Politics of Toleration: Is there ever a justification for limiting speech because of its content?

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Freedom of speech is the central point of numerous constitutions in the world. From the first amendment to the 1776 US constitution to the Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declared in 1948; it has been presented as an indispensable factor of achievement and progress in the history of mankind. However, freedom of speech, also called freedom of expression, may be highly contested when it has to deal with some practical issues and has to quit the theoretical grounds in which it is rooted. Indeed, there are several contemporary issues on which freedom of expression has been denied. The notion itself of free speech is practically disclaimed by an environment of competing values within which it has been evolving so far; here one may refer to instances such as pornography or any other forms of "hate speech".

Hence, Thomas Scanlon, a famous American political philosopher, gives a quiet interesting account of freedom of speech on the ground that for him it does "single out a class of "protected acts" which it holds to be immune from restrictions to which other acts are subjects" (204: 1972). Despite the fact that free speech may harm directly or not one in some ways; the very consideration of freedom of speech as a "protected acts" spares it from any form of legal sanctions or restriction for Scanlon. In this context, the extent to which there is ever a justification for limiting freedom of speech because of its content seems very thin. In the first part of this essay, one may highlight the idea that any limitation on freedom of speech should not be accepted on the ground of the argument of one's right to live autonomously. In the second part, one may emphasize on the extent to which Mill's harm principle and Feinberg's offense principle are necessarily unjustified reasons to limit one's freedom of speech.

Extraits

[...] Considering this, the Nazi march on Skokie is an interesting example of a case of limitation of free speech on the ground that the content in question is seen as highly offensive for its victims (Feinberg: 1985; 86). Indeed, some people may be opposed to this demonstration but in the same time most have a bare knowledge of what is actually happening for whatever reasons; such conditions are not sufficient reasons for prohibiting it. However in this case other factors are at stake such as the social value of the demonstration, seen as largely insignificant, or the wide range of people offended by. [...]

[...] Nevertheless Feinberg himself acknowledges that his principle may struggle in dealing with people differences' of character, belief and way of life. For this reason, one has to acknowledge that though he may see a valuable justification for limiting freedom of speech in the case of the Nazi march in Skokie according to Feinberg Offense principle's criteria; this decision would to a certain extent remain very subjective in the sense that some may never accept dealing with it. Bibliography: Brison, S. (1998)”The Autonomy Defense of Free Speech” Ethics 108(2): 312-339. Feinberg, J. [...]

[...] Dworkin underlines the fact that pornographers cannot explicitly be blamed for it since in most cases they do not incite watchers to commit rapes or harmed women in any way (Stanford: 2.2 Therefore one may acknowledge that actually no direct harm is being perpetrated towards women through pornographic movies. Hence one may consider that Mill's harm principle is not relevant in this case, since it is only based on direct harm, and thus cannot justify the prohibition of pornography on the ground that women are feeling indirectly harmed by its content. Another famous argument for the limitation of free speech refers to Feinberg's Offense principle. [...]

[...] Therefore, Susan Brison argues that the limit of such view is that all speech is processed rationally, and not all beliefs are formed as the result of considered judgment“(1998: 328). Indeed Scanlon himself has been defending the case for false advertizing for instance on the grounds that banning it would be at odds with the need for free speech and one's ability to behave autonomously. Moreover Scanlon advocates in the same time the case for hate speech in the sense that its restrictions would undermine his autonomy account for free speech. [...]

[...] To support her argument she shed light on the situation of a woman confined in a harem who does not have either the choice to leave this place nor the capacity to imagine how different her life would be elsewhere, which if she had the ability to think about, would broaden her range of options and could lead her to choose not to live this life otherwise; namely to commit suicide. this view, autonomy admits of degrees, and one is more or less autonomous depending on the range of goals one is aware of having as real options” (Brison: 1998; 338). [...]