Free speech, rights and religion
What’s Wrong With Blasphemy?
By ANDREW F. MARCH, NYT
Suppose there had not been a single riot in response to the now infamous video “The Innocence of Muslims.” Not a single car burned, not a single embassy breached, not a single human being physically hurt. Would the makers of this risible little clip have done anything wrong? If so, to whom, and why?
These questions are now at the center of an international debate. President Obama himself touched on the issue in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, in which he directly addressed the violent reaction in the Muslim world to the “crude and disgusting video.” But does philosophy have anything to say to the view that many people have that there is something about this kind of speech itself — not just its harm to public order or its adding of insult to the injury of imperialism and war — that should not be uttered or produced?
Do our rights extend to speech that mocks, insults or lies about things that others hold sacred?
Obviously, we think this about many other kinds of speech. Most of us think that it is wrong for white people to use the “n-word.” (Use it? I can’t even bring myself to mention it.) Personally, I would feel a shiver of guilt and shame if that word crossed my mind as a thought about another person. And it’s not hard to account for that feeling. It is a word that is intimately associated with a chain of some of humanity’s greatest historical evils — the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the practice of chattel slavery and countless legal, social and psychological practices aiming at the effective dehumanization of persons of black African origin. To perpetuate it publicly is to harm other persons, and this matters objectively even if I don’t personally, subjectively care about the persons in question. But my feelings about this word are even deeper than this: I don’t even want to participate in the history that produced it and its meanings by letting it grow roots in my own mind.
(More here.)
By ANDREW F. MARCH, NYT
Suppose there had not been a single riot in response to the now infamous video “The Innocence of Muslims.” Not a single car burned, not a single embassy breached, not a single human being physically hurt. Would the makers of this risible little clip have done anything wrong? If so, to whom, and why?
These questions are now at the center of an international debate. President Obama himself touched on the issue in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, in which he directly addressed the violent reaction in the Muslim world to the “crude and disgusting video.” But does philosophy have anything to say to the view that many people have that there is something about this kind of speech itself — not just its harm to public order or its adding of insult to the injury of imperialism and war — that should not be uttered or produced?
Do our rights extend to speech that mocks, insults or lies about things that others hold sacred?
Obviously, we think this about many other kinds of speech. Most of us think that it is wrong for white people to use the “n-word.” (Use it? I can’t even bring myself to mention it.) Personally, I would feel a shiver of guilt and shame if that word crossed my mind as a thought about another person. And it’s not hard to account for that feeling. It is a word that is intimately associated with a chain of some of humanity’s greatest historical evils — the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the practice of chattel slavery and countless legal, social and psychological practices aiming at the effective dehumanization of persons of black African origin. To perpetuate it publicly is to harm other persons, and this matters objectively even if I don’t personally, subjectively care about the persons in question. But my feelings about this word are even deeper than this: I don’t even want to participate in the history that produced it and its meanings by letting it grow roots in my own mind.
(More here.)
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