Freedom, Speech, and Society
I. The False Idol of Unrestricted Freedom Modern discourse exalts “freedom” as the power to do or say whatever one wills. Yet this negative freedom - freedom as mere absence of restraint, is the most abstract and shallow form of liberty. It expresses the self’s isolation, its withdrawal from the ethical whole. True freedom is not found in the assertion of arbitrary will but in rational self-determination, in the unity of the individual will with the universal. When freedom is conceived as pure independence, it becomes destructive. The will that acknowledges no order above itself negates the very possibility of shared meaning, law, and ethical life ( Sittlichkeit ). Therefore, genuine liberty requires form , the rational order of the ethical state in which the individual recognizes himself not as against society, but as its conscious organ. II. Freedom of Speech and the Rational State Speech is the outer existence of thought. It is how Spirit externalizes it...
