3.3 Action

Taking action which is different from the conventional has two senses at least, one is that the rare action that one takes is the conventional for the person as one bases the context which is different from other people. The context itself is different for the one from others, and the action comes from one’s original context is ordinary to oneself but rare to others. Another is that one is aware of the norm of society but disagrees with it, that is why one attempts to get diverted from it. Action often takes place when one tries to change the present state or when not convinced by the current social order. One consciously takes their action towards society. In addition, they take action more reactionally in the sense that they had no choice to react given the situation which is going on in the society.

The actions have effect in their community: “When people speak, they are disclosing important aspects of themselves to the world, staking out their own place in a society that consists of millions of distinctive individuals, each defined by his or her principles, values, convictions, and beliefs”(1). Speech is a type of action that claims oneself to the outer world of oneself. When some present something progressive to the world, there is certain possibility of backlash arising from it. Taking action against the conventional has its risk. That often comes from those who prefer the conventional contrary to the one presented. Also, among those who, not prefer the conventional but, are dubious against the idea may oppose it. The stronger the power which moves toward one direction, the more intense the reaction could be. If that is little by little incorporated in the society, the increasing number of people may come to accept it without questioning rigidly, with the probability of conflict decreased. This acceptance is not necessarily what one explicitly, or consciously, admits, it is presumably more frequent to take it for granted without questioning, that is to say getting accustomed to it.

There’s a variety of expression in general. Although the term expression is often used for writing, speech, and painting, it can be taken in a wider meaning. It doesn’t have to be limited within speech and publication, how one behaves is a certain kind of expression. The reason why to take the word in a wider meaning is to suggest behaviours and actions of persons can be recognised as expression and it has more general effect towards society than the limited sense of the word. Although it may be better to use the word in its limited sense in discussing the topics of freedom of expression so that the arguments align with others, it is written in a wider sense so that this indicates the wider link with the general life of persons. Expression is required to change the present state. It is not merely conscious expression but also unconsciously one expresses based on what they perceived. The unconscious reaction is contained in the category of expression, contrary to action which is, not always but, more conscious behaviour.

In terms of the interaction with the world they live in, people’s behaviours are related to the past ones. Things put in the world by the present or past members of community are used. A number of agents involved in a person change the direction of their behaviour. If one has met an admirable person, one’s activities after that may have been greatly influenced. Intangible rules by which people spend their life are accumulation of the past experiences, in other words they are lessons from the past to live a better life for coming generations.

Context could be recognised as accumulation of actions. Person’s action is connected to the context. When one moves their right leg forward to move ahead, it should be accepted if that is to go to a grocery store, but if that is to do wrongdoing, people who noticed it would stop him. The same action can have different context.

Action moves the reality to a certain direction. It can be described as the power to push and the power to pull of context: the former is to expand the sphere progressively which applies to activism, even if it is unconventional, one attempts to expand the frontier; the latter is to pull the edge of the sphere back inside which is more conservative and a resistance to the unconventional action taken by another. Apart from the manipulation of sphere, pulling has another sense that is to pull new things into the norm as such that pulling an interesting cultural product of another country to their own. Also, some sets of norm disappear as time passes by in some cases.

Persons’ action is connected to community, and its norms. In community, it has certain stream of thoughts such as conservative, liberal, globalism, and nationalism. When some group of more globalism moves the norm of their society towards globalism, other group of more nationalism or anti-globalism would pull the norm back to their own end so that the norm of their society doesn’t get diverted that much from what they recognise acceptable. Towards the direction that one prefers, they make action of one’s view. It is also a matter of how society architectures the way in which the reaction caused by one’s action is flowed. For example, in terms of expression, the platforms may create the structure that prevents the spread of misinformation. Restricting every direction is too restrictive and doesn’t progress the society. The early progress of human rights culture has been fostered by the human rights activists who unconventionally questioned the norms that had been oppressing the minorities and the rights of women, for example. The human rights advocates who think the violation of the rights of certain groups of people are not right, they make protests or start movement towards its change. Though there are cases that need to be advocated for the development of society even if that is different from the conventional norms, one needs to be careful of whether it truly has benefits to the public.

