Stanley Fish Free Speech

Superior Essays
Questioning is risky. It requires both the risk of questioning incorrectly, and the risk of undermining the oft-accepted beliefs of an authority. In the face of loftily written texts by distinguished academics, agreeing with the text at face value seems the easiest option. The fear of overstepping and inaccurately rendering the author’s opinion moot outweighs the reward of carefully finding the flaws in the text and learning more about reading critically. The reader of Stanley Fish’s “There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too” may experience a similar feeling. In his essay, Fish frames his claims with “we”, thereby trapping his reader into the confines of his beliefs, and dedicates a scathing two pages to scrutinizing …show more content…
Shortly into the text, Fish takes issue with English writer John Milton’s stipulations on free speech, as he excludes Catholics from his definition. With Milton in mind, Fish claims that “the institution,” will silence any rhetoric or behavior “subversive to its core rationale” (Fish 104). Milton’s outlook on free speech is definitely flawed, however Milton’s perspective alone is not enough for Fish to come to the conclusion that all institutions--whatever that may mean to Fish--push insidious agendas through the speech they allow and disallow. Unfortunately, Fish neglects to acknowledge the fact that Milton can write his beliefs down on paper and send them to Parliament because he is a landed white man, and landed white men in 17th century England retained that right simply due to who they were. Consequently, Milton’s perspectives on free speech stems from the society he lived in and his access to resources. Fish, narrowing in on Milton’s Areopagitica, emphasizes a viewpoint that was allowed to exist, shutting out the viewpoints society buried. Readers are more likely to accept Fish’s viewpoint if he uses a wide range of examples and their implications--whose scope surpasses religion. By deriving so much importance and so much of his argument from a sentence of Milton’s writing, Fish chooses to look at free speech through the lense of a white man who died long before the first amendment was even considered. As Fish ignores the variant voices of the non-white, non-male, unlanded majority, readers whose identities diverge from both Fish and Milton’s risk more in questioning Fish beliefs. Put differently, how is the reader to critique a discussion that they were not invited to take part

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