Offences to feelings, and regulation of speech in a multicultural era
Picking up on last week’s post about Milton’s Areopagitica, in the classical liberal tradition, the fact that speech is offensive is not in itself a sufficient reason to censor it. As John Stuart Mill (pictured left) put it, “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”. And he utterly rejected that offence could amount to such harm:
…Before quitting the subject of freedom of opinion, it is fit to take notice of those who say, that the free expression of all opinions should be permitted, on condition that the manner be temperate, and do not pass the bounds of fair discussion. Much might be said on the impossibility of fixing where these supposed bounds are to be placed; for if the test be offence to those whose opinion is attacked, I think experience testifies that this offence is given whenever the attack is telling and powerful, and that every opponent who pushes them hard, and whom they find it difficult to answer, appears to them, if he shows any strong feeling on the subject, an intemperate opponent. But this, though an important consideration in a practical point of view, merges in a more fundamental objection.