If try to go beyond conventional norm, there should be certain public benefit. If one goes against the conventional norm, just violating the dignity of persons harms the society. Society changes over the history with the demand from the citizenry to change the wrong aspect of society in which they live in. It had been taken for granted for some time that “The smallest acquaintance with human life in the middle ages, shows how supremely natural the dominion of the feudal nobility over men of low condition appeared to the nobility themselves, and how unnatural the conception seemed, of a person of the inferior class claiming equality with them, or exercising authority over them”(2). The less powerful positions of certain groups of people such as racial groups or women and the activism to protect their rights and dignity is the examples that some asserted the wrong norms prevalent in previous ages and tried to correct it.

People’s speech is limited by the context, against which some try to expand the sphere of speech. If that is radical, often they cause backlash. Those who speak of what is different from the conventional of society are often criticised. Their publications are tried to be suspended. A shared norm is to work to dislike a certain sort of behaviour. Where justice is too strong, once one happened to have unjust one, even if it is slightly unjust from what has been in the history, one may commit the disappearance of oneself if noticed the deadlock of one’s situation. Justice narrows acceptable conduct. It feels a certain progress coming out of the human rights culture and advocation of justice by liberals, it has been moving towards the good direction. In the meantime, how society with the progress and implantation of the concept handles the deeds which is a bit diverted from justice.

People experience and learn the custom of their society, weaving the threads of custom towards the ideal point which is changeable over time. If radically try to change it, it collides with those who do not agree. One may say that to the extent that doesn’t offend the dignity of another, one can challenge going beyond the present paradigm. In the plain state, when people take actions such as speaking, if not offending they can exercise their power to that direction. The standard is based on the present life circumstance, which means the plain state of plus minus zero at each time, though it is a continual thread of history.

Beyond activism, there’s a choice that one chooses not to express though one can express the view to the public. The choice is because, for example, one can imagine that expressing as one wants is offensive to certain groups of people. People often find the necessity to make action in a certain way. If it is societally obvious to hurt the feelings of others, it would be better to think about the publicness of that publication.

Oppression is attempted to oppress the actions, by which more and more power is charged at the bottom of the oppressed. Not everything is straight, but some are twisted. Distortions in society can cause that sort of twist in society itself, that can get unleashed unexpectedly. They are absorbed as distortions in persons which in spiral causes distortion in others.

(1) Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 161. In the page that Waldron talks about C. Edwin Baker.

(2) John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and The Subjection of Women (London: Penguin, 2006), p.145.

3.2.2 Context

Looking at objects from different context is often seen. One of them is that in humanities, people reinterpret the old works written by authors who wrote them in different social context. Even, to quote some passage from other authors’ works are to pull the sentences, and often context, of another and to connect it to the writing of one’s own.

The difference of language is not limited to the case of, for example, English and French. It also includes the case that even if they both speak English, if what they have in their background is different what they mean by using the same kind of words is different. Word is a box in which one can put the meaning into it.

The difference of context can be explained by the plus and quus functions. These functions were explained by Kripke. He described that a person, who has “never performed” the “computation” of “68+57” but has computed others in the past whose “numbers smaller than 57”, responded the answer of “68+57” is “125”(3). He meets another person who claims that the answer “should have been ‘5’!”, and suggests the misinterpretation(4).

Context changes over time in terms of social surroundings including norms, technology, and the changing characters of persons.

Depending on context, the meaning of a word changes.

Apart from the societal view, in individual view, context partly consists of one’s philosophy. As one reread the same book which they have read before, they may notice a new finding which they haven’t got in the previous reading because of their changing character and thoughts over time. Also, one can point out the wrong of another, the person told can recognise it but may not fully understand at the moment in their mind and may understand when their surroundings changed.

Some people come to become stubborn when getting older that is because they are surrounded by solid context from their past experiences. Their views are more fixed than when they were younger, having more factors that underpin them.

