This essay is also available as a Google doc if you prefer that format.
This is my re-interpretation of All Minus One, which itself is a modernised adaptation of John Stuart Mill's 1859 essay On Liberty. While All Minus One aimed to make Mill's arguments more accessible, I found its language still too dense and difficult to understand even after multiple readings. This document presents Mill's arguments in modern language.
The basic idea behind All Minus One is that even if everyone except one person holds a belief, it's still wrong to silence that lone dissenter because:
The following chapters expand on each of these three arguments in turn, unpacking Mill's reasoning in a (hopefully!) accessible way.
If everyone in the world, except for one person, had the same opinion, it wouldn't be right for humanity to silence that one person, just as it wouldn't be right for that person to silence everyone else if they had the power.
Suppressing an opinion robs humanity — both present and future generations — of something valuable. If the opinion is true, they are deprived of the opportunity to exchange error for truth. If the opinion is false, they lose something almost as valuable: to develop a clearer perception and livelier impression of the truth that comes from debating with opposing viewpoints.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are trying to suppress is actually false; and even if we were sure, silencing it would still be wrong.
First, the opinion being suppressed may possibly be true. Those who want to suppress it, of course, deny it's true, but they are not infallible. They don't have the right to decide what's true or false on behalf of all of humanity and exclude others from making their own judgments. To refuse to hear an opinion because we are sure it is false is to assume that our certainty is the same as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. The argument against silencing opinions can rest on this common argument, which is no less valid for being common.
Unfortunately, while people always acknowledge that they're fallible in theory, this understanding rarely carries weight in practice when they make judgments. Although most people know they can be wrong, few think it's necessary to take any precautions to guard against their fallibility, or entertain the possibility that any strongly-held opinion might be an example of the very mistake they admit they are capable of making.
Absolute rulers, or others who are used to receiving unquestioning deference, usually have complete confidence in their own opinions on nearly all subjects. People in more fortunate situations, who have their opinions challenged and are not unused to being corrected, tend to place this unbounded confidence only in opinions shared by everyone around them or in those they habitually defer to. The less confidence a person has in their own independent judgement, the more they tend to rely on the supposed infallibility of 'the world' with unquestioning trust. For each person, 'the world' means the part they interact with — their party, sect, church, or social class. By comparison, someone who thinks of 'the world' as something as broad as their entire country or era can be considered almost liberal and open-minded.
People's confidence in this collective authority remains unshaken, even when they are aware that other eras, countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties have believed, and still believe, the exact opposite. They place the responsibility of being right on 'the world' they know, against the differing 'worlds' of others. It never bothers them that pure chance has determined which of these many worlds they rely on, and that the same circumstances that make them a Christian in London would have made them a Buddhist or a Confucian in Beijing. It is clear, without needing much argument, that eras are no more infallible than individuals. Every era has held beliefs that later ages have considered not only false but absurd. Just as many opinions once widely accepted are now rejected, it's equally certain that many commonly held opinions today will be rejected by future generations.
An objection to this argument might go like this: "Preventing the spread of false opinions is not, in itself, a claim to infallibility — it's simply another instance of authorities exercising their judgement. Judgement is given to them so they can use it. Should they not use their best judgement at all, simply because they might make mistakes? Stopping what they believe to be false isn't about claiming they're always right — it's about fulfilling their duty, even if they might be wrong, by acting on their genuine beliefs. There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is enough assurance for the needs of practical decision-making. They must assume their opinion is true to guide their actions, and it's no different when they prevent people from misleading society by spreading ideas they believe to be false and dangerous."
I answer that this assumes far greater infallibility than other decisions. There is the greatest difference between two ways of treating our opinions as true: first, acting on them because they have survived every challenge and remain unrefuted; second, acting on them while actively preventing them from being challenged at all. Only when we allow our opinions to be completely contradicted and disproven do we earn the right to treat them as true for practical purposes. This is the only way that any rational person can have genuine confidence in their beliefs.
