- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226662749
- eISBN:
- 9780226662756
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226662756.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This chapter discusses three challenges to the free expression theory that led to the threefold clash of intellectual and moral options. First, the program of civic self-discipline and sublimation ...
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This chapter discusses three challenges to the free expression theory that led to the threefold clash of intellectual and moral options. First, the program of civic self-discipline and sublimation derived from Greco-Roman norms and practiced by English-speaking gentlemen from Locke to Smith to Mill to Holmes is largely in wreckage. Second, postmodernism heralds the breaking of old dams of social and cultural segregation. Third, the credo that anything is permitted because everything in the end advances the public good looks dubious, and the theodicy that pain always bears fruit seems indecent. Modern scientific rationality requires a self capable of impartiality and abstraction. Postmodern cultural relativism stems from the overwhelming blurring of genres and the viral spread of images. Moral absolutism or “fundamentalism” is sick and tired of a patient or solicitous approach to wickedness and crime.Less
This chapter discusses three challenges to the free expression theory that led to the threefold clash of intellectual and moral options. First, the program of civic self-discipline and sublimation derived from Greco-Roman norms and practiced by English-speaking gentlemen from Locke to Smith to Mill to Holmes is largely in wreckage. Second, postmodernism heralds the breaking of old dams of social and cultural segregation. Third, the credo that anything is permitted because everything in the end advances the public good looks dubious, and the theodicy that pain always bears fruit seems indecent. Modern scientific rationality requires a self capable of impartiality and abstraction. Postmodern cultural relativism stems from the overwhelming blurring of genres and the viral spread of images. Moral absolutism or “fundamentalism” is sick and tired of a patient or solicitous approach to wickedness and crime.