People do not talk to the person in front of them especially when they first meet. They talk with people of similar category they have met before. Categorisation and what is required to be said is processed in themselves. People change what they talk, imagining what is in necessity there. That is to say that they presuppose those who listen to it. Humour is in part what kind of speech you make towards a given context.

Whether one recognise it is a lie or not depends on the circumstance. Lying is often perceived negatively, however in some case it also is recognised as not merely negative, that is to say whose case is not able to be just condemned as the action of lying. Lying has arbitrariness in the expression. It is not simple failure or success, lying is different. Deception is intendedly to play different linguistic game between them. In addition, whether what one talked is perceived as arrogant or not depends on what the receiver thinks.

Take the meaning of words superficially, and claim that what it is written becomes an excuse in some cases. It attempts to take advantage of literal sense. The word “literally” is used because people often do not use the word literally.

In the societal perspective, a case is that interpretation of constitution changes depending on the time it is read. Around constitutional issue, in the late 18^th century in which US needed to abolish the Articles of Confederation to have the new Constitution in place, their basis on that move was what’s written in the Declaration of Independence that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness”(1). The “rule was valid not because it was found in some authoritative rule book, but because it had become taken for granted by the Framers’ generation. Not by everybody, but by enough”(2). This rule is not likely to be accepted as valid in a different age, and demonstrates the relationship with social surrounding.

As social surroundings change, technological advancement such as computer enabled the rapid spread of information from one place to another. It can be spread in a moment, and peoples’ expressions are abundant in the lives of persons.

The negative aspects also need to be paid attention to. The problem of disinformation is one of them, which is also a problem of informational structure of how to manage the flows of information on the platforms. Besides, when speech is globalised, peoples of different contexts face each other. Compared with the previous ages, it is more likely for different peoples to interact each other with less context shared. It in some cases is beneficial to the development of some intelligence as such that scientific discovery can be shared rapidly in a global world through the communication tools, though some conflicts also arise.

While I feel that it is necessary to spend time in updating the policies put in place in our community, even if we (try to) erase hate speech from public places such as the walls that we see in a city or town, the prejudices or hate which at least partly are the cause of hate speech doesn’t get disappeared from society. In this respect too, the necessity to look at the inner part of oneself to cultivate their compassion towards others is required. Especially, the feeling of what if I were in that position is an essence for having this value in society.

The true creates the context. A true philosopher makes people aware of the important ideas or perspectives in their society, some of which they were even not aware of. Then, they make a history of ideas.

Footnotes

(1) Lawrence Lessig, Fidelity & Constraint: How the Supreme Court Has Read the American Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp.12-13.

(2) Lawrence Lessig, Fidelity & Constraint: How the Supreme Court Has Read the American Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), p.14.

(3) Saul A. Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1982), p.8.

(4) Saul A. Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1982), pp.8-9.

3.2.1 Context

What I would like to emphasise is that the difference of context or background among different groups of people causes the confrontation in a society. When it comes to the debates around the topic of freedom of expression, I do believe that the context of expression is what should be paid attention to more. In order to progress the debates in this domain, I make my argument on the context of expression. That is because what people perceive from an expression differs, if they have different backgrounds. In other words, if context differs, even if the expression is the same, what people perceive from the expression could differ. Besides, even if both persons claim the same argument, if what each experienced in their life is different, it could be different. This is a complex aspect of expression, but it is worth being taken into account provided that this aspect of expression causes tension among different groups of people in a society.

In a society of large population, there is a variety of people with different background. Of the limited time one has spent, they are not likely to imagine all the patterns of situation which persons in the same community face. Even the number of people crossing boundary of nation-states is enormous. In that situation, regarding the interpretation of an object, it could vary by each person. The community of larger scale is difficult to maintain compared with the smaller one as in the larger community it is more likely that what each person believes could differ and they often organise their own group that they share the same purpose, and others organise their own groups that the purposes are different.

