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In support of free speech

In search of better arguments, playwright Tom Stoppard challenges the belief that free speech is an inalienable right. Rallying a defense, Norm Geras believes Stoppard's criticisms don't undermine free speech as natural law.

Stoppard argues that simply calling something inalienable doesn't make it so, and even if believers are convinced by faith, that wouldn't compel non-believers who share society with them. Acknowledging the loss of universality, and after a stab at utilitarianism, Stoppard despairs whether society will be able to justify free speech under all circumstances. "The underlying question remains as before: does Voltaire's credo [to defend to death the right of free speech] hold good at all times in all circumstances?" In reply, Geras maintains free speech is universal, stating it as a fact, as if that alone will make it so. While he levels four criticisms at Stoppard, he fails to undermine Stoppard's thesis and never explains why free speech is valuable. That's too bad, because, in the end, Stoppard and Geras both agree free speech is a valued part of successful society -- they just disagree about how to argue compellingly for it.

Without going into detail, modern philosophy tends to reject natural laws. However, that's a distinction without merit insofar as even if free speech does not follow from natural law, it operates as if it did because it follows from deductions can be made obvious to anyone at any time. My essay Measured steps toward civilization explains that free speech is necessary when individuals join together to form a society to offer another avenue by which people can discover when their own mental map of reality used to plan their better future is mistaken. Short of experience, it is the only tool available to convey to people who think they are correct that they may be mistaken. In other words, if not universal, it might as well be because it comes into play whenever any two people get together to interact.

In a Darwinian world, while the law of the jungle is always in play, people working together can project a safer operating framework that, from personal experience, people across cultures can deduce value. While not universal in the sense of existing before mankind and afterwards, insofar as the universal applicability can be deduced by anyone who cares to examine it, it might as well be universal.

Neither gentlemen ask, "Ought free speech ever be tempered?" and, if so, how? The slipperiness of the issue is best understood by seeing that free speech isn't a value, a result, or an absolute, so much as it is a factor in a process by which people decide what to do. It seems all the more complex because the other side of the right to exercise free speech is the responsibility to refrain from exercising it.

Both Stoppard and Geras should join together to recognize free speech is a core principle of society at the same time they should both support publicizing why.

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