Since
time in memorial, the problematic of freedom has been at the centre of discussion
of many people. This arose as a result of different phenomenon man was
observing in his surroundings. Hence some of the various questions he was
posing were whether he is living a free life or a determined one? Whether his
life has no other purposes than to follow moral laws traced by the society?
Whether he can live contrary to the natural laws? etc. Following the course of
history, freedom can to be a complex concept, extended to diverse areas, which
a single definition cannot satisfy.
My motive in this kind of
enterprise arises form my impression that the dignity of the human person and
the responsibility of human freedom when it comes to the point of expression
are somehow minimized or obscured. Many cases happened and still happen proving
indeed that there is a crisis of freedom of expression in many places in the
world. We should refer to the twenty years that passed after the cruel First
World War and the later revelation of Nazi and Soviet concentration camps.
Moreover, we still cannot forget the oppression of freedom of world dimension,
perhaps the ugliest of all time, which happened in our own lifetime.
To accommodate the topic at
hand, the paper is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter, the
hermeneutic method has been employed to sort out some points showing how the
notion of freedom was conceived in general from the classical period up to the
contemporary period. In doing so the paper will emphasize some prominent
figures in the history of philosophy in accordance with the period in which
they lived. In the second chapter the historical analysis method has been
employed to trace Mill’s freedom of expression. Freedom of expression
should be understood as the right of each individual to express his thoughts
without any interference. The third chapter comprises a synthetic formulation
from the two chapters.
The attitude, which
undermines the importance of freedom of expression for human development, is
extremely important in our African situation and more particularly in Democratic
Republic of Congo. People lack freedom of expression and their free expression
is stifled by their poverty and by autocratic regimes. This is one of the
reasons, which makes my research necessary to enlighten me on freedom of
expression.
The main sources in this
paper have been the works of Stuart Mill especially: On Liberty, Utilitarianism and
Political Philosophy of Mill. Other books and commentaries have been used for
better clarity on the topic. I accept to be criticised by any one who will find
the topic very interesting and I think he may say much more than I do.
1. General Understanding of Freedom
Generally
speaking, the main concern of this chapter will focus on the general
understanding of the concept freedom, which may be conveniently divided into:
Classical Period, Medieval Period, Modern Period and Contemporary Period. This
chapter will try to show the various meaning of freedom according to different
philosophers from classical period up to Contemporary period. In Classical period:
Plato and Aristotle; in Medieval period: Augustine and Thomas Aquinas; in
Modern period: Descartes and Kant; and in Contemporary period J.P Sartre. In
fact since the beginning of the history of philosophy, the notion of freedom
was very complex and general. Let us discover it in the following paragraphs.
Plato did not speak really about
freedom in an explicit sense. But in reading some philosophers of this period, we
find some notions that could correspond to freedom. Plato was impressed by the
idea of servitude that was seen as liberation internal to man. “Freedom
was the fulfilment of the reasoning subject by the internal domination of
reason.”
Man possesses the rational capacity, which helps him to reach freedom. Plato,
in speaking about the rational capacity that makes man free distinguishes
between the classes. And this distinction of social classes made people to be
different from each other. Such kind of distinction shows us clearly that
people were not free themselves. Some were considered as the best and more
important than others who had a considerably greater right of expression than
others. They had even more power than
the other.
In Plato’s conception
of society, women were not considered with much esteem. They were qualified as
the guardians under the guidance of government. Freedom, more especially,
freedom of expression in Plato’s conception was determined by one’s
intellectual capacity. Men are not independent of each other but they cooperate
with one another in order to produce the necessaries for the common good of the
society. Each and everyone exercise his freedom in his social class for the
common good but those who possess the intellectual capacity are the ones who
should be over the others because they possess knowledge. Plato speaks of the
ideal community in which each individual should contribute and participate in
order to reach the common good.
Aristotle described the
notion of freedom in comparison with the actual society. “The parts of
household management correspond to the person who composed the household. A
complete household consists of slaves and freemen.”
The society is composed of men, women and children and none of them are equal
and free. Man in Aristotle’s view is considered as a master of the
society and he is the one who should rule. No one could pretend to be over him.
Aristotle emphasizes the authority of man in the society and neglects the
presence of women. Women in Aristotle’s conception are considered as
slaves depending totally on their masters.
The masters have the power
of doing violence and one superior in brute strength while women are there just
to obey everything from their masters because men are the only ones who can be
free and exercise their freedom over the slaves. The male children have
something to say in the society but they are still immature in many things.
They are not totally considered as salves. The freemen manifest their freedom
in commanding and imposing their viewpoints to others. Indeed, Aristotle
distinguishes two kinds of classes. The first class belongs to the slaves who
always have to be under the control of the others where as the second class is
the class of freemen, who possess power. This implies that there is a
“giving order” process to one side and a “following
order” on the other side.
