Freedom Of Speech:Its Possibility And Limitation

The possibilities freedom of speech has two understandings which refer to ontological and normative aspects:one is whether or not people could speak freely, the other is even if people could, they cannot understand each other because of cultural differences, outside forces or induces, which means they could not speak freely. For a very long time, the discussion about speech freedom and its limitation all agree with the first understanding that is we have the ability to speak freely or speech itself is free, with ignoring where this freedom comes from.However, from the perspective of modern linguistic philosophy, the freedom of speech is not so apparent. The challenges are included in three points from linguistic philosophy and linguistics:speech acts or illocutionary intentionality theory originated from Austin and refined by Searle, generative grammar or biological grammar theory invented by Descartes and inherited by Chomsky, linguistic determinism enlightened by Wittgenstein. In the first part of this thesis, those challenges are analyzed and reflected while a new metaphysics theory on the possibilities of speech freedom is being developed.The possibilities of speech freedom in the range of metaphysics pave the way for that of normative, Mill offered the first normative argument which based on utilitarianism. But the problem of the argument is also obvious. Therefore, the author will provide an argument appealed to deontological theories, which means the free speech has inherent value. And advocating that the speech right should be guaranteed from the perspective of resources equality.As an inherent value, the value of free speech may conflict with other inherent values, so the limitation of free speech should be clarified. In the third part, the limitation will be discussed. Firstly, why boundaries need to be set when speech happens will be explained by slippery slope. Later, the defects of limitation from the harm principle based on utilitarianism and its improved former:the offense principle will be analyzed in detail. At last, a universal law will be appealed to discuss the limitation of free speech again, as well as the principle of deontological theories that "act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end", in which way free speech boundaries will be set with concrete meaning.