Those groups could in some extreme cases are going to be a divide in a national scale. One of the particularly important differences among people is what happiness means to each member of the community. Some would seek the wealth of capital that maximises their happiness with abundant materials in their life, others would not feel happiness from that type of wealth and they rather feel happy when they spend their time in calmer way such as being surrounded by nature. In addition, when community is larger, there are different groups of people with different background emerges, these are represented by educational, geographical background. The latter geographical background means that the difference of geography has different culture in one’s background. Some culture is tied with the geographical factors such as abundance of nature or what has happened in a particular place and how it affected in the region over time and how the effect remains today. Where one was raised and spent his life so far, and that is sort of time and place matter affects the context in which one lives. Plus, the different living standards, that is different living conditions, such as the income would little by little differentiate the interests of people living in the same nation-state. There are different units as a globe, a continent, a nation-state, a province, etc. It depends on to what extent they would like to govern the region, but if it gets larger the more difficult to implement a kind of law which has legal and illegal distinction given the differences in each scale of community.

It would be much easier to refrain from having conflicts if the community is small and homogenous as it is with the people seeking the similar interests. However as the world is globalised in a sense that development of transportation system and information became available to huge number of people living on the earth and securing the freedom to choose the way they want to live, at least some in the world moves to the direction that the flow of persons into other communities and diversity in a community needs to be tolerated rather than enclosing the communities.

In the complex world where a vast number of persons look at the same expression, it is viewed by those who have different contexts. When controversy occurs, the different contexts have been claimed by different peoples. Even if different context among people may cause conflict, the difference doesn’t justify the restriction on freedom. It is because in ultimate sense every individual has different context of their own, and nobody is able to express if that restriction is put in place.

Around dispute on freedom of expression, it often seems that there’s group of people who feels uncomfortable by the expressions of another group. The latter group claims that they have their right or freedom to express it. These disputes are often seen in the topic of belief. There’s a different degree of importance in one’s life that some may have deeply been rooted in person’s identity and others are less related. If an emperor of a country is who has been receiving beliefs from the public over the decades, it is more likely to cause anger when some expression hurts the feelings of the public.

Even if the publisher claims the freedom of expression on the one hand, the perception or opinion of another is different, and it often seems that each side has the different context. Fundamentally, the contexts of persons are different depending on them as each has different experience in their life linked with when and how one has spent their life so far. It has inevitably to do with the physical world in which one has lived. The geographic and timely factors are tied to oneself. This is what is related to the idea of the reality, people are in the different positions, that is why different views arise.

Paving the context is seen in art and museum. The curation of art in a museum is an important element in the exhibition as it is how the works are presented towards the audience. It is how they provide the context to the audience.

On sensitive issues such as the ones related to their history, the same opinion uttered by a person of one nationality is perceived differently if that is uttered by another person of different nationality.

3.1 Expression

People express their emotion, views, opinions, and so forth with their friends, parents, and others. Expressing at least in some cases removes the complexity of the world in human recognition. It emphasises some parts of the world, which are included in the expression, and others are not. It is key for the receiver how to perceive the expression whether they also think of the unexpressed parts to what extent.

Communication can tell another more than what one supposed to tell if another has more knowledge or imagination in it. When one talks about a certain thing, another could interpret the meaning different from what one had intended.

One of the important propositions in thinking about communication is the “notion of holistic proto-language” — the alarm calls of vervet monkeys, according to Alison Wray, “should be compared with complete messages rather than with individual words in human language”, and “holistic” means “no internal structure” and “never combined with any other vocalization to form a multi-component message”(1). Voice changes based on the sentiment that speaker feels(2).

Experience, or what people sensed in their life, fulfils words. It is often said that as people get older people get sympathetic. That is presumably because of the accumulation of experience in their life. Even if they watch a part of a film they can see their closer experience in it or can feel that situation more realistically.

People come to have the ability to use language. It is a matter of how people use their ability to distinguish. It is to tell the difference. Adding words in a publication is to limit the context in general, however using abstract words sometimes opens up the context.

When it comes to languages such as English, they tend to precisely specify the objects that it refers to and a sentence can be divided into further smaller parts.