History demonstrates why this freedom to challenge opinions is so essential. Looking at the history of opinions, we must ask: why aren't things worse than they are? It's certainly not due to the inherent strength of human understanding. On any matter that isn't obvious, there are ninety-nine people who are completely unable to judge it for every one person who can. And even the one person's ability is only relatively better, as many of the most respected people of every past generation held opinions that we now know to be wrong, and did or supported things that no one today would justify. Why, then, is there generally a tendency toward rational opinions and behaviour among people? If such a tendency exists — and it must, unless human affairs are, and always have been, in an almost hopeless state — it is because the human mind has a quality that is the source of everything respectable in humanity, both intellectually and morally: the ability to correct its own mistakes. People can correct their mistakes through discussion and experience. Not through experience alone — there must also be discussion to help interpret what that experience means.
Consider any person whose judgement truly deserves our confidence – how has it become so? Because they kept their mind open to criticism of their opinions and actions. Because they made it their practice to listen to all that could be said against them, to learn from whatever was true, and to explain to themselves — and, when needed, to others — the flaws in what was incorrect. Because they understood that the only way a human being can come close to fully understanding a subject is by listening to what people of every different opinion have to say about it and by considering every perspective that different minds might have. No wise person ever gained their wisdom in any other way; nor is it in the nature of the human mind to become wise through any other means.
The steady habit of correcting and refining one's own opinions by comparing them with those of others is the only solid foundation for having true confidence in them. When people understand the major arguments against their views, have confronted all opposing positions, have actively sought out objections rather than avoiding them, and have considered every relevant insight from any source — only then do they have a right to believe their judgement is better than those who haven't gone through this process.
If this process of confronting opposing views is necessary for the wisest people to have true confidence in their opinions, then surely it should apply to the general public, which is made up of a few wise and many foolish individuals. Even the Roman Catholic Church, when canonising a saint, allows and patiently listens to a 'devil's advocate.' The holiest of people, it seems, cannot be given honours after death until all the arguments the devil could make against them have been heard and weighed.
It's strange that people accept the arguments for free discussion but resist when they are pushed to the extreme. They do not realise that unless the arguments are valid even in extreme cases, they are not valid at all. It is also strange that they do not see themselves as assuming infallibility when they say there should be free discussion on all subjects that could be doubted, yet believe that some ideas or doctrines should never be questioned simply because they are 'certain' — meaning they are certain that it is certain. To call any idea certain while there is even one person who would deny its certainty if allowed — but who is not allowed — is to assume that we, and those who agree with us, are the ones who decide what is certain, without even hearing the other side.
Some argue that certain beliefs are so useful, even essential to well-being, that governments have a duty to uphold them, just as they protect other societal interests. When such necessity exists, they claim that even without absolute certainty, governments may be justified – or even required – to act on their own opinion when supported by general public sentiment. Many argue openly, and even more believe privately, that only bad people would want to weaken these beneficial beliefs, and therefore there's nothing wrong with restraining such people and forbidding what only they would wish to practise.
This way of thinking makes the justification for restricting discussion not about whether doctrines are true, but about their usefulness, and in doing so, escaping the responsibility of claiming to be an infallible judge of opinions. But those who think this way do not realise that the assumption of infallibility is simply shifted from one place to another. The usefulness of an opinion is itself a matter of opinion — just as debatable, as open to discussion, and as much in need of debate as the opinion itself.
The claim that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those comforting falsehoods that people repeat until they become accepted as common knowledge, but which all experience contradicts. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries.
It is just wishful thinking to believe that truth, simply because it is the truth, has any special power over error when faced with persecution and punishment. People are often just as passionate about false beliefs as they are about true ones, and a sufficient application of legal or social punishments will generally succeed in stopping the spread of either. The real advantage of truth is that, even if it is suppressed once, twice, or many times, over the course of history there will usually be people who rediscover it, until eventually, one of its reappearances coincides with favourable circumstances that allow it to escape persecution and grow strong enough to resist future attempts to suppress it.
