Some thoughts on censorship #227 (P)

Can we handle unrestricted freedom of speech?

Dear supporters of Daily Philosophy,

This past week might have seen the usual collection of deaths, wars, fires and floods worldwide, but for Daily Philosophy it was, if I may say so, a good week: for the first time, we passed 25,000 monthly pageviews on the Daily Philosophy website, and this newsletter now has reached 227 posts, more than I’d ever thought possible! For this, I have to thank all our authors, who so kindly gifted us the articles that brought in all those readers, and the readers themselves, who make this project worthwhile. I will take this opportunity to give you a brief update on how Daily Philosophy is doing and what is in store for the near future.

Thankfully, the interest of authors to send in their best work is also as strong as ever. Our publication calendar for the weekly Friday newsletter is now filled until the beginning of December. This is great news, because it means that I will be able to write more articles for the premium Saturday edition myself. All this will hopefully keep you interested and entertained into the new year.

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Thank you for all your help over the past year and for your continuing support!

And now, let’s go back to our topic for today. We had begun to talk about Salman Rushdie and censorship before, and I’d like to add a few thoughts to that. I am not going to pretend that I’m an expert on the philosophy of free speech or anything like that, so please do take this post as an invitation to discuss and correct me. Let’s go!

Salman Rushdie and the Satanic Verses

In case you have only a hazy recollection of the original case (or none at all):