The limits of speech
On the axis: Political liberty · public speech
Speech that demeans without striking a blow: must a free society protect it in the name of freedom itself, or restrain it in the name of the freedom of those it targets?
You sit on the board of a cultural center. Months ago it booked a well-known essayist whose latest book, many say, demeans an entire group of people: he mocks them and questions their abilities, but calls for violence against no one. A petition demands that the talk be cancelled; its signatories say hosting him is not debate but harm. Others reply that cancelling it would betray everything the center exists for. The decision falls to you.
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Justification
The principle of On Liberty is negative: the only legitimate ground for constraining an individual is to prevent harm to others. Over himself, over his own body and mind, each is sovereign. Liberty is measured by the space shielded from interference.
On Liberty, ch. I
Justification
Mill judges a regime on two counts: what it does for public affairs and what it does to the citizens. Representative democracy wins because it best develops those who take part in it, yet that very participation exposes it to incompetence and the tyranny of the majority. His answer seeks to reconcile the two demands: a plural voting scheme that excludes no one from the franchise but weights votes by education, so that number does not silence competence, which inclines him toward .
Considerations on Representative Government (1861), ch. 8 (plural voting) · Considerations on Representative Government, ch. 3 (the superiority of representative government)
Justification
The argument proceeds by analogy with the technai, the crafts: one entrusts the helm not to the many but to the pilot who knows, and a ship where the crew elected its captain by acclamation would be deemed mad. Governing is likewise a knowledge, that of the Good and of justice, acquired only through a long education. From this Plato infers, against the Athenian that condemned , that authority must fall to competence and not to the opinion of the greater number. The thesis cuts all the deeper for striking at his own city's ruling regime.
Republic, V, 473c-e · Republic, VI, 488a-489d (the ship metaphor)
Anchors: Mill · Spinoza · Plato · Popper
leads to: Violence · Who should decide