3.2.7 On norm

People live in the narrow world. Norm is in ordinary state what people often are not aware of, or it is not what they take time and think about it carefully in their life. However, they sometimes notice that it was inconvenient, for example. In daily life, many citizens are not aware of the ceiling, some go beyond that framework, but those people described as some are limited in a few. In order to be against the stringent norm, to create a culture first with limited community towards their society is a way to spread their opinions. Historically, there are times in which people live in the world of narrow norm. Even one may live in the world of narrow norm at present. Some opinion suggests that over the centuries people come to live in the narrow norm, with things established as civilisation is built up. On the other hand, there are things that one cannot talk in one epoch, but later in another epoch those can be talked with less conflict. Even if it causes tension among people, there would be times in which for the progress of civilisation, one would have to claim for public benefit.

In the case of emergency in society, the pressure on the urgent needs narrows the sphere of tolerance. This sudden decreased tolerance often weeps out the existing values except the ones the society recognise as important at the moment. In other words, limited number of values comes to dominate society with the sphere of freedom narrow. Other values than a few of domination tend to be underestimated or ignored. It often has a force of excluding freedom and the number of people who care about freedom also decreases. If certain period of time, what has been unusual and unacceptable is forced to be put in practice, some may recognise that it is the ordinary. Not only the effect that changes are infiltrated into society consciously or unconsciously, people do forget what has been ordinary.

People sometimes say that if they get older it gets more difficult to develop their abilities than they were child. That is presumably because they become more established when getting old. Their personal norm is more established. They have a variety of factors surrounding them based on their history. If they can break the established factors apart, they can make their own way less restricted by their past establishment. They can develop their abilities unrestrictively, if without being surrounded by it. Sometimes, people are obsessed by the conventional knowledge that they got in the past. It may hider their progress.

The world history as a whole may have been on the path of progress, it is on the way of progress by breaking through the established history of themselves — in the meantime it also has been creating success on top of the wisdoms built up by the previous generations.

The divided preference, from which channel they get information, create different social groups. If people spend more in what they are interested in, they become more divided into specific domains. If society is divided and what their mainstream media covers is also divided, what people in the society believes in is also separate in two opposite positions. Americans’ trust towards media became lower as described that “Forty-five percent of Americans say there is a ‘a great deal’ of political bias in news coverage (up from 25 percent in 1989)”(1).

While maintaining the potential of diversity, it is beneficial to secure the places where people of different domains can interact. Diversity, in one sense, leads to the broader sphere in which people live in. The actual experiences that people regularly visit a place or are based on their custom create powerful intimacy which is more physical sense rather than theory.

Although it is important to have discussion in terms of whether hate speech should be regulated by law or not since legal aspect in society is one of the significant domains, discussion from other perspectives provides another insight on this issue and deepens discussion.

There’s been a discussion whether we should restrict certain kind of speech such as hate speech. Discussion on the policies is what is here regarded as environmental one. Considering the balancing of regulation in society, that is to what degree it implements regulation on expression, given the nature of contingency of freedom. This characteristic that freedom is not absolute makes it necessary to think about others in exercising freedom including freedom of expression. The necessity to care about others prevents the abuse of exercising one’s freedom and rights. Even though there’s a value that we should protect freedom and rights, it should not support that we can utter anything based on the freedom of expression we have. In order to balance this relationship between one’s freedom and its contingency upon others, the development of sentimentality is proposed. This development of sentiment underpins the part of oneself to think about others.

The way of governance is not limited to only law but also social norms exist in society. Beyond legal framework which is law, norm exists in a society. Regulation is not only laws, but also norms are. One doesn’t have to construct society only by the border between legal and illegal. Some sphere in between there, or other factors are to introduce flexibility to that regulation, norm is one besides law.

If societal norms are too restrictive, it has oppressive effect. In the meantime, the stability in a society comes from maintaining norm. Education has an effect in creating shared norm among citizens by which society maintains stability. However, it is a matter of balancing and it would be better not to leaning towards one end. For instance, securing the sphere of freedom absorbs the stresses among citizens, not always we should bind ourselves by norm. Additionally saying, norm doesn’t have to be the one which is standardised, it can be taken for granted that diverse standards coexist in a society.

Education is a type of activity that educator gives a framework to students. How students are evaluated is based on the frame of the previous generations. Evaluation in a educational course is just to look at a limited aspect of student. If students strive to get better grade, they get themselves adapted to the criteria, but not necessarily all people have to move that way. It often has potential in unevaluated areas. It may not be inevitable for evaluators to set the criteria, but sharing that the potential of each person is not limited to how they are judged by educational institution, exams, or company makes difference.

In the context of media, Japanese society (or at least those who are more in the position of activism) focused on the self-censorship of media in especially the second half of 2010s. The focus on media was partly from the aspect of freedom of the press. Through this period, the citizens in Japan on the Internet, came to recognise this media tradition and got frustrated. The traditional norm got influenced through the accumulation of voices among citizens feeling the negativeness of this situation. Since the voices among citizens were visible on the Internet, it was presumably sensed by those who work in media industry. Through not just media’s self-censorship topic but also other old structural topics in society, the norm slightly changed towards the first half or the middle of 2020s that people tend to more criticise, for example people inside the mass media such as newsreader speaks critical view towards their own company in news programme when their company was to blame.

