Freedom of Speech

The History of an Idea

Elizabeth Powers

• Publisher: Bucknell University Press
• Year: 2011
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781611483673
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The essays in this volume portray the debates concerning freedom of speech in eighteenth-century France and Britain as
well as in Austria, Denmark, Russia, and Spain and its American territories. Representing the views of both moderate and radical
eighteenth-century thinkers, these essays by eminent scholars discover that twenty-fi rst-century controversies regarding the extent of permissible speech have their origins in the eighteenth century. The economic integration of Europe and its offshoots over the past three centuries into a distinctive cultural product, "the West," has given rise to a triumphant Enlightenment narrative of universalism and tolerance that masks these divisions and the disparate national contributions to freedom of speech and other liberal rights.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Freedom of Speech: Contemporary Issues and a History
• Libertas Philosophandi in the Eighteenth Century: Radical Enlightenment versus Moderate Enlightenment (1750–1776)
• In Praise of Moderate Enlightenment: A Taxonomy of Early Modern Arguments in Favor of Freedom of Expression
• Cynicism as an Ideology behind Freedom of Expression in Denmark-Norway
• Alexander Radishchev’s Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow and the Limits of Freedom of Speech in the Reign of Catherine the Great*
• Print vs. Speech: Censoring the Stage in Eighteenth-Century Vienna
• The Crisis of the Hispanic World: Tolerance and the Limits of Freedom of Expression in a Catholic Society1
• Rousseau, Constant, and the Emergence of the Modern Notion of Freedom of Speech
• Toward an Archaeology of the First Amendment’s Free Speech Protections
• Conclusion: A Way Forward?
• Milestones in the History of Freedom of Speech
• Appendix I: Freedom of Expression in the Netherlands and Britain1
• Appendix II: Freedom of Expression in Northern Europe, Habsburg Lands, and Russian Empire
• Appendix III: Freedom of Expression in Spain1
• Bibliography
• Contributors