Our resident philosopher Edward Feser dispels certain mirages that liberalism creates around “free speech” by way of a teleological understanding of the right to speak the truth and uphold the good.
The author slips in a concession to censorship, an exception to free speech, that in its huge wooliness looks a lot like the exceptions that have kept so many 20th and 21st century tyrannies in business for so long: "Hence," he writes, "governments can legitimately suppress the expression of radical forms of skepticism and relativism and other doctrines that would subvert the very natural law that grounds the right to free speech, when there is a danger that the influence of such doctrines might spread beyond an eccentric and ineffective minority."
In other words, speech that questions the legitimacy of the regime's founding idea (in this case, a natural-law regime) is forbidden; especially worrisome is that eerily familiar three-word trapdoor, "and other doctrines." Ouch. That is a trapdoor that opens out on a particularly broad, and especially slippery, slope. And just who gets to decide what speech qualifies as subversive of natural law, and what speech qualifies as "other" forbidden doctrines?
Is there a way out of this briar patch? I like his big argument. Banning pornography is clearly coherent with the founding doctrine. But it seems to me these other concessions to censorship are dangerously subversive of it, and impractical. Are we stuck with Mill after all?
It would seem, as per the last article from Feser in this Substack, that the way to get to these future possible concessions to censorship would be prudence - as scarce as this political virtue is in our current leadership around the world. However, it seems that a postliberal defense of free speech need not fall into imperatives that are too broad. It must only be committed to the natural law principles and then apply them prudentially in each situation.
I would think that a postliberal leader would be fine with the prohibition to certain racial discourse in Brazil, as per the specific situation here. However, to deem that there are doctrines, outside of natural law, completely immune to be suppressed prudentially would seem a most imprudent free speech "absolutism", would it not?
And I would be skeptical of relying on classical works such as Milton and Mill to defend free speech, as they were most ready to censor Catholic discourse as contrary to their conception of the good.
I agree. Feser's June 5 post "Postliberalism without Despotism" almost reads like a conciliatory response to my critique, and you summarize his argument well.
Feser might have acknowledged (on behalf of liberalism) that free speech was never absolute in the United States, and that until recent decades (I think) it even looked a bit like what he is proposing in an imagined postliberal regime:: i.e. less doctrinaire and more sensitive to particular cases (perhaps even as justified by natural law reasoning, which was not totally foreign to U.S. jurisprudence).
Feser has reached a point in his argument where it would be clarifying to climb down into a discussion of a few particular free speech cases already adjudicated and compare the Court's reasoning to that of Feser's posited natural law jurisprudence. We might discover some unexpected congruence in some cases, as well as some interesting contrast. If this has been done, I'd love to see the cite(s).
The author slips in a concession to censorship, an exception to free speech, that in its huge wooliness looks a lot like the exceptions that have kept so many 20th and 21st century tyrannies in business for so long: "Hence," he writes, "governments can legitimately suppress the expression of radical forms of skepticism and relativism and other doctrines that would subvert the very natural law that grounds the right to free speech, when there is a danger that the influence of such doctrines might spread beyond an eccentric and ineffective minority."
In other words, speech that questions the legitimacy of the regime's founding idea (in this case, a natural-law regime) is forbidden; especially worrisome is that eerily familiar three-word trapdoor, "and other doctrines." Ouch. That is a trapdoor that opens out on a particularly broad, and especially slippery, slope. And just who gets to decide what speech qualifies as subversive of natural law, and what speech qualifies as "other" forbidden doctrines?
Is there a way out of this briar patch? I like his big argument. Banning pornography is clearly coherent with the founding doctrine. But it seems to me these other concessions to censorship are dangerously subversive of it, and impractical. Are we stuck with Mill after all?
It would seem, as per the last article from Feser in this Substack, that the way to get to these future possible concessions to censorship would be prudence - as scarce as this political virtue is in our current leadership around the world. However, it seems that a postliberal defense of free speech need not fall into imperatives that are too broad. It must only be committed to the natural law principles and then apply them prudentially in each situation.
I would think that a postliberal leader would be fine with the prohibition to certain racial discourse in Brazil, as per the specific situation here. However, to deem that there are doctrines, outside of natural law, completely immune to be suppressed prudentially would seem a most imprudent free speech "absolutism", would it not?
And I would be skeptical of relying on classical works such as Milton and Mill to defend free speech, as they were most ready to censor Catholic discourse as contrary to their conception of the good.
I agree. Feser's June 5 post "Postliberalism without Despotism" almost reads like a conciliatory response to my critique, and you summarize his argument well.
Feser might have acknowledged (on behalf of liberalism) that free speech was never absolute in the United States, and that until recent decades (I think) it even looked a bit like what he is proposing in an imagined postliberal regime:: i.e. less doctrinaire and more sensitive to particular cases (perhaps even as justified by natural law reasoning, which was not totally foreign to U.S. jurisprudence).
Feser has reached a point in his argument where it would be clarifying to climb down into a discussion of a few particular free speech cases already adjudicated and compare the Court's reasoning to that of Feser's posited natural law jurisprudence. We might discover some unexpected congruence in some cases, as well as some interesting contrast. If this has been done, I'd love to see the cite(s).
Good, thanks.