The restrictiveness of norm depends on country. Where a country has more conservatively been built, it is narrower than other countries. Japan’s narrow norm puts people into a thin frame, compared with Europe which has wider norm. Japanese society is conservative, stable and so forth. Its norm is more shared within the entire society. That may be the cause of less progress of the country. Japanese society has been having 空気, and it has been recognised with importance at least among some people in the past(2).

The Japanese word “空気” isn’t what we can see, and the kinds of it aren’t distingushable clearly. It is what the places and persons there create, but not necessarily the contribution deriving from their positive actions but rather even passively created in some cases. That is to say, for instance, if people in a society don’t take action and stay calm for a while, that also becomes the norm.

(1) ‘Public trust in the media is at an all-time low. Results from a major new Knight-Gallup report can help us understand why‘, Knight Foundation, published 16 January 2018, accessed 4 February 2024, https://medium.com/trust-media-and-democracy/10-reasons-why-americans-dont-trust-the-media-d0630c125b9e. This sentence is also cited in Mark R. Levin, Unfreedom of the Press (New York: Threshold Editions, 2019), p.12. First Threshold Editions hardcover edition.

(2) One of the persons that focused on it is Shichihei Yamamoto. 山本七平, 「空気」の研究 (東京: 文春文庫, 2018). 新装版.

4.2 Sentiment

What one perceives from the symbols of language needs to be focused, and it is how one’s mind recognise the expressions. Sentiment is related to how persons understand expressions. There would be necessity to care about the appearance and form of expression to be used among persons, but caring about the form of expression with excessive attention would put too much focus on it, and deploying only the care of appearance into society doesn’t solve the issues completely.

Over the history of language, it became less “passioned” and focused on “reason”, exactness, and clarity(1). The “progress” of “the lettered languages” results in the “progress” of “the grammar and the logic”, they also become “cold” and “monotone”(2).

From music to language, the former is more abstract and the latter focuses on the small meaning, the current human beings became able to identify the small parts. Abstractness has more adaptability. Music is more abstract than language. Music is abundance of information. It enriches the sentimentality. There are what are difficult to be speechable, but felt by persons.

The concept of sentiment becomes more important to think about the interaction with others. The globalised world enabled to interact with people of different backgrounds, and sometimes not necessarily we share each other the context of people we interact, which includes the custom, religion, ideology, and others. Sentiment is a concept worth discussing, in order to understand each other in our deeper part as I don’t think it is possible to understand enough the cases of different custom, religion, ideology, and so on to communicate with others given the limit of time in our life. That is to say that we need to cultivate the deeper sphere of ourselves that can go beyond the differences which could cause conflict among different groups of people. Sentiment is a primary aspect of human beings profoundly rooted in ourselves.

Apart from the environmental factors such as policies in society, I regard how one understands an expression and why one expresses hate speech as being related to one’s internal state within oneself. By cultivating the internal aspect of oneself, I try to tackle the problem of hate speech. This is the basis of referring to the concept of sentiment which is the internal aspect of oneself and if sentiment is developed I presume it is less likely for hate speech to occur as those who with the developed sentiment take into consideration within oneself what the receiver of the expression would feel.

Around 19^th and 20^th centuries “are most easily understood not as a period of deepening understanding of the nature of rationality or of morality, but rather as one in which there occurred an astonishingly rapid progress of sentiments, in which it has become much easier for us to be moved to action by sad and sentimental stories”(3). This sentiment lets people contemplate from others’ perspectives, and they think of others’ circumstances in their standpoints. As of the middle of 19^th century, “We are entering into an order of things in which justice will again be the primary virtue; grounded as before on equal, but now also on sympathetic association; having its root no longer in the instinct of equals for self-protection, but in a cultivated sympathy between them”(4).

The kind of sentimental education is as follows. This kind of education uses a story that puts a person to the situation of others and it lets them to imagine what others would feel in the circumstance. In his writing, Richard Rorty described that “to answer the much more frequently posed question ‘Why should I care about a stranger, a person who is no kin to me, a person whose habits I find disgusting?’”(5), “A better sort of answer is the sort of long, sad, sentimental story that begins, ‘Because this is what it is like to be in her situation – to be far from home, among strangers,’ or ‘Because she might become your daughter-in-law,’ or ‘Because her mother would grieve for her.’”(6). This type of sentimental stories puts the person, in the case above the person who asked the first question, into taking into account the situations of others. The importance of “sentimental education” is that it “gets people of different kinds sufficiently well acquainted with one another that they are less tempted to think of those different from themselves as only quasi-human”(7). The growth of sentiment is expected to be, for example, from watching films which nourish empathy among persons. Stories are often what different episode focuses on different person. It enables viewers to be in the different viewpoint which the featured person is put in. This letting people to be in the place of another is to lessen the solid standpoint of oneself.

