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Freedom of Speech

My Lords, this is an important debate. There is no doubt that freedom of speech and liberal democracy more generally are under attack from various kinds of fundamentalisms in the modern world. In that context, we need to be clear about the moral basis for liberal democracy and the place of freedom of speech in it. In the view of some critics of liberal democracy, that immediately puts liberalism on the back foot because, in their view, there are no deep values acting as the foundations of liberal society. Let me cite one sophisticated example of this critique from the Muslim philosopher and theologian, Professor Akhtar. His argument is that at the basis of liberalism there is, paradoxically, a type of fundamentalism; what he calls the fundamentalism of doubt. Liberals are fundamentalists. Their fundamental principle is to doubt everything. That is his view. So why do liberals, in his view, value free speech and other democratic values? The answer, in his account, is that liberals are in fact sceptics and relativists. They do not know what the truth is, so they need free speech and other liberal values to cope with the basic axiom of liberalism that all beliefs are up for grabs. If that is so, liberalism can have no fundamental moral beliefs of its own. It is, rather, simply a coping mechanism—a way of coping with doubt and scepticism. This puts liberal values on the defensive when confronted with a world view such as fundamentalist Islam, which claims to know what the truth is and has a mission to see that its conception of truth prevails. In his view, the fundamentalism of faith will overcome the fundamentalism of doubt. I do not think that that is a true account of liberal values such as freedom of speech, but we need to be clear about the basic values of liberalism and the considerations on which a defence of free speech rests. The first is the idea that so far as an understanding of the empirical world is concerned—an understanding which we acquire through sciences of all kinds—advances in knowledge require an openness of debate and dialogue to provide the context for what Karl Popper called the process of conjecture and refutation. If an open society is necessary for the advancement of empirical inquiry, we cannot easily constrain the exercise of free speech purely to this sort of area. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, in the sphere of morality, we have to acknowledge that there are many important values, such as liberty, equality, justice, mercy, charity, friendship, loyalty, respect for individuals and the claims of community, which are all real and genuine values. Liberals are not sceptical or relativist about the centrality and importance of such values in human life. Nevertheless, it remains true, as Isaiah Berlin constantly argued, that there is no uniquely compelling way of linking these values together in some kind of monolithic or ordered framework. We always need the freedom to debate the relative weight of such values in changing situations. Indeed, we are doing precisely that at the moment. The weight given to particular values depends on openness to dialogue and not on assertion and will. It is vital in a diverse society within which people differ on the ways in which various goods should be weighted, that debate contributes to what the American philosopher John Rawls calls ““public reason””; that is, a public culture of rational debate about values and principles and what sorts of reasons count in favour of one way of looking at values rather than another. These cannot be settled for society at large by religious or ideological authority, and freedom of speech is an essential part of public reason. So should free speech be limited? Usually liberal thinkers have invoked the harm principle; that free speech can be limited when it causes harm to others. Critics of free speech will major on this and argue that feeling insulted and offended is a form of harm, and therefore there should be no freedom of speech to insult and offend. I think that this is a mistake. We need to distinguish between civility and law, and so far as the law is concerned, I believe that this would make limitations on freedom of speech far too subjective. If there are to be legally enforceable limitations on free speech, they should be as capable of as much objectivity as possible. This has led liberals to espouse two conceptions of harm: harm to physical security, and the prevention of another person being able to follow his or her own conception of the good. It is argued that most people, whatever their beliefs, would regard undermining their physical security and restricting their ability to follow their most fundamental beliefs as the basic forms of harm. If this is so, the restriction on free speech could be justified by citing either or both of those considerations, and unlike insults and offended sensibilities, they are capable of objective establishment and adjudication. It has been said in the past few days that free speech should be exercised responsibly. On the view that I have outlined, if its exercise does not cause harm, then it is exercised responsibly. However, those who make that point about responsibility argue that it should be exercised in a way that respects the belief of others. That argument seems to neglect two aspects of respect: first, that respect should be seen as a reciprocal relationship, and, secondly, that respect must be earned. It seems to me at least that many who demand respect for their beliefs have very little, if any, respect for the beliefs of others and how they live their lives. Respect is a two-way street, and I do not see why I should be expected to respect the beliefs of others when, in the articulation of their beliefs, they show little or no respect for other members of society. On the point about respect being earned, I argue that, in a democratic society, beliefs earn respect if adherents to those beliefs accept that it is reasonable for other people to disagree with them; that is to say, they earn respect if they hold their beliefs in a reasonable way, recognising the right of others to disagree. As the right reverend Prelate said, it is fashionable in these post-modern times to decry the values of the Enlightenment and say that there can be no foundations for the democratic values endorsed by that movement. I hope that I have suggested, at least, that that is not the case. We need to be clear about democratic values and their defence. Abandoning the Enlightenment leads us to endarkenment, and nobody wants that.