Academic

Waldron Bayle, Lock, Montesquieu, & Voltaire on Hate Speech

By Lawrence Solum

Jeremy Waldron (New York University - School of Law) has posted Toleration and Calumny: Bayle, Locke, Montesquie and Voltaire on Religious Hate Speech on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

There is a considerable literature on the issue of hate speech. And there is a considerable literature on religious toleration (both contemporary and historic). But the two have not been brought into relation with one another. In this paper, I consider how the argument for religious toleration extends beyond a requirement of non-persection and non-establishment. I consider its application to the question of religious vituperation. The focus of the paper is on 17th and 18th century theories. Locke, Bayle and other Enlightenment thinkers imagined a tolerant society as a society free of hate speech: the kind of religious peace that they envisaged was a matter of civility not just non-persecution. The paper also considers the costs of placing limits (legal or social limits) on religious hate-speech: does this interfere with the forceful expression of religious antipathy which (for some people) the acceptance of their creed requires?

Highly recommended.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on November 02, 2010 (boomark / email).