Letters such as A of alphabet have generality(3). The letter A “of the Phoenician alphabet” “plausibly” comes from “a head of ox”, later it became generalised to “represent” the widest reach of the sound(4). This generality makes possible that different persons communicate via letters. At the standpoint of using the medium, it is possible to communicate, however in more profound sense, what persons interpret from them can differ.

The information also tries to be borderless by translation. The threshold became lower but previously it was chosen by those who engage in translation and who speak different languages by which information cross border.

To write a larger volume of texts takes time, compared with the short text of 200 words, for instance. A long text, which is a book of 200 pages, is presumably written by an author who was at their desk for many hours to write a book, before publishing as a book it in addition goes through the publishing company and its editor. In contrast, a shorter text can be written without careful consideration and it may be spent just a few minutes to be published, or it may be written by spending a few hours during which the author spent their time in choosing the words carefully. By having the Internet available, barriers to send/receive a writing became removed.

Being unable to use metaphor makes expression poor. And where they cannot make their expression in long length, they would have to shorten their expression though they may be aware that it could be interpreted in a variety of ways.

Nuance of an expression is delicate. Manipulate it to spread in a negative way or it was spread by accident in a negative way happens. In the age where rapid spread of information is possible by for example social media, the spread of the sort described above is instantly possible.

If words they encounter are difficult to understand, they don’t try to care about the order of words unless they are intellectual or enthusiastic. The use of words, how it is constructed sometimes are looked with attention unconsciously or consciously.

In typical cases, most people cannot endure the moment that one talks to another person, but the latter in conversation doesn’t respond to them. The conversation from another triggers one to respond to. In case of writing, this binding is weaker as it can be remote or distant.

There is a variety of aspects which arise from speech and expression, it includes historical revisionism. In the pandemic started worldwide around 2020, a negative phenomenon of information called infodemic took place, and the years around then more particularly in US context, how to deal with conspiracy was in dispute as well. Dating back further, in 2016, the word post-truth was in trend, and Oxford Dictionaries recognised it “as its 2016 international word of the year”(5).

As regards the privacy of persons, there are magazines which publish the photos or articles on the private life of those who are well known to the public. Apart from the misconducts, and the similar sort of wrongdoings, revealing the private aspect of persons even if their professions are publicly visible ones undermine the privacy of those targeted people.

With regard to the ethics of persons, even if one put in emphasis one’s freedom, how to speak and present needs to be taken into consideration with one’s ethics. If works supposed to be presented is likely to have inflammatory aspect, whether it will really work for the public good needs to be discussed in advance.

Verbal attack on dignity of others by expression causes a conflict among peoples. Enemy of dignity is, as literally means, perceived by recipient as what they express offends their dignity. When receiver of the expression felt their dignity is offended, unless they are convinced by the explanation of expressor that it is not intended so, it has the risk of dividing groups of people, and it would be better for the expressor to think about what kind of public benefit it has. In other cases, for example, media often publish the information which is not favourable to authorities. However, it endeavours to have the public benefits in it and it is perceived often as an opponent of argument.

By expression, people can damage the dignity. As a supplementary framework, offending dignity is judged as negative as people of different contexts collide. In this sense, despots should not oppress the citizens as it offends the dignity. Racial discrimination that causes unfair judgement on certain groups of people is not tolerable.

Footnotes

(1) Steven Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body, first Harvard University Press paperback ed. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007), p.109. Steven Mithen mentioned the concept of holistic proto-language by Alison Wray.

(2) This sentence is written by being influenced by p.102 of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essai sur l’origine des langues (Paris: GF Flammarion, 1993).

(3) Henri Bergson, Histoire de l’idée de temps: Cours au Collège de France 1902-1903 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2016). Particularly p.38.

(4) Henri Bergson, Histoire de l’idée de temps: Cours au Collège de France 1902-1903 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2016). Particularly p.38.

(5) ”Post-truth’ declared word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries’, BBC, published 16 November 2016, accessed May 15, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-37995600. The original text is bold, which is removed in this writing.

