The article is here; the Introduction:
Without a doubt, the most widely read and closely studied argument for the freedom of speech ever written appears in John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Marking in 1959 the centennial of the essay's publication, Isaiah Berlin opined that Mill's "words are today alive and relevant to our own problems; whereas the works of James Mill, and of Buckle and Comte and Spencer, remain huge, half-forgotten hulks in the river of nineteenth-century thought." According to Berlin:
Mill's central propositions are not truisms, they are not at all self-evident…. They are still assailed because they are still contemporary…. Mill looked at the questions that puzzled him directly, and not through spectacles provided by any orthodoxy…. One of the symptoms of this kind of three-dimensional, rounded, authentic quality is that we feel sure that we can tell where he would have stood on the issues of our day…. Surely that alone is some evidence of the permanence of the issues with which Mill dealt and the degree of his insight into them. Because … his conception of man was deeper, and his vision of history and life wider and less simple than that of his utilitarian predecessors or liberal followers, he has emerged as a major political thinker in our own day.
Berlin's "day" was the middle of the twentieth century. My question is whether sixty-five years later he plausibly could have maintained Mill's contemporaneity in the face of the various ways that digital technology has altered the dynamics of human belief formation and persuasion.
To address this question, I identify the distinctive concerns, assumptions, concepts, objectives, and derivations that have given Mill's argument its preeminence for a century and a half. Then I canvass the changes wrought by digital technology in how speakers formulate their messages and generate attention to them, and how audiences notice, receive, and potentially act on such messages. Finally, I assess whether, in the light of such changes, On Liberty remains an instructive resource for thinking about what Mill terms "the liberty of thought and discussion" and its cognate liberties.
And the concluding paragraphs:
Certainly, a utilitarian, especially one whose measuring rod is "the permanent interests of man as a progressive being," needs to be forward-looking in the sense of not assuming that current patterns of belief formation that bear on societal well-being constitute the inevitable future. If the corrigibility of belief is as important as Mill claims it is, and if keeping alive the ideal of the open mind is a way to help revitalize the active holding of unfrozen opinions, or even just preserve what corrigibility of belief remains in the digital age, On Liberty has something to say to contemporary readers.
In that regard, despite six subsequent decades of evolution in the processes of opinion formation, Isaiah Berlin's centennial assessment of On Liberty's durability remains apt:
Mill's defence of his position in the tract on Liberty is not, as has often been pointed out, of the highest intellectual quality…. Nevertheless, the inner citadel—the central thesis—has stood the test. It may need elaboration or qualification, but it is still the clearest, most candid, persuasive, and moving exposition of the point of view of those who desire an open and tolerant society. The reason for this is not merely the honesty of Mill's mind, or the moral and intellectual charm of his prose, but the fact that he is saying something true and important about some of the most fundamental characteristics and aspirations of human beings.
The post Journal of Free Speech Law: "Is John Stuart Mill's <i>On Liberty</i> Obsolete?," by Vince Blasi appeared first on Reason.com.