Saint
Augustine
(354-430)
Augustine tried to explain
explicitly the notion of freedom in using two Latin words: liberum arbitrium
and libertas. Man by nature was created by God to be free and to have dominion
and power over all other creatures but not over his fellow man. The lack of
freedom is a kind of slavery, which does not exist at all in God’s will.
Man possesses in him liberum and libertas. The choice to be disobedient in the
garden led him to the loss of libertas. When man lost his freedom, he became a
slave of sin because he had been created freely. By using badly his libertas,
he discovers that he is not free. His freedom is dying to sin. “ By
nature, as God created us, no one is the slave either of man or of sin. This
servitude is, however, penal, and is appointed by the law which enjoins the
preservation of natural order and forbids its disturbance.”
God’s will in creating us was that we could live equal and free. No one
should pretend to be superior over another so that we can reach this liberum
arbitrium and libertas.
Augustine seems to assume
that even now the individuals are in possession of this liberum arbitrium
though it is weak or diminished. There is still some autonomy left to the will
in such a way that one can even choose a disordered love, something that God in
no way causes directly. God seems to be a co-causer of good choices only. In
the performance of evil actions one merely says no to God’s will. Church
fathers and great theologians of the middle Ages were thoroughly aware of a
double problem that existed on the notion of freedom. That is, The libertas Christiana (the freedom of
Christians), as the primacy of grace, and the liberum arbitrium as the more
limited question of our human free will inside the moment of grace. God’s
will is to see the individuals equal so that they can reach the heavenly home.
This should follow that in the same line of their freedom, they should have the
facilities to express themselves in a very free way.
In his philosophy of
freedom, St Thomas seems to bring out some clarifications. Thomas
speaks about the state of innocence in comparison to freedom of expression. The
state of innocence is the only real state, in which people are equal and free
and no one has authority over the other. St Thomas used the term liberty
instead of using freedom, which have the same meaning. “ Liberty is one of the chief goods
and would not have been lacking in the state of innocence.”
Equality and freedom are the elements that promote the common good of the state
of innocence. Each individual should be free in acting as a freeman and keep
him alive. Thomas did not consider mastership as a concept opposed to slavery.
This is in the sense that the master has to consider the slave as his equal
though logically speaking; the slave has to be subjected to him. In other words,
there are neither masters nor slaves in the state of innocence otherwise we
could not talk about equality of people and liberty more especially on the
expressive level. “Man is the master of a free subject by directing him
either towards his proper welfare, or to the common good and such kind of
mastership have existed in the state of innocence between man and man.”
Man by nature was born free and the state of innocence helps him to develop and
to use his freedom in the proper way for the common good and to promote a good
life in the society. Although we were created differently, some with many
talents and others without, those having should use their talents as a precious
gift that conduced to the benefit of others and the promotion of the society.
In Descartes’ view, freedom of expression is no
longer the result of harmony cooperation between the intellect and will, but is
the expression of a blind will to do, to act. In speaking of freedom Descartes
refers to God and to man. Freedom is the greatest perfection of man. When we
are thinking of freedom in God, truly speaking, this means the absolute
freedom, which is operated with essences and truths as well as with the
existences. “Freedom is in some way infinite in man too; in the way it is
in him the mark of the creator. Man can oppose the clearly known good simply to
assert his freedom.”
Indeed, the notion of freedom is based on the intellect and will in order to
prove the existence of God. In fact, man is considered as a mediator of this.
The reason is that while the human intellect is finite, it is proper to the
nature of will to have a very large aperture, and the perfection of man is of
acting freely and consciously. This freedom is in our will that which help us
to choose and use our freedom properly as human being. According to Descartes
this notion of freedom is innate to us.
In speaking
of freedom of expression Kant tries to understand it through human society as
an environment in which men are born and exercise independently their notion of
right and their expression. In that society, there should be a law, which
everyone should follow.
“There is, indeed, an
innate equality belonging to every man which consists in his right to be
independent of being bound by others to anything more than that to which he may
also reciprocally bind them.”
Equality and freedom constitute the key points of the universal law.
Furthermore, human freedom is caused by his
free will. The will to do whatever he wants even to create his moral law that
he can only follow himself rather than to be imposed by someone else. This is
because all are equal and free in using their expression; no one has power on
the other in the society. Everybody has something to say and within or outside
the society. In a clearer way, the power does not belong to particular
individual in the society rather everyone has the power as a member of common
wealth. Kant concludes that according to the way things appear to us in the
society, we are not free (phenomena), our actions are determined and yet we
must believe that the way things really are, we are free (noumenon).
