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Google圖書搜尋
Courting the Abyss
John Durham Peters
其他書名
Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition
出版
University of Chicago Press
, 2010-02-15
主題
Philosophy / General
Philosophy / Political
Law / Civil Rights
Language Arts & Disciplines / Rhetoric
ISBN
0226662756
9780226662756
URL
http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=YYVU1Wnw5k8C&hl=&source=gbs_api
EBook
SAMPLE
註釋
Courting the Abyss
updates the philosophy of free expression for a world that is very different from the one in which it originated. The notion that a free society should allow Klansmen, neo-Nazis, sundry extremists, and pornographers to spread their doctrines as freely as everyone else has come increasingly under fire. At the same time, in the wake of 9/11, the Right and the Left continue to wage war over the utility of an absolute vision of free speech in a time of increased national security.
Courting the Abyss
revisits the tangled history of free speech, finding resolutions to these debates hidden at the very roots of the liberal tradition.
A mesmerizing account of the role of public communication in the Anglo-American world,
Courting the Abyss
shows that liberty's earliest advocates recognized its fraternal relationship with wickedness and evil. While we understand freedom of expression to mean "anything goes," John Durham Peters asks why its advocates so often celebrate a sojourn in hell and the overcoming of suffering. He directs us to such well-known sources as the prose and poetry of John Milton and the political and philosophical theory of John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., as well as lesser-known sources such as the theology of Paul of Tarsus. In various ways they all, he shows, envisioned an attitude of self-mastery or self-transcendence as a response to the inevitable dangers of free speech, a troubled legacy that continues to inform ruling norms about knowledge, ethical responsibility, and democracy today.
A world of gigabytes, undiminished religious passion, and relentless scientific discovery calls for a fresh account of liberty that recognizes its risk and its splendor. Instead of celebrating noxious doctrine as proof of society's robustness,
Courting the Abyss
invites us to rethink public communication today by looking more deeply into the unfathomable mystery of liberty and evil.