2.3 Freedom of expression

The importance of freedom of expression stands out as persons express their opinions or thoughts via expression to try to convey them from one to another. It also plays the role of expressing oneself towards their society. Giving utterance of certain opinions in public space sometimes makes others feel uncomfortable, especially in sensitive topics such as beliefs. Even when others feel this uncomfortableness, whether freedom of expression needs to be exercised to what extent is questionable. Of course, freedom of expression and speech is one of the indispensables, but should it truly be said that since everyone has the freedom of expression and it has to be protected, one can say anything one wants?

In order to protect the public interest, one can think that speech is subject to restriction. There’s been a discussion on the legal restriction of harmful kind such as hate speech. This is to implement regulation in society, which is what I consider as environmental perspective in the respect that policies regulating hate speech is placed outside human beings and try to secure safer environment for all groups of people in a community.

The world has been moving towards protecting the right to speech and express one’s opinion. On the protection of human rights, it often refers to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among the descriptions, freedom of expression is mentioned in the article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”(1). Among the articles of the Declaration which are devoted to protect the rights in universal scale, it is written as above that each one has the right to express their opinion.

From constitutional and conventional point of view, rights and freedom are not allowed unconditionally to be exercised. Some “constitutions acknowledge that basic rights, including freedom of expression, are legitimately subject to restriction”(2). Also, the article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights has the description that it “may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety”(3), and the article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that “Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law”(4).

While looking at the topic of free speech, in the US context, it is mentioned that “the First Amendment has a large cultural presence”(5). Among the amendments of the US constitution, the First Amendment is known as being related to freedom of speech: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”(6). The US has unique free speech culture which is defined in one of their constitutional amendments.

Freedom is one of the most important spheres that needs to be protected. In a society where diverse peoples live in, their different customs and preferences are not tolerated in the narrower sphere. Society cannot help but to see incidents and events happening in it, where people of different interests live together. Even if some people claim the importance of freedom of expression when an incident happens in their society, it is not regarded in the same way by other group of people. In this sense, the difference of context is what should be paid attention to more, or shared concept in communication among people. Shared sense can at least partly achieved by education or other means of communication.

Discourse wasn’t open before as we had some barrier of for example language and distance. After the emergence of the Internet, as regards language barrier, it can be easily translated by using some application on computer. The distance between persons is now virtually able to be close even if they are physically distant which causes conflict between persons. People living in far distant area face each other on the Internet causes conflict in some issues, if not facing that isn’t caused. Freedom and its characteristics of being contingent with others necessitate the feeling for others, but to what extent it is possible to presuppose those who see, from the standpoint of those who express is a further point of discussion.

Freedom one owns is the number and the width of the paths in which one acts. In the perspective of the architecture in which the access to expression is ensured among the citizenry, “Access to means of expression is in many cases a necessary condition for participation in the political process of the country”(7).

While noting the importance of securing the access to political participation, whether the restriction on the expression of citizens in the case of harmful speech should be tolerated is a matter which needs to be taken into consideration. Regarding hate speech, some promote the restriction on it, others do not welcome restriction.

From the perspective of the legitimacy of political decisions and the restriction on expression, one of the arguments is the legitimacy argument. Dworkin claimed that “if we intervene too soon in the process through which collective opinion is formed, we spoil the only democratic justification we have for insisting that everyone obey these laws, even those who hate and resent them”(8). On this argument, it is explained that “legislation that forbids one side from expressing its opinion to the public—its opinion, for instance, that blacks are inferior creatures who should be sent back to Africa—destroys that fairness. It deprives us of our right to enforce laws against those who have been denied a fair opportunity to make a case against their enactment”(9).

On the restriction of speech, what’s been in dispute is whether speech which is affecting negatively others should be tolerated or not. That is the case of hate speech or discriminating speech against certain groups of people. There are people on the side that any restriction on speech damages the legitimacy of democracy, on the other hand, restriction on the hate speech is inevitable given the negative effect on their community.