Sentimental education is related to the development of persons in society whose life is too limited to understand the different cultures and customs of other groups of people. Even though persons are mortal, societal architecture which could foster the growing of persons could contribute to the better society where less expression of hatred occurs. Also having the viewpoints of different persons are useful to make a more sensible judgement than having only one. People’s sentiment plays a supplementary role to buffer the intensity of conflicts among people which unshared information causes. It is to lessen the tension among people.

One of the roles of arts is to develop sentimentality in oneself. At least a certain people need to have the grown sentimentality which makes enough to overcome the hardships. Anime or novels are type of works which foster the development of sentiment. The inward of oneself can surpass the reality, and brings benefits such as resilience to society.

With regard to the scale of population, sentiment works to maintain community. If the community gets larger and so do their population, the complexity increases. The intervention of sentimental education creates the core of compassion. In the larger society, people are not much aware of the detailed situations of some group as the number of groups in a community also increased. The intervention is more required in larger community than smaller where one’s ability to picture the situations of others works relatively easier since the difference of circumstances is more limited. The complexity is related to the number of agents in a community, and the community’s paths of information.

The form of language could exhibit its beauty to the world, however the phenomenon of promoting political correctness at the beginning of 21^st century seems that it is promoted to avoid the conflicts among people stemming from the appearance of words which is offensive. It narrows the sphere in which the kinds of words are acceptable. Not only abusive words, words of certain connotation which has possibility of being perceived as politically incorrect are also refrained from being used. How people perceive is related to how people use words including political correctness. Sentimentality is a way to expand the sphere of language to deal with the narrowness of the speech sphere.

Speaker needs to think of how it would be perceived by audience in the meantime audience think of the context in which speaker expressed that way. Sentimentality works towards both speaker and listener and other audience: the first mentioned is to imagine how one’s expression influences towards listener and other audience in society; the second is to understand the essential part of expression not being just influenced by the superficial meaning of the expression one is facing, what is the core of the expression; the third is related to how other people in the community react to a certain expression, which is a large part in how the expression is perceived by the community. What cultivation of sentimentality means is that it creates the soil on which one perceives things in the world, that is to say the preliminary attachment of information before one perceives symbols. When one sees the discriminatory expression by others, the preattached information which grows sentiment in oneself affects the position one takes to that behaviour. It is a perspective of what peoples have in common before seeing expression, and sentimentality could be the one. At the moment one sees the symbols written by others, the symbols themselves have vast amount of discarded information such as what factors led them to write those on the material. The viewers with enriched sentimentality perceive it with one’s sentimentality by referring to the present social situations or possible backgrounds.

Combined with the development of sentiment in oneself, the principle of the Golden Rule is worth looking at. The Rule suggests that one should “treat others as you would like to be treated”(8). The Rule encourages people to think about their own actions in the perspective of others. The Golden Rule has practical aspect which is closer to lives of persons. Apart from the theories which are abundant with jargon, the Golden Rule is closer with its practical aspect. Against this Rule, although one may claim that I don’t feel annoyed by the way I treat you, even if one doesn’t feel annoyed, one should take into consideration that another presumably would feel annoyed. Understanding the probability of others feeling offended is an element to keep in mind.

In terms of hate speech, understanding the position of persons who receive hate speech is necessary for people to understand its negativity. Even if we intensify the regulation in the public space, for example to implement the laws that are to give stricter penalties to those who did hate speech or erase more eagerly hate speech from the walls in public space as well as on online platforms while focusing on the regulation, this type of regulation doesn’t guarantee the disappearance of hate speech in society. It just tried to make it disappear from visible space, but hate would just move to different places and would remain in less visible places such less popular online sites. This signifies the importance of understanding the negativity of hate speech more profoundly in one’s mind. Given this nature, the importance of the development in one’s mind is emphasised.

If adding more words to the topic of hate speech, apart from the cases that it is obvious to everyone the speech is recognised as a hate to certain group of people, there would be cases that is not easy to recognise whether it is hate speech or not. Regarding expression, it is not always clear to distinguish it as hate or not. Cultivation of sentiment is to supplement the ambiguous nature of expression by nurturing the inner sphere in oneself.

Political correctness is a tendency that people are required to care about the form of language and use the correct words regarded by the world. If we look at the form of words, some words are not societally accepted at present though it was used decades ago.

(1) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essai sur l’origine des langues (Paris: GF Flammarion, 1993), p.68.

(2) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essai sur l’origine des langues (Paris: GF Flammarion, 1993), p.79.

(3) Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p.185.

(4) John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and The Subjection of Women (London: Penguin, 2006), p.180.

(5) Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p.185.

(6) Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p.185.

(7) Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 176.

(8) François Héran, Lettre aux professeurs sur la liberté d’expression, (Paris: La Découverte, 2021), p.171.

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.

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.