8 Drinking the hemlock
-
Neville Morley
Abstract
One recurring motif in claims about the illiberal cultures of universities has been the deployment of Socrates to delegitimise attempts at restricting ‘free speech’. To take just the most recent example, within an hour of the news that Jordan Peterson had been denied a visiting fellowship at Cambridge, one of his admirers had tweeted: ‘You have become Athenian jurors to @jordanbpeterson’s Socrates: you should drink the hemlock yourselves’. This image of the Greek philosopher operates in two mutually dependent ways. First, Socrates is the archetypal martyr for secular truth; the comparison heroises figures such as Peterson by equating their loss of a platform to a formal death sentence and equating their critics to the ignorant, irrational Athenian mob. Secondly, Socrates shows us that the only route to understanding lies through confronting of students with ideas that contradict their assumptions and make them feel uncomfortable. Both readings are profoundly anti-democratic, simply assuming the superiority of an enlightened genius over ignorant students who must be directed and discomfited and over the mass of the population. They are unhistorical and ideological, not least because of the lack of direct evidence for the historical Socrates – such interpretations carefully avoid too close an association with Plato, the main source for information about his teacher, not least because The Republic is notoriously tolerant of the idea of censorship. Then, as now, the concern of Socrates’ admirers was to privilege the speech solely of those who supposedly possessed superior understanding – themselves.
Abstract
One recurring motif in claims about the illiberal cultures of universities has been the deployment of Socrates to delegitimise attempts at restricting ‘free speech’. To take just the most recent example, within an hour of the news that Jordan Peterson had been denied a visiting fellowship at Cambridge, one of his admirers had tweeted: ‘You have become Athenian jurors to @jordanbpeterson’s Socrates: you should drink the hemlock yourselves’. This image of the Greek philosopher operates in two mutually dependent ways. First, Socrates is the archetypal martyr for secular truth; the comparison heroises figures such as Peterson by equating their loss of a platform to a formal death sentence and equating their critics to the ignorant, irrational Athenian mob. Secondly, Socrates shows us that the only route to understanding lies through confronting of students with ideas that contradict their assumptions and make them feel uncomfortable. Both readings are profoundly anti-democratic, simply assuming the superiority of an enlightened genius over ignorant students who must be directed and discomfited and over the mass of the population. They are unhistorical and ideological, not least because of the lack of direct evidence for the historical Socrates – such interpretations carefully avoid too close an association with Plato, the main source for information about his teacher, not least because The Republic is notoriously tolerant of the idea of censorship. Then, as now, the concern of Socrates’ admirers was to privilege the speech solely of those who supposedly possessed superior understanding – themselves.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of contributors viii
- Introduction 1
-
Protecting freedom of speech
- 1 Protecting the freedom of speech 23
- 2 Open-air free speech 30
- 3 The problem of neutrality and intellectual freedom 43
- 4 In a diverse society, is freedom of speech realisable? 53
- 5 Training readers as censors in Nazi Germany 63
- 6 Is boycotting for or against free speech? 74
-
Free speech as a weapon
- 7 When is free speech not about freedom? 87
- 8 Drinking the hemlock 95
- 9 Secularism, Islamophobia and free speech in France 103
- 10 The logic of nonsense 115
- 11 Weaponised Swissness 131
- 12 Free speech and the British press 143
-
Free speech on campus
- 13 Free speech and preventing radicalisation in higher education 157
- 14 Anatomy of a ‘trigger warning’ scandal 168
- 15 Grad school as conversion therapy 180
- 16 Teaching ‘freedom of speech’ freely 192
- 17 The politicisation of campus free speech in Portugal 200
- 18 Do we need safe spaces? 211
-
The internet: the Wild West of free speech
- 19 A postmodern neo-Marxist’s guide to free speech 227
- 20 Free speech and online masculinity movements 239
- 21 Choose your fighter 251
- 22 Free speech in the online ‘marketplace of ideas’ 261
- Index 271
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of contributors viii
- Introduction 1
-
Protecting freedom of speech
- 1 Protecting the freedom of speech 23
- 2 Open-air free speech 30
- 3 The problem of neutrality and intellectual freedom 43
- 4 In a diverse society, is freedom of speech realisable? 53
- 5 Training readers as censors in Nazi Germany 63
- 6 Is boycotting for or against free speech? 74
-
Free speech as a weapon
- 7 When is free speech not about freedom? 87
- 8 Drinking the hemlock 95
- 9 Secularism, Islamophobia and free speech in France 103
- 10 The logic of nonsense 115
- 11 Weaponised Swissness 131
- 12 Free speech and the British press 143
-
Free speech on campus
- 13 Free speech and preventing radicalisation in higher education 157
- 14 Anatomy of a ‘trigger warning’ scandal 168
- 15 Grad school as conversion therapy 180
- 16 Teaching ‘freedom of speech’ freely 192
- 17 The politicisation of campus free speech in Portugal 200
- 18 Do we need safe spaces? 211
-
The internet: the Wild West of free speech
- 19 A postmodern neo-Marxist’s guide to free speech 227
- 20 Free speech and online masculinity movements 239
- 21 Choose your fighter 251
- 22 Free speech in the online ‘marketplace of ideas’ 261
- Index 271
