A History of Freedom of Thought

A History of Freedom of Thought PDF

Author: John Bagnell Bury

Publisher: IDEA

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 9781932716320

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Most people who live in open societies, especially in the West, take freedom of thought and expression for granted. Yet throughout most of history, independent thinking was discouraged and often persecuted. The battle for independence of mind continued for centuries. In Freedom of Thought, J. B. Bury provides a dramatic survey of intellectual history, clearly and eloquently describing the struggle for intellectual freedom from ancient times to the beginning of the 20th century. He guides the reader from the flowering of rational inquiry in early Greece, through the suppression of free thought during much of the Middle Ages, to the rediscovery of classical philosophy in the Renaissance, and finally to the growth of rationalism beginning with the Age of Reason in the 17th century. Along the way, Bury explains the key events that contributed to the modern rational understanding of nature and offers concise sketches of the many important persons'philosophers, scientists, and writers'who c

Freedom of Thought

Freedom of Thought PDF

Author: John Bagnell Bury

Publisher: Great Minds

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781591025191

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

One of the best surveys of the drama of intellectual history. With striking eloquence and clarity of expression, Bury succinctly describes the struggle of reason in the search for truth from ancient times to the beginning of the 20th century.

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate PDF

Author: Anthony Lewis

Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1458758389

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

More than any other people on earth, we Americans are free to say and write what we think. The press can air the secrets of government, the corporate boardroom, or the bedroom with little fear of punishment or penalty. This extraordinary freedom results not from America’s culture of tolerance, but from fourteen words in the constitution: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment.InFreedom for the Thought That We Hate, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Lewis describes how our free-speech rights were created in five distinct areas—political speech, artistic expression, libel, commercial speech, and unusual forms of expression such as T-shirts and campaign spending. It is a story of hard choices, heroic judges, and the fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face to face with one of America’s great founding ideas.

A History of Freedom of Thought

A History of Freedom of Thought PDF

Author: J. B. Bury

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2017-11-20

Total Pages: 76

ISBN-13: 9781979910644

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A History of Freedom of Thought by J. B. Bury. IT is a common saying that thought is free. A man can never be hindered from thinking whatever he chooses so long as he conceals what he thinks. The working of his mind is limited only by the bounds of his experience and the power of his imagination. But this natural liberty of private thinking is of little value. It is unsatisfactory and even painful to the thinker himself, if he is not permitted to communicate his thoughts to others, and it is obviously of no value to his neighbours. Moreover it is extremely difficult to hide thoughts that have any power over the mind. If a man's thinking leads him to call in question ideas and customs which regulate the behaviour of those about him, to reject beliefs which they hold, to see better ways of life than those they follow, it is almost impossible for him, if he is convinced of the truth of his own reasoning, not to betray by silence, chance words, or general attitude that he is different from them and does not share their opinions. Some have preferred, like Socrates, some would prefer to-day, to face death rather than conceal their thoughts. Thus freedom of thought, in any valuable sense, includes freedom of speech. Freedom of thought (also called freedom of conscience or ideas) is the freedom of an individual to hold or consider a fact, viewpoint, or thought, independent of others' viewpoints. It is different from and not to be confused with the concept of freedom of speech or expression. Freedom of thought is the precursor and progenitor of-and thus is closely linked to-other liberties, including freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression. Though freedom of thought is axiomatic for many other freedoms they are in no way required for it to operate and exist. Conception of a freedom or a right does not guarantee its inclusion, legality, or protection via a philosophical caveat. It is a very important concept in the Western world and nearly all democratic constitutions protect these freedoms. For instance, the Bill of Rights contains the famous guarantee in the First Amendment that laws may not be made that interfere with religion "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo reasoned in Palko v. Connecticut (1937): Freedom of thought... is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. With rare aberrations a pervasive recognition of this truth can be traced in our history, political and legal.

The Law and Ethics of Freedom of Thought, Volume 1

The Law and Ethics of Freedom of Thought, Volume 1 PDF

Author: Marc Jonathan Blitz

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-12-06

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 3030844943

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Freedom of thought is one of the great and venerable notions of Western thought, often celebrated in philosophical texts – and described as a crucial right in American, European, and International Law, and in that of other jurisdictions. What it means more precisely is, however, anything but clear; surprisingly little writing has been devoted to it. In the past, perhaps, there has been little need for such elaboration. As one Supreme Court Justice stressed, “[f]reedom to think is absolute of its own nature” because even “the most tyrannical government is powerless to control the inward workings of the mind.” But the rise of brain scanning, cognition enhancement, and other emerging technologies make this question a more pressing one. This volume provides an interdisciplinary exploration of how freedom of thought might function as an ethical principle and as a constitutional or human right. It draws on philosophy, legal analysis, history, and reflections on neuroscience and neurotechnology to explore what respect for freedom of thought (or an individual’s cognitive liberty or autonomy) requires.

Freedom

Freedom PDF

Author: Annelien De Dijn

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2020-08-25

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0674245598

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Winner of the PROSE Award An NRC Handelsblad Best Book of the Year “Ambitious and impressive...At a time when the very survival of both freedom and democracy seems uncertain, books like this are more important than ever.” —The Nation “Helps explain how partisans on both the right and the left can claim to be protectors of liberty, yet hold radically different understandings of its meaning...This deeply informed history of an idea has the potential to combat political polarization.” —Publishers Weekly “Ambitious and bold, this book will have an enormous impact on how we think about the place of freedom in the Western tradition.” —Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough “Brings remarkable clarity to a big and messy subject...New insights and hard-hitting conclusions about the resistance to democracy make this essential reading for anyone interested in the roots of our current dilemmas.” —Lynn Hunt, author of History: Why It Matters For centuries people in the West identified freedom with the ability to exercise control over the way in which they were governed. The equation of liberty with restraints on state power—what most people today associate with freedom—was a deliberate and dramatic rupture with long-established ways of thinking. So what triggered this fateful reversal? In a masterful and surprising reappraisal of more than two thousand years of Western thinking about freedom, Annelien de Dijn argues that this was not the natural outcome of such secular trends as the growth of religious tolerance or the creation of market societies. Rather, it was propelled by an antidemocratic backlash following the French and American Revolutions. The notion that freedom is best preserved by shrinking the sphere of government was not invented by the revolutionaries who created our modern democracies—it was first conceived by their critics and opponents. De Dijn shows that far from following in the path of early American patriots, today’s critics of “big government” owe more to the counterrevolutionaries who tried to undo their work.

A History of Freedom of Thought

A History of Freedom of Thought PDF

Author: J. B. Bury

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2017-03-25

Total Pages: 138

ISBN-13: 9781544281681

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

IT is a common saying that thought is free. A man can never be hindered from thinking whatever he chooses so long as he conceals what he thinks. The working of his mind is limited only by the bounds of his experience and the power of his imagination. But this natural liberty of private thinking is of little value. It is unsatisfactory and even painful to the thinker himself, if he is not permitted to communicate his thoughts to others, and it is obviously of no value to his neighbours. Moreover it is extremely difficult to hide thoughts that have any power over the mind. If a man's thinking leads him to call in question ideas and customs which regulate the behaviour of those about him, to reject beliefs which they hold, to see better ways of life than those they follow, it is almost impossible for him, if he is convinced of the truth of his own reasoning, not to betray by silence, chance words, or general attitude that he is different from them and does not share their opinions. Some have preferred, like Socrates, some would prefer to-day, to face death rather than conceal their thoughts. Thus freedom of thought, in any valuable sense, includes freedom of speech.