Devoir de Philosophie

Are there limits to freedom of expression?

Publié le 12/08/2010

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Analysis of the subject: - It seems at first glance there is no reason to be limits to freedom of expression, because talking does no harm. Freedom of expression vehicle of ideas and words but do not commit crimes. - However, freedom of expression can lead to crimes that otherwise might not have happened without it. It thus appears that a dangerous society tolerates that distributes calls to murder in his journals. It is thus quite conceivable that words affect the mind and the minds they grow weak in some directions: Did not Socrates was sentenced to death for "corrupting the youth? - Consider also that words do not hurt is blind about this may be an evil: it's not just the physical harm that constitutes a crime, but also moral evil. That calumny can be relayed by the press and problematic. - In doing so, freedom of expression is problematic because it exists primarily to counter the arbitrary power, but, if we choose to limit it, it will necessarily limit the power. So it seems difficult to encourage such a limitation because it would be like to have full power to power up. - It therefore appears that there are only two alternatives: either tolerate an absolute freedom of expression or abandon freedom of expression. - The problem will therefore probably want to assess the benefits and disadvantages that can be drawn from one or the other proposal, and to choose which one is best. Problematization: Freedom of expression seems harmless. However, believing that it may be remembered that the expression is the source of all human actions, and that except in the case of madness, crime always start by thinking, if by " twisted ideas. Should we not therefore prevent such ideas germinate in the minds fragile? But can there be freedom of speech limited? How to keep control over the censors if it is not possible to speak of them? The evils of freedom of expression are so great that one should be deprived of the benefits of this freedom?

- The laws that regulate the city were therefore also aims to forge the individuals who compose it, and therefore they must provide very specific requirements on what individuals should and should not do. Laws must strengthen the golden thread is present in every human being, because the state has an educational role with respect to the people and it should behave like a father with his children. - That is why the laws must prohibit certain forms of expression, because they could degrade the sense of the people. But why destroy a man is destroying his home any possibility of knowing the true freedom. - Plato gives to this subject such as music and dance. In the second book of laws, he explains his view that it is in the chorus of singing and dancing to set the holiday season that people develop a sense of order and harmony that they have endowed by nature and they are replacing and the shortcomings of their moral education. Indeed, dance and music, using rhythm and harmony, expressing a certain harmony of the body refers to the order of the soul. - In doing so, since there is a correlation between the musical harmony and order of the soul, it must be ensured to encourage certain melodies and prohibit others, because of bad harmonies fabricate poor souls, only the truly beautiful music that could lead to virtue and educate men. The censors must endorse or prohibit the melodies composed by the artists. - That is why Plato denounces abuses that took place in Athens: he writes that artists' music and ravalèrent unconsciously pushed up the stupidity believing it had no intrinsic value and pleasure of the man who tastes, whether good or bad, is the surest rule to judge it properly.

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