When You Can't Say Something Nice...
When the controversy over the cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten depicting the Prophet Muhammad erupted early in 2006, a leading article in the Guardian of London suggested that John Stuart Mill was a "better guide" to the issues involved than Voltaire. What exactly does the father of modern liberalism have to tell us about insult, offense, and the limits of free speech?
In considering what circumstances could justify limits on expression, Mill offered what has become a basic standard in liberal societies, known as the Harm Principle, according to which the "only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." Now, for Mill, actions are harmful which directly violate the rights of a person (rights being understood by him to be certain "immunities" enjoyed by persons against the power of rulers). And if we grant that definition of harm, then very few limits on freedom of expression are going to be justified, since very few expressive acts could plausibly be said to cause harm to the rights of others.
This is not to say, however, that no expressive act (a piece of speech, say, or a cartoon) could cause harm. Mill takes the example of speech about corn dealers. It is reasonable, he says, to declare, in print, that corn dealers starve the poor, but it is not permissible to make the same claim before an angry mob gathered outside a corn dealer's home. In the latter case, the speech is an incitement to "some mischievous act" and places the rights, and indeed the life, of the corn dealer in danger.
Some critics, including some of those who wrote about the Danish cartoons affair, think this definition of harm is too restrictive. They argue that in addition to the Harm Principle, we need something such as what the philosopher Joel Feinberg calls an Offense Principle. But, as Jerome Neu points out in "Sticks and Stones: The Philosophy of Insults" (Oxford University Press, 304 pages, $29.95), it not clear where we would find the "Aristotelian mean" that would tell us just how sensitive to insult we can reasonably be. In any case, it would be very hard to apply such a principle, since some people take offense simply because they are oversensitive, or because they harbor unjustified prejudices.
It is sometimes said that justice requires that we defer to the interpretation that vulnerable minorities give of the speech acts and gestures directed at them. The problem with this, according to Mr. Neu, is that "feeling insulted is not an infallible guide to being insulted"; it is not obvious that we can trust the vulnerable always to get the interpretation right. What are we to do, for instance, with people whose beliefs make them peculiarly susceptible to insult or offense? Mr. Neu's rich and luminously written book is, among other things, an attempt to answer such questions.
A distinctive feature of insult, then, is that it is more often felt than intended to be given (and of course intention matters; especially, one might say, in cases such as that of the cartoons). Borrowing the terminology of the English philosopher J.L. Austin, Mr. Neu makes the very interesting suggestion that this has a good deal to do with the language of insult. Unlike promising or censuring, for example, there is no "distinctive performative verb for insulting"; that is, we don't say, "I insult you," whereas we do say, "I promise to you" or "I censure you." This means that insults are often ambiguous: One can be insulted without taking offense (the insult can, as Austin puts it, "misfire"), just as one can take offense where none is intended. There are also significant implications here for restrictions on hate speech confined to profane or vulgar language. There can be "politely worded insults," after all, but to prohibit these as well would be to risk "stifling all controversial discourse." It is one thing to claim that words are also deeds and can do harm, and quite another confidently to specify the words that wound.
Mr. Neu's skepticism about hate speech legislation, speech codes, and blasphemy laws is grounded in a very Millian understanding of what is involved in upholding freedom of speech. We should, he argues, see certain kinds of discomfort, offended feelings, and so on as being among the unavoidable costs of free thought, inquiry, and argument. The Muslim protesters who besieged the office of the editor of Jyllands-Posten were entitled to his respect, but not his "submission." Failing to recognize that these are not the same threatens to make free expression itself the "victim."
Mr. Derbyshire is a writer and critic based in London.
