#428 Stanley Fish - There's No Such Thing as Free Speech
RECORDED ON DECEMBER 30th 2020.
Dr. Stanley Fish is Professor of Law at Florida International University and Visiting Professor of Law at Cardoso Law School. In addition to being one of the country’s leading public intellectuals, Professor Fish is an extraordinarily prolific author whose works include He has authored over 200 scholarly publications and books. While his research covers a variety of fields, Professor Dr. Fish has written for many of the country’s leading law journals. including Stanford Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Yale Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, Columbia Law Review, and Texas Law Review. His books include Is there a Text in This Class? Interpretive Communities and the Sources of Authority (1980); There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too (1994); Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change (1995); The Trouble with Principle (1999); How Milton Works (2001); and The First: How to Think About Hate Speech, Campus Speech, Religious Speech, Fake News, Post-Truth, and Donald Trump (2019).
In this episode, we focus on free speech. Dr. Fish presents his thesis against the idea that free speech exists, and we discuss its details. We start with a bit of Dr. Fish’s background and where his interest in free speech comes from, and also a definition of free speech. We talk about John Stuart Mill’s position, and the history of the political struggle for free speech. We discuss freedom of speech in the context of academia and the media. We ask if it makes sense to distinguish speech from action, and also address the distinction between freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry. Toward the end, Dr. Fish explains why he thinks “philosophy does not matter”.
Time Links:
Intro
Dr. Fish’s background, and his interest in free speech
What is free speech?
John Stuart Mill’s position
The history of free speech
Free speech in academia
Speech and action
Freedom of inquiry
Philosophy doesn’t matter
Follow Dr. Fish’s work:
Faculty page: http://bit.ly/37WEarh
Amazon page: https://amzn.to/3pDIjXp
There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech: http://amzn.to/34VItRY
The First: http://amzn.to/3rGA1jl