Hallam v the State, and free speech. The Just Stop Oil desecrations are calling to our humanity
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Published 2024-07-21
I suspect that what’s being missed is something fundamental to human society and how we participate in a wider environment, and that can be discerned more fully by considering the true nature of freedom of speech.
I draw on a talk given by Joseph Milne at the excellent Temenos Academy. The archive of talks can be found here - www.temenosacademy.org/main-lecture-archive/
The approach is to consider what freedom of speech meant to our ancestors, so as to cast a light on the present. Aristotle's thoughts in the Politics is key, as speech for him is what makes human society - speech understood as a sharing the wider rationality and intelligence of the animate cosmos.
Justice, then, is an exercise in the bonds of friendship, which is very different from an exercise in rights and the will to power.
The limits of social contract theories, the mainstay of modern understandings, are on display. And what we need to recover are other ways of speaking freely - modes of dialogue and discourse that aren't primarily about proposition or facts, but commitments, relationships, devotions, celebrations.
All Comments (10)
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Thank you for this call to truly free speech.
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Thankyou Mark for this timely and generous unfolding of the present linguistic sclerosis we seem to be mired in🙏🏼
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Free speech has nothing to do with stopping people going about their lawful business or destroying property.
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very thoughtful and thought provoking - thank you
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Perfectly free to express their opinions just not by causing untold misery on thousands of others....freedom of speech my rrse.
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I thought you presented an intelligent desciption of the establishment view on these protests. But I still feel that this particular new law and how it has been applied, particularly in regards to Roger Hallam, signals a dangerous increase in authoritarianism. In Hallams case, to be sentenced to 5 years for acting in an advisory role, not actually participating in the protest and not even involved in the planning stage, this seems to be a gross miscarriage of justice. One wonders to what extent can this law reach in order to suppress non-violent civil disobedience. I accept the argument that just stop oil went too far and caused way to much disruption to the puplic, doing their cause no good at all by alienating themselves from the puplic. But the reach of these new laws is bringing us ever closer to the likes of China and other such highly controlled societies.
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That was so beautiful to hear you read those Blake proverbs. I also loved the reminder that freedom of speech is a privilege and we are want to speak well by that gratitude. Such an important reminder. This video especially a necessary sane voice of a vision of how we can treat our own voices and aspirations. I wish every ear could hear your voice right now Mark. Finding myself looking at the books on your shelf I would love to hear a list of book recommendations of yours in a video.
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Freedom of speech will have us reading words such as William Blake. And giving credit to his thoughts. Freedom of thought would have us reading the environment of words seeing that William Blake is Will I am B lake. He's a big pond erer. Thought constructs the word and speech repeats the word.
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Your analysis of the motivations and aims of the protestors is remarkably reactionary and blinkered, and sadly completely misses the point. Describing their actions as "desecration" is also a wild overreaction, and potentially a dangerous one when we consider that the protestors have been subject to repeated acts of violence from members of the public, egged on by the faux-outrage of the media commentariat. The protests simply draw attention to the fact that if we truly claim to value these "sacred" works of art, then we should get comfortable with the idea of losing them, because that's what will happen if the scientists are correct, and we, as a society, fail to reckon with the science. It's not easy to listen to the scientists and truly receive and internalise their message. Hallam and the others have done that, and they are living in a new reality, and acting accordingly. If we ignore science, and the scientific method, we are also falsifying the dream of a civilization founded on reason and dialogue. I was moved to comment as your sneering at Just Stop Oil surprised me, I was expecting something more insightful from you. But there we go. You should read Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy by the way, he will help you get some depth to your musings on the relation between speech and revolution (which is what you are talking about, though you don't seem to realise it).
