Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal TraditionUniversity of Chicago Press, 2010 M02 15 - 316 páginas Courting the Abyss updates the philosophy of free expression for a world that is very different from the one in which it originated. The notion that a free society should allow Klansmen, neo-Nazis, sundry extremists, and pornographers to spread their doctrines as freely as everyone else has come increasingly under fire. At the same time, in the wake of 9/11, the Right and the Left continue to wage war over the utility of an absolute vision of free speech in a time of increased national security. Courting the Abyss revisits the tangled history of free speech, finding resolutions to these debates hidden at the very roots of the liberal tradition. A mesmerizing account of the role of public communication in the Anglo-American world, Courting the Abyss shows that liberty's earliest advocates recognized its fraternal relationship with wickedness and evil. While we understand freedom of expression to mean "anything goes," John Durham Peters asks why its advocates so often celebrate a sojourn in hell and the overcoming of suffering. He directs us to such well-known sources as the prose and poetry of John Milton and the political and philosophical theory of John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., as well as lesser-known sources such as the theology of Paul of Tarsus. In various ways they all, he shows, envisioned an attitude of self-mastery or self-transcendence as a response to the inevitable dangers of free speech, a troubled legacy that continues to inform ruling norms about knowledge, ethical responsibility, and democracy today. A world of gigabytes, undiminished religious passion, and relentless scientific discovery calls for a fresh account of liberty that recognizes its risk and its splendor. Instead of celebrating noxious doctrine as proof of society's robustness, Courting the Abyss invites us to rethink public communication today by looking more deeply into the unfathomable mystery of liberty and evil. |
Dentro del libro
Resultados 1-5 de 72
Página 1
... ideas that shape thinking about communication's role in public and political life. More specifically, it traces the leading framework for understanding public communication in the Anglo-American world, namely, free expression, focusing ...
... ideas that shape thinking about communication's role in public and political life. More specifically, it traces the leading framework for understanding public communication in the Anglo-American world, namely, free expression, focusing ...
Página 2
... ideas is itself one of the things it finds abhorrent. Each option—modern, postmodern, and antimodern, as we might rename them—can score points against the others. Like rock, paper, scissors, none wins all the time. The modern and ...
... ideas is itself one of the things it finds abhorrent. Each option—modern, postmodern, and antimodern, as we might rename them—can score points against the others. Like rock, paper, scissors, none wins all the time. The modern and ...
Página 12
... ideas tradition since each one offers something that undermines that cliché and opens new vistas of thought. Milton, after all, was one of history's great painters of hell in Paradise Lost, and the risky benefits of exploring its pits ...
... ideas tradition since each one offers something that undermines that cliché and opens new vistas of thought. Milton, after all, was one of history's great painters of hell in Paradise Lost, and the risky benefits of exploring its pits ...
Página 15
... ideas” where any notion, good, bad, or ugly, could be evaluated on its own merits and whose price would be set by nothing but free and open competition. This marketplace is supposed to be the motor of democratic life and the place where ...
... ideas” where any notion, good, bad, or ugly, could be evaluated on its own merits and whose price would be set by nothing but free and open competition. This marketplace is supposed to be the motor of democratic life and the place where ...
Página 16
... ideas with the energy and ingenuousness of truth. In such a state of intellectual freedom and activity, the progress of mind would infallibly become accelerated ... Exposed to the incessant attack of Argument, the existence of Error ...
... ideas with the energy and ingenuousness of truth. In such a state of intellectual freedom and activity, the progress of mind would infallibly become accelerated ... Exposed to the incessant attack of Argument, the existence of Error ...
Contenido
1 | |
29 | |
Milton and AbyssRedemption | 68 |
Chapter 3 Publicity and Pain | 100 |
Chapter 4 Homeopathic Machismo in Free Speech Theory | 142 |
Chapter 5 Social Science as Public Communication | 181 |
Suffering and the Informed Citizen | 215 |
Witnessing as Participation | 247 |
Responsibility to Things That Are Not | 284 |
Afterword | 295 |
Acknowledgments | 297 |
Index | 299 |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition John Durham Peters Sin vista previa disponible - 2005 |
Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition John Durham Peters Sin vista previa disponible - 2020 |
Términos y frases comunes
abyss-artists abyss-redeemers ACLU Adam Smith Amendment Arendt Areopagitica argues argument audience Augustine body Cambridge century Christian citizens civic Civil Disobedience civil libertarians communication conscience Court critical critique cultural cynicism death debate defend democracy doctrine Emerson ethical evil faith Foucault free expression free speech Habermas Hannah Arendt Havel Holmes human ideas intellectual J. S. Mill Jewish John John Stuart Mill Kant King liberal liberty Locke means Mill’s Milton modern moral Nazis ness Nietzsche norm notion numbers offense one’s opinion other’s pain Paradise Lost passion passivity Paul Paul of Tarsus Paul’s person philosophical pity political public sphere radical Ralph Waldo Emerson reason Romantic scientists sense Skokie Smith social science society soul statistics Stoic Stoicism sublime suffering theorists theory things thinkers Thoreau thought tion tolerance torture tradition trans truth University Press Václav Havel virtue witness words York
Pasajes populares
Página 149 - The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
Página 144 - If all mankind, minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
Página 72 - I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.
Página 110 - As the strength of the body lies chiefly in being able to endure hardships, so also does that of the mind. And the great principle and foundation of all virtue and worth is placed in this, that a man is able to deny himself his own desires, cross his own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs as best, though the appetite lean the other way.
Página 73 - I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors.
Página 81 - The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.
Página 76 - Prove all things, hold fast that which is good'; and he might have added another remarkable saying of the same author: 'To the pure all things are pure' — not only meats and drinks, but all kind of knowledge, whether of good or evil. The knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled.
Página 82 - Milton's Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God, as one who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, is to one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments.
Página 189 - Our debates were to be under the direction of a president and to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without fondness for dispute or desire of victory; and to prevent warmth, all expressions of positiveness in opinions or direct contradiction were after some time made contraband and prohibited under small pecuniary penalties.
Página 50 - There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Referencias a este libro
Freedom of Expression and Human Rights: Historical, Literary and Political ... Liam Gearon Sin vista previa disponible - 2006 |
The Handbook of Journalism Studies Karin Wahl-Jorgensen,Thomas Hanitzsch Sin vista previa disponible - 2009 |