Freedom of Speech

GOV 94FS Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Freedom of speech is often treated as a human right, a constitutional right, or the right of citizens in a liberal democracy. Of late, the issue of “free speech” seems particularly polarizing or “political,” with those on the right and on the left taking turns promoting and censoring it. But “free speech” has always been a contentious political issue, as well as a theoretically thorny one. When considering freedom of speech, a variety of questions arise: Who has the moral and/or political standing to speak, especially in a democratic polity? When is speech necessary, permissible, and/or prohibited? What kind of topics are called for in the public sphere, and what in the private sphere? Should the private-public distinction determine what kind of speech is appropriate? When does the style and not merely the content of speech matter? Speech as opposed to what? Action? Thought? Silence? Listening? Noise?

This class provides a theoretical and historical examination of such foundational questions. Instead of prescribing “what should be done”, we will be taking a step back and examine, in an attitude of critical curiosity, how and why issues of free speech seem so divisive. This is partly due to the ambiguity of the nature of speech as action and non-action; and of freedom as a right and as a responsibility. While today speech tends to be promoted and protected in contrast to action, in much of the history of political thought, speech was classified as a type of action. The process of separating speech from action was intertwined with the rise of several other phenomena: liberalism and the public sphere; the positive appraisal of democracy and an expanded suffrage; secularization and the separation of politics from religion. In examining these related processes, we will read works on the politics, ethics, epistemology, and legality of speech in relation to freedom. These include works by: Kant, Mill, Habermas, Foucault, Marcuse, Hirschmann, and MacKinnon.