For Sartre Freedom is not only the foundation of man’s essence but also the
reason for which values, ends and objects are present in the world. By his
freely chosen projects, man puts order into the things of the world, he makes
the world a universe and he alone gives meaning to being. Sartre stresses a
little on the problem of freedom of man. If man lacks consciousness, his life
is obviously not free. “What we call freedom is, thus, impossible to
distinguish from being of the human reality.”
Man exists first and has the capacity to make his essence. Human freedom
precedes the essence and makes it possible.
That is why Sartre states
“existence precedes essence.”
Man possesses the capacity to make himself to become dependent of himself in
connection with his own choice. In Sartre’s conception, man is condemned
to be free. No one can choose to be free or not to be. By nature man is free in
the sense that he is conscious of his own existence and of all things of the
world. Therefore man is totally free. He can give a reason for his own
existence by consciously making himself to be a kind of man he has freely
decided to be. It is clear that human freedom is to be upheld in order to
create a value that could be based on the society. Freedom in Sartre’s
view is one of the essential elements of man, which helps him to make a
distinction between man described as pure act, and his freedom is designated as
absolute.
In conclusion, the concept
freedom has various meaning as we have seen so far according to its periods.
The classical thinkers oriented their attention on moral freedom while in the
medieval period freedom has got another meaning, which is freedom in God in
calling men to salvation. However, in Modern period, freedom has got another
significance with Kant who conceived it as an attribute of the noumenal or
intelligible self and in Contemporary period, the concept freedom was much used
with different meaning. Freedom was understood by Sartre as consciousness and
defines human essence.
Going with this
understanding, there is a possibility to say that this understanding was not
enough for individual’s life. In the following chapter, the main concern
will be freedom of expression in Mill’s understanding. In this chapter,
freedom of expression should be understood as the right of an individual to
express or communicate in a more or less public way his view without
interference from other individuals or groups with authority. That is the way freedom
of expression should be understood. Mill was much influenced by the theory of
the greatest happiness, which led all Utilitarians to speak about human
freedom.
Truly speaking, Mill was concerned
with the problem of society as was Bentham especially by showing how the
individual and the government should be related. It is out of this context that
Mill has tried to develop his philosophical understanding of freedom of
expression, which is the main concern of this essay. Thus, this chapter will
survey the individual’s freedom of expression, social freedom of
expression and political freedom of expression. However, for a better
understanding of these notions, we should turn to Mill’s historical
background, his writings and belief, and his unique version of Utilitarianism.
John Stuart Mill was born
in 1806. He had an
intense private education offered by his father James Mill, the stern
Utilitarian. Mill at the age of three learned Greek; at seven he studied the Dialogue
of Plato; at eight he had studied logic; and by thirteen political economy.
At the age of seventeen he was writing articles. But such intense application
led, at the age twenty to a severe emotional disturbance. His health finally
was restored by his discovery of beauty, art and music. After Mill had written
most of his important books he served in the house of commons (1865-1868),
where he stood with radicals, principally on the extension of right to vote.
Mill independently proposed women’s suffrage and proportional
representation.
Mill at the age of fifteen
became familiar with Bentham’s ideas and these had a decisive influence
on him. Starting from Bentham’s principle that the good of the society
lies in that which brings the greatest happiness to the largest number, the
philosophical radicals agitated for repeal of the grain tariff, removal of the
causes of over population, extensive free education, prison reform, religious
liberty, freedom of labor unions, and the improvement of workers condition in
the factories. His most important philosophical works include his System of
Logic (1843), The principle of Political Economics (1848), Thoughts
on Parliamentary Reform (1859), On Liberty (1859), Utilitarianism
(1863), Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy (1865),
and The Subjection of Women (1869).
In his famous essay, Utilitarianism, Mill aims
at defending the principle of Utility, which he learned from his father and
Bentham. In defense against its critics, he made many changes within the
theory. His qualitative version came out quite different from Bentham’s
quantitative measurement. Bentham taught that pleasures differ among themselves
only in their amount; that is, different ways of behaving produce only
different quantities of the same pleasure. The only measurement of goodness is
the amount of pleasure an act can produce. This means that all modes of
behavior that produce the same amount of pleasure are equally good. He believed
that quantitative measurement of pleasure was the sole test of the morality of
an act. For him, goodness is not connected with any specific and particular
kinds of behavior but rather only with the amount of pleasures measured by his
calculus.
Mill altered Bentham’s
quantitative approach and substitutes a qualitative approach. In doing so, he
started first by giving a new analogy:
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig
satisfied.”