Persecution takes many forms, and social pressure can be as powerful as law: excluding people from the means to earn a living is as severe as imprisoning them. Those who have financial security and don't need favours from the powerful, from organisations, or from the public have nothing to fear from openly expressing their opinions, except being ill-thought of and ill-spoken of. This is not something that should require extraordinary courage to endure; there is no need to appeal to pity for such people. But while we may no longer physically harm those who think differently, we damage our own society just as much through this social persecution. Our social intolerance today doesn't kill anyone, or root out any opinions, but it does lead people to disguise them or avoid any active effort to spread them.
This suppression creates a peculiar state: in our society, unconventional opinions neither advance nor retreat significantly from one decade or generation to the next. They never gain widespread acceptance, but continue to smoulder within small circles of thoughtful and studious people where they originated, without ever illuminating humanity's broader concerns with either true or misleading insights. Many find this situation satisfactory because it maintains the status quo of accepted opinions without requiring unpleasant measures like fines or imprisonment, while allowing those who think differently to reason privately. A convenient arrangement for maintaining intellectual peace and preserving the existing order. But the price for this sort of intellectual peace is the sacrifice of all moral courage of the human mind.
Consider what this sacrifice means in practice: when many of the most active and inquiring intellects find it advisable to keep the genuine principles and grounds of their convictions to themselves, and try to make their real views seem compatible with conventional beliefs they no longer hold, they cannot produce the open, fearless characters and logical, consistent intellects that once adorned the thinking world. Instead, the kind of people that can be expected under such conditions are either those who simply conform to conventional beliefs or those who compromise on the truth — whose arguments on important subjects are crafted for public acceptance rather than expressing what they truly believe. Those who avoid this alternative do so by narrowing their thoughts and interests to topics that can be discussed without touching on principles — that is, to minor practical matters that would solve themselves if people thought more boldly, but which remain unsolved precisely because they don't. Meanwhile, the very thing that would strengthen and enlarge people's minds — free and daring speculation on the highest topics — is abandoned.
Those who think it's not a problem for those with unpopular views to keep their views to themselves should first consider that this leads to a situation where those ideas are never openly or thoroughly debated. Without fair discussion, these arguments — whether they are weak or strong — do not get properly examined. Even if the weaker arguments are prevented from spreading, they do not fully vanish. Instead, they linger unchallenged, potentially causing harm because they are never exposed to the scrutiny of public discourse.
But it is not the minds of heretics that suffer the most from the ban on any inquiry that does not end in orthodox conclusions. The greatest harm is done to those who are not heretics — their entire mental development is stunted, and their reasoning is subdued by the fear of heresy.
Who can calculate what the world loses in the countless promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train of thought for fear that they might lead to conclusions that could be seen as irreligious or immoral? Among them, we sometimes find a person of deep conscientiousness, and subtle and refined understanding, who spends their entire life struggling with an intellect they cannot silence — exhausting all their ingenuity to reconcile their conscience and reason with orthodoxy, without ever fully succeeding. No one can be a great thinker without recognizing that, as a thinker, their foremost duty is to follow their intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more from the errors of someone who, with proper study and preparation, thinks for themselves, than from the correct opinions of those who only hold them because they refuse to think critically.
Freedom of thinking isn't important just to produce great thinkers – in fact, it's even more essential for enabling ordinary people to reach their full mental potential. While great individual thinkers have emerged even in environments of intellectual oppression, no society has ever achieved widespread intellectual vitality under such conditions. When any society has approached such vitality, it was only because the fear of unorthodox ideas was temporarily lifted.
In societies where there's an unspoken rule against questioning fundamental principles, where discussion of humanity's most important questions is considered settled, we cannot expect to find the kind of broad intellectual engagement that made certain historical periods remarkable. The human mind has only been truly awakened – elevating even ordinary people to the status of thinking beings – when controversy was allowed to address society's most important and inspiring questions.
We've seen this pattern in three historical examples: in Europe immediately after the Reformation; on the Continent among the educated classes during the intellectual movement of the late eighteenth century; and briefly in Germany during the era of Goethe and Fichte. While these periods produced vastly different ideas, they shared one crucial feature: the rejection of intellectual authority. In each case, an old system of mental control had been overthrown before a new one could take its place. These three periods shaped modern Europe, and every significant advancement in human thought or institutions can be traced to one of them. Currently, the momentum from all three periods appears to be fading, and we'll need to reclaim our intellectual freedom before we can move forward again.