Even if the ways through which some can utter their discriminating speech to other racial group are prohibited by law, as far as other ways in which the access to express is secured for the citizens — citizens don’t have to use aggressive words towards others to claim their opinions —, it differs from the situation of the oppression of speech imposed on them. One is able to choose the way in which they speak of what they want to tell to another. It can be an offensive words or softened words depending on the way in which they speak. It is problematic that one intentionally chooses the offensive words to insult others, it has the cases that some unintentionally used words which the listener felt offensive. Given the harm that discriminating speech causes, the blockage of the path of that sort of speech can often be tolerated by those who advocate restriction on hate speech. However, it needs the consideration of the impact which restricting the expression of hate speech causes in relation to others before putting it in place. The problem of hate speech in society damages the dignity of people such as certain racial group. On dignity, while Waldron said that his use of the word “is not just a philosophical conception of immeasurable worth in (say) the Kantian sense of würde”(10), he views that “It is a matter of status—one’s status as a member of society in good standing—and it generates demands for recognition and for treatment that accords with that status”(11).

The argument of ensuring assurance in community has positive effect to some extent while the matter of how one perceives the symbols remains. In terms of “assurance”(12) which hate speech “aims to dispel the sense of assurance that we attempt to provide for one another, a sense of assurance that constitutes the social upholding of individual dignity”(13), the speech of the kind unstabilise the society. The “dignity-based assurance is a public good provided to all by all, and that unlike the benefit of street lighting it cannot be provided by a central utility”(14). The cooperation by each member in a community to create the environment in which their dignity is assured is an ideal democratic atmosphere it promotes. Apart from legal restriction, not always one has to exercise one’s right to express. People can choose not to say by having the freedom at their hand based on their rational decision.

To create the space that is secure for freedom of expression is the accumulation of efforts and could be accomplished, gradually expanding it.

Freedom of expression and art is what should be discussed. For example, for arts audience can interpret works in many ways. It enables people to take time in thinking about the contexts and the concepts. It is one of the interesting aspects of art that viewer enjoy thinking about the works profoundly and they may notice the different opinions from their first impressions. At the time of first glimpse, the information on the work that one has is limited, thinking of the background in the work, the viewer can expand the imagination on it and they may change their opinion. Also, at the beginning, what audience feel from the work is influenced by their previous life experience. It could be uncomfortable for some groups of people who visited to see it. Especially art works sometimes send their message sharply towards the world.

Having said above, it is agreed that freedom of expression should be protected. Securing places that artists can share their works and audience can get the opportunity to see them would enrich the experiences they can get in community. However, always claiming that it is one’s right to express sometimes deepens the confrontation with the groups of people who have different opinions.

The oppression on the speech of people have been historically what we have been caring for. It still is an important topic, but in liberal democratic societies where higher percentage of people share the common recognition that freedom of speech and expression should be protected, it may become a different level that one would be better to care about others as well.

In addition to the environmental perspective that, is located outside oneself, one implement and revise the policies put in practice in society, the inner part of oneself is what should be paid attention to.

Footnotes

(1) ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, United Nations, accessed 25 January 2023, https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights.

(2) Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 13.

(3) ‘European Convention on Human Rights’, European Court of Human Rights, accessed 4 February 2023, https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf. François Héran refers to the same article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights in pp.12-13 of his book François Héran, Lettre aux professeurs sur la liberté d’expression, (Paris: La Découverte, 2021).

(4) ‘International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights’, OHCHR, accessed 9 February 2023, https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights. Jeremy Waldron (2014) refers to the same article 20(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in p.29 of his book Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014).

(5) Cass R. Sunstein, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media, paperback ed. (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018), p. 196.

(6) ‘Constitution of the United States’, Library of Congress, accessed December 9, 2023, https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/.

(7) T. M. Scanlon, The Difficulty of Tolerance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 22.

(8) Ronald Dworkin, ‘Foreword’, in Extreme Speech and Democracy, edited by Ivan Hare and James Weinstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p.viii.

(9) Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), pp. 177-178. Waldron describes the legitimacy argument by Ronald Dworkin.

(10) Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 60.

(11) Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), p.60.

(12) Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014).

(13) Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 166.

(14) Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 97.