He meant that, human beings have faculties more elevated than an animal’s
appetites. The pleasure of the intellect, of feelings, of imaginations and of
moral sentiments bears a higher value than that of mere sensation. For him
“ it would be absurd that while in estimating all other things, quality
is considered as well as quantity, but the estimation of pleasure should be
supposed to depend on quality alone.”
Mill’s quantitative approach holds that certain human faculties like
intellect and will, if used nicely instead of pleasure alone, can be the
criteria of true happiness that can lead to goodness. Therefore, pleasure is to
be granted not for quantity but quality; and this is the standard of morality.
2.4 Mill’s Justification of Freedom of Expression
Before moving on to examine deeply what justifies
really freedom of expression, first of all let us say in brief what freedom of
expression means itself because freedom of expression is the main point of this
paper. According to Mill, Freedom of expression is an inalienable human right
and the foundation of self-government. It is permissible only if the manner of
expression be temperate and if it does not pass the bounds of fair discussion.
Mill’s freedom of expression
is that kind of freedom which helps the individual to look for his own good in
his own way as long as he does not attempt to deprive others of their own
freedom, or impede their effort to obtain it. This freedom is a freedom from
interference from government or society. The most important point in
Mill’s justification of free expression is this: the individual must be
free to discuss and from this discussion then truth can be found. Mill says:
Truth cannot be discover if
men, who are fallible, place limits on What is permitted to discuss; only open
discussion of ideas can lead to truth and to new knowledge.
According
to Mill truth can only be found if there is free and open discussion because
for Mill true opinions are most likely to emerge through freedom of discussion.
In order to make an atmosphere of free discussion the individuals must be free
to express their thoughts and feelings to reach that truth. For Mill to limit
free expression is to limit what is essential in human life. Civilization
cannot advance without truth because the advance of society needs truth and to
discover truth the individuals need freedom of expression. The chief
justification of free expression according to Mill is that enables the
individuals to strive to know the truth and thereby to attain the dignity of
thinking beings. Furthermore, Riley summarizes Mill’s thinking as this
subject in saying,
The real morality of public
discussion, he emphasizes, involves a disposition to distinguish between what a
person says and how he says it. Complete liberty ought to be granted to both
the content and the manner of expression, with the usual caveat about
expression, which is not reasonable, classed as self-regarding. But observers
must develop the capacity to see the truth in what a person says, and separate
that truth from how he says it.
Mill values more than simply
having true opinions. Rather, he values the way in which the truth is held.
Mill wants people to hold their opinions in a rational manner, with knowledge
of the significance of these opinions and the grounds for them, and with
willingness to change or modify them in the light of new arguments and
evidence. Mill therefore distinguishes between having true opinions and what he
calls to know the truth. Whereas the avoidance of mistake argument stresses the
value of having true opinions, both the assumption of infallibility and the
necessity of error argument emphasize the importance of trying to know the
truth.
Mill’s arguments of
freedom of expression are based on the notion of human fallibility. But this
argument is ambiguous, and depending on how it is interpreted, it in fact
establishes two different connections between human fallibility and allowance
of freedom of expression, and corresponding to these two connections, there are
two different notions of the value of the search for truth. Sometimes Mill
points to human fallibility as a reason for not suppressing an opinion because
we may be mistaken, and in suppressing a purportedly false opinion, we may in
fact be suppressing what in future will be shown to be true. Mill says that:
Let us assume that the contrary opinion is mistaken,
and that we do in fact hold the true view. Nevertheless, even a true opinion
can be held in different ways: it can be held openly by a mind which is always
willing to change its point of view depending upon the evidence or it can be
held as sheer prejudice.
For
Mill those who engage in mistaken acts of suppression are often sincere men who
believe in the rightness of what they are doing. Indeed our beliefs are
generally and widely accepted by the rest of our society, and by the whole age,
this is no guarantee that we are not mistaken. According to Mill the absence of
freedom of expression also creates an atmosphere in which men fear to pursue
their opinion to unorthodox and socially unacceptable conclusion. Instead they
will trim their beliefs to suit the existing orthodox, and in such an
atmosphere of intellectual timidity and conformity, no new beliefs will emerge
to challenge prevailing views. Let’s call this avoidance of mistake
argument. Its central claim is that human fallibility makes freedom of
expression if we are to avoid suppressing true beliefs. This first argument
should be distinguished from what may be called the assumption of infallibility
argument.
According to the infallibility
argument, the opinion the individual desire to suppress may very well be false,
as we claim it to be, but, as fallible beings, the individual can have no
rational assurance that it is false unless there is freedom to discuss it. In
“ the absence of liberty of discussion and of personal experimentation,
no human can properly claim that his beliefs are warranted by the best
available evidence.”