Let us now move to the second part of the argument. Setting aside the idea that any of the accepted opinions might be false, let us assume they are true. We should then consider how valuable these opinions really are if their truth is not freely and openly debated. Even if someone with a strong opinion is reluctant to admit that they could be wrong, they should recognize that no matter how true their belief may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will become a dead dogma rather than a living truth.
There is a group of people (fortunately less numerous now than in the past) who believe it is enough if someone agrees without doubt to what they consider true, even if that person has no understanding of the basis for the opinion and cannot defend it against even the simplest objections. Such people, if they can get their beliefs established by authority, naturally think that no good, and perhaps some harm, comes from allowing those beliefs to be questioned. Where their influence prevails, they make it almost impossible for people to reject the accepted opinion wisely and thoughtfully, though it may still be rejected rashly and ignorantly. Completely shutting down discussion is rarely possible, and once discussion begins, beliefs that are not based on conviction tend to crumble at the slightest appearance of an argument. {...} However, holding a true opinion merely as a prejudice — one that persists without reasoned support and resists argument — is not the way a rational being should uphold truth. This is not truly knowing the truth. When truth is held in this way, it becomes just another superstition that happens to align with a truth.
{...} On important subjects, where believing correctly is crucial, people should be able to defend their beliefs against at least common objections. A critic might respond, "Teach them the reasons behind their opinions. The fact that opinions aren't openly debated doesn't mean they're mindlessly repeated. Consider geometry students—they don't simply memorize theorems but understand and learn the proofs. It would be absurd to say they don't understand the reasons for geometric truths just because they've never heard anyone try to disprove them."
Certainly: such teaching works well for subjects like mathematics, where there is no real argument to be made for the wrong side. The distinctive feature of mathematical evidence is that all valid arguments support one conclusion. There are no genuine objections to address. But in every field where differences of opinion are possible, truth emerges from weighing competing arguments against each other. Even in natural science, there are typically multiple ways to explain the same facts: consider the historical debate between geocentric and heliocentric models, or between phlogiston and oxygen theories. We cannot truly understand the foundations of our own views until we can demonstrate why alternative theories fail, and comprehend how this demonstration works. When we turn to subjects that are infinitely more complicated — such as morality, religion, politics, social relations, and practical life — three quarters of the arguments for any disputed opinion involve dispelling the misconceptions that favor an opposing view. Cicero, the greatest orator, save one other, of antiquity noted that he always studied his opponent's case with as much, if not more, intensity than his own. What Cicero practiced as a method for success in the courtroom should be followed by anyone who studies a subject in search of the truth.
One who knows only their own side of the case, knows little of that. Their reasons might be strong, and perhaps no one has been able to refute them. But if they are equally unable to refute the reasons from the opposing side, or if they do not even know what those reasons are, they have no valid basis for preferring one opinion over the other. The rational position for them would be to suspend judgment, and unless they are willing to do so, they are either following authority blindly or, like most people, simply choosing the side that feels most comfortable to them.
It's not enough for someone to hear the arguments of opponents as presented by their own teachers, accompanied by what their teachers believe are effective rebuttals. This does not do justice to the arguments or allow them to truly engage with the ideas. Instead, they must hear these arguments from people who genuinely believe in them, who defend them earnestly and do their best to present them convincingly. They must know these arguments in their most persuasive form; they must feel the full force of the challenges that the true view has to encounter and dispose of. Otherwise, they will never truly grasp the part of the truth that addresses and overcomes these challenges.
