Relation ◽  
Logical Problem ◽  
The Government ◽  
Special Rights ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Freedom Of Action

Virtually all philosophers now agree that human beings - and possibly the higher animals - have moral rights in some sense, both special rights against individuals to whom they stand in a special relation (such as a creditor's right to collect from a debtor), and general rights, against everybody or against the government, just in virtue of their human nature. Some philosophers also think, however, that anyone who is a utilitarian ought not to share this view: there is a fundamental incompatibility between utilitarinism and human rights. Most utilitarians, of course, have not thought there is such an incompatibility. John Stuart Mill, for instance, espoused utilitarianism at the same time that he defended rights to free speech and freedom of action except where it injures others. In what follows I wish to explore some reasons recently put forward to show that the utilitarian who wishes to affirm that there are moral rights faces a serious logical problem; and I shall argue that further analysis shows the alleged difficulty is unreal.

The new inhalation tracheostoma valve: improvement of finger-free speech in laryngectomees

2000 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 322-323
Author(s):  
A.A. Geertsema ◽  
H.K. Schutte ◽  
H.F. Mahieu ◽  
G.J. Verkerke
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech
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