Freedom of expression

I wrote a post last month about Simone Weil’s critique of how “freedom of thought” is fetishized, at the expense of actually having thought—and how this applies very much to our current situation, where there is a lot of talk about the importance of freedom of thought, but usually by people who don’t have any thoughts.

I wanted to follow-up on that with a related point she makes, about the point of freedom of expression—which is, to develop your intelligence. It is not simply to be able to say whatever you want, to try to change people’s minds, or win in the marketplace of ideas. That is usually what is intended when “freedom of expression” is discussed as some kind of valuable thing in the world today. But it’s not about the impact on the world, or on other people—it’s about you, the person doing the expressing and thinking. People should be free to express what they want, in order to better understand themselves, and to better develop and refine their ideas. The point of expression isn’t to impose your ideas on the world—it is to learn how to have ideas. This is a very basic point that seems to have been entirely lost. You should be free to express things, because if you express them well, then you become smarter, and understand what you think more fully.