Ninety-nine out of a hundred so-called educated people are in this situation, even those who can argue persuasively for their views. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know; they have never put themselves in the position of those who disagree with them, and considered what those people might say. As a result, they do not, in any sense of the word, understand the doctrine they themselves claim to believe in. They do not understand the parts that explain and justify the rest, or the reasons why a seemingly contradictory fact can be reconciled, or why, of two apparently strong arguments, one should be preferred over the other. All of the deeper truths that shape the conclusions of a fully informed mind are unknown to them. True understanding is only achieved by those who listen equally and impartially to both sides and try to understand each perspective in its strongest form. This practice is so crucial for a real understanding of moral and human issues that, even if no actual opponents of important truths exist, it is necessary to imagine them and provide them with the strongest arguments that a skilled devil's advocate could conjure up.
To weaken these arguments, a critic of free discussion might say that it is unnecessary for most people to know and understand all the arguments for or against their beliefs as presented by philosophers and theologians. It is not essential for ordinary individuals to be able to counter every misstatement or fallacy made by a clever opponent. It is enough if there is always someone qualified to refute them, ensuring that no argument likely to mislead uninformed people goes unanswered. Simple-minded individuals, once taught the basic reasons for the truths instilled in them, may trust authority for the rest. Knowing that they lack the knowledge or talent to resolve every possible difficulty, they may take comfort in knowing that all challenges have been, or can be, answered by experts trained for this purpose.
Let's consider those who say we only need a basic understanding of truth to believe in it. Even if we fully accept their view, the argument for free discussion remains just as strong. For this doctrine itself acknowledges that people should have a rational assurance that all objections have been satisfactorily answered. But how can objections be answered if they are not voiced? Or how can we know if an answer is satisfactory if objectors have no opportunity to show why it isn't? If not the public, then at least the philosophers and theologians who must resolve these difficulties should familiarize themselves with these difficulties in their most challenging form. And this cannot be achieved unless the difficulties are freely expressed and presented in the strongest possible light.
Some might argue that when commonly held beliefs are true, the only harm in not discussing them freely is that people remain unaware of why they are true. This might appear to be merely an intellectual shortcoming, rather than a moral one, with no impact on how these beliefs shape character. However, the consequences run deeper: without discussion, people lose touch not only with the reasons for their beliefs, but even with what the beliefs mean. The words expressing these beliefs become empty phrases, conveying only a fraction of what they were originally meant to communicate.
Instead of a vivid understanding and genuine belief, all that remains are a few memorized phrases. Or, at best, only the outer shell of the meaning survives while its essential core is lost.
This pattern appears in nearly all ethical doctrines and religious beliefs. These ideas are filled with meaning and vitality for their creators and their direct followers. The full meaning continues to be deeply felt, and may even become more clearly understood, as long as there is an ongoing struggle to establish the doctrine or belief over competing ideas. Eventually, one of two things happens: either it becomes the commonly accepted view, or it stops spreading but maintains its current following. Once either outcome becomes clear, debate about the subject weakens and gradually fades away. The doctrine secures its place, if not as the prevailing view, then as one of several accepted schools of thought. Those who follow it have typically inherited rather than chosen it, and conversion between these different doctrines, now a rare occurrence, receives little attention from their adherents. Rather than constantly being prepared to either defend themselves against critics or convince others to join them, they have settled into passive acceptance. When possible, they avoid listening to arguments against their beliefs, and they don't bother trying to convince skeptics with arguments in favor of them. This moment typically marks the beginning of the doctrine's decline in living power.
Religious teachers of all faiths often lament how difficult it is to keep their followers' understanding of truth alive and meaningful — rather than having them accept it in name only. They struggle to make these beliefs resonate emotionally with their followers and truly shape their conduct. Yet such difficulties are nowhere to be found when a faith is still struggling to establish itself. During those early stages, even casual followers have a clear understanding of what they're fighting for and how their beliefs differ from others. At this stage in any belief system's existence, you can find many people who have deeply internalized its core principles in every aspect of their thinking, who have carefully weighed all its important implications, and who demonstrate the full transformative effect that this belief system should have on someone who truly embraces it.
