We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2015
THE UNIVERSALITY OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Our understanding of knowledge underpins our attitude to free speech. If we agree that knowledge is composed of our grasping a set of truths that lie outside ourselves, then our main concern will be with how to access this understanding, how to unlock this truth. The role of the authority figure in the delivery of this knowledge is often critical in a culture that takes this approach to knowledge: it may be the priest or other kind of spiritual leader or it might be some Royal personage or other type of ruler with wide acceptability within the relevant community. In none of these situations is knowledge particularly problematic; nor is it generative of politics. In fact where truth is held by authority figures and passed on to a largely passive audience of subjects, ‘free speech’ will often be regarded as subversive rather than facilitative of truth: it will be seen as getting in the way of knowledge rather than as helping the discovery of it. This is why strong religious movements clamp down on speech (heresy) and authoritarian leaders lock people up for expressing their point of view (treason; ‘terrorism’).
The version of knowledge outlined above has not survived the rational scrutiny of the Enlightenment period. Starting with the reformation and moving through the revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries into a ‘post-modern’ culture where knowledge is not characterised in absolute terms, we now see knowledge as something that is made not found, that we create out of our intercommunications rather than receive as tablets of stone from some higher authority. In such circumstances the politics of knowledge become key: whose version of truth is to be heard? Who can persuade whom? How do we reach agreement on what truth for now prevails? Here is where the importance of free speech becomes apparent: it is the vital oil in the machine of truth-manufacture that makes every modern society tick.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
