Thursday, 2 February 2023

Free Speech: free online materials

I’m pleased to be giving two talks on the upcoming Day School The Limits of Free Speech: Offence, Hate Speech and No Platforming on Saturday 25th of February 2023.

I thought I would put up some online resources that would be useful to anyone looking to attend the event.

Free online reading

Background reading on Freedom of Speech

van Mill, David, "Freedom of Speech" in Zalta (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021)

Anderson, Luvell and Michael Barnes, "Hate Speechin Zalta (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2022)

Bonotti, Matteo, and Jonathan Seglow. "Freedom of expressionPhilosophy Compass 16, no. 7 (2021): e12759.

If you want to buy a short introductory book, I recommend Nigel Warburton's Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction

JS Mill's classic (and very readable) text On Liberty (1859) is available cheaply, but as it is out of copyright you can view it online (also see below for a free the audiobook)

More advanced readings

I’ve noticed that a lot of the works of Alexander Brown, an author in this area, are available free online. If you want to read something more advanced you could read one of his papers, or his book.

Videos

There are lots of videos online discussing liberty, free speech and hate speech.

Two authors for whom I have a lot of respect, Jeremy Waldron and Ronald Dworkin presented their contrasting views on the issue of hate speech in 2013. Links here.

Audio

(listen online or download to your podcast app)

Audiobooks

Some people have kindly recorded J.S. Mill’s On Liberty (1859) as an audiobook

Nigel Warburton reads the Chapter John Stuart Mill on Liberty from his book Philosophy: The Classics.

Podcasts

Tim Scanlon on Free Speech Philosophy Bites (2008)

Rae Langton on Hate Speech Philosophy Bites (2012)

Caught between free speech and hate speech Big ideas (2018)

Jacob Mchangama Clear and Present Danger - Free Speech Podcast (Many episodes!)

Freedom of Speech: Censors working overtime Origin Story (2022)

Controversial Ideas and “No Platforming” with Jeff McMahan Why we argue (2019)

Deplatforming Jurisprudes (2022). 

Political Philosophy and liberty

These materials also provide a useful background to the online short course Political Philosophy: An Introduction, which I often teach.

This 10 week course runs three or four times per year.  

Liberty is one of the topics covered. We look at JS Mill’s harm principle and whether and how you it applies to various cases.

I hope to see you on one or both of the courses above!

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