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Kant and Rawls on Free Speech in Autocracies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2018

Peter Niesen
Peter Niesen*
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg
*
Email: Peter.Niesen@uni-hamburg.de
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Abstract

In the works of Kant and Rawls, we find an acute sensibility to the pre-eminent importance of freedom of speech. Both authors defend free speech in democratic societies as a private and as a public entitlement, but their conceptions markedly differ when applied to non-liberal and non-democratic societies. The difference is that freedom of speech, for Kant, is a universal claim that can serve as a test of legitimacy of all legal orders, while for Rawls, some legal orders are owed full recognition even if they do not in principle guarantee freedom of speech. I explain Kant’s account of free political speech and argue that the defence of individual rights should be seen as its core feature, both in republican and in autocratic states. I then argue that a much-overlooked shift in Rawls’s development to Political Liberalism likewise ties his account of free speech in democratic societies to issues concerning rights and justice. In a next step, I discuss Rawls’s perspective on some non-democratic regimes in his Law of Peoples, regimes that he understands as well-ordered but which do not guarantee freedom of speech. I criticize Rawls’s account from Kant’s perspective and suggest to introduce a ‘module’ from Kant’s pre-republican thought into Rawls’s conception, aiming to secure a core area of rights- and justice-related speech. My claim is that under Kant’s view of autocratic legitimacy, an important extension of speech rights is called for even in non-liberal, non-democratic states, and that a Rawlsian account should and can adopt it.

Keywords

KantRawlsfree speechfreedom of speechdecent hierarchical societiespolitical liberalismthe law of peoples
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 23 , Special Issue 4: Special Issue on Kant & Rawls , December 2018 , pp. 615 - 640
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2018 

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