But when a belief becomes inherited rather than chosen — when it's accepted passively instead of actively — people's minds are no longer forced to engage as intensely with the challenging questions their belief presents. They gradually tend to forget everything about their belief except its formal rituals and phrases. They give it only dull, lifeless acceptance, as if merely trusting in it removes the need to truly understand it or test it through personal experience. Eventually, the belief almost completely disconnects from their inner life. This explains the cases — so common in our time that they're nearly the majority — where the belief system sits like a shell around the mind, hardening it against any other influences that might speak to our higher nature. Its only power is negative: preventing any fresh and living convictions from entering, while doing nothing to nourish the mind or heart except standing guard to keep them empty. Both teachers and learners fall asleep at their posts as soon as there is no enemy in sight.
This principle applies broadly to all traditional teachings — whether they're about practical wisdom, life experience, morality, or religion. Every language and literature contains general observations about life — both about what it is and how to live it. These are observations that everyone knows, everyone repeats, and everyone nods along to. They're accepted as obvious truths, yet most people only truly understand their meaning when experience, usually painful, makes these truths real to them. How often does someone, after being struck by an unexpected misfortune or disappointment, suddenly remember some proverb or common saying they've known all their life — realizing that if they had truly felt its meaning before as they do now, they might have avoided their current trouble?
There are, admittedly, reasons for this beyond the lack of discussion: some truths simply cannot be fully understood until personal experience drives them home. But even these truths would have been better understood, and what was understood would have left a deeper impression, if people had been used to hearing them debated by those who truly comprehend them. Mankind's dangerous habit of stopping all thought about something once it's no longer in question causes half of their mistakes. As one contemporary writer aptly put it: "the deep slumber of a decided opinion."
But must we lack agreement to achieve true knowledge? Must some people remain in error for others to grasp the truth? Does a belief lose its reality and vitality the moment it becomes widely accepted—and can we only deeply understand and feel a truth when doubt still exists? When humanity unanimously accepts a truth, does that truth die within us? Until now, we've believed that the highest goal and best outcome of advancing intelligence is to unite humanity in recognizing all important truths. Does intelligence only last as long as it hasn't achieved this goal? Do the fruits of victory perish simply because the victory is complete?
I make no such claim. As humanity progresses, more and more beliefs will become undisputed and undoubted. In fact, we can almost measure humanity's well-being by counting the number and importance of truths that have become universally accepted. The end of serious debate, one question after another, is a natural part of how opinions become settled—a process that is as beneficial when the opinions are true as it is harmful and destructive when they are false. But though this gradual reduction in diversity of opinion is necessary in both senses—being both inevitable and essential—we shouldn't assume that all its consequences must be positive.
Having to explain or defend a truth against opponents provides vital help in developing an intelligent and living understanding of it. While losing this help isn't enough to outweigh the benefits of universal agreement, it's still a significant drawback. When we can no longer benefit from real opposition, I admit I would like to see teachers create a substitute for it—some method of making students as conscious of the difficulties and complexities of an issue as they would be if challenged by a passionate opponent trying to change their mind.
But instead of developing new methods for this purpose, they have lost the ones they once had. The Socratic method, brilliantly demonstrated in Plato's dialogues, was one such approach. Through systematic questioning, it challenged people's assumptions about life's great philosophical questions. This method was designed to show those who had simply accepted conventional wisdom that they didn't truly understand the subject—that they hadn't grasped the real meaning of their professed beliefs. Once people recognized their lack of understanding, they could then work toward developing firm beliefs based on a clear grasp of both the doctrines and their supporting evidence.
The medieval school debates had a somewhat similar purpose. They were meant to ensure that students truly understood both their own position and (by necessity) the opposing viewpoint, and could defend the reasoning for one while refuting the other. These debates did have one fatal flaw: they relied on authority rather than reason for their premises. As a tool for developing the mind, they were inferior in every way to the powerful dialectical method that shaped the intellects of the Socratic thinkers. Nevertheless, the modern mind owes far more to both approaches than it typically acknowledges.
There remains one of the main reasons why diversity of opinion is beneficial, and will continue to be so until humanity reaches a level of intellectual advancement that currently seems impossibly distant. So far, we have considered only two possibilities: that the commonly accepted opinion