مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - ON JOHN STUART MILL’S FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

Abstract :

Freedom of expression is one of the fundamental rights and freedoms. One of the most important sociological and political philosophers of nineteenth century is John Stuart Mill who made the very fist defense of the idea of freedom of expression. Suggesting that anti-freedom ideas are spreading within the modern society, Mill passionately defended freedom of expression as a solution fort his problem deriving from the modern society. Stating that modern society creates a kind of homogeneity and uniformity under the pretext of public opinion, he also highlighted his regard to differences and diversities, strongly. From Mill’s perspective, freedom of expression is addressed on utilitarian basis in terms of its instrumental role in exploration of reality while making it to be the right thing on moral basis as a value in itself. Mill’s thesis on freedom of expression is fundamentally based on the argument of exploring the reality. Accordingly, expression of any kind of idea should be tolerated in order to reach reality, since individual and society are not infallible. Limiting freedom of expression would mean to pretend a kind of infallibleness. Mill presents limits of fredoms within the scope of harm principle which is identified with him. Hence, actions which have nothing on the interests of others should be considered as within the absolute private area of the individual. He therefore agreed that we could not mention about an unlimited freedom of expression, thoughts might lose their privacy by taking actual conditions and time when they are expressed into consideration and finally freedom of expression might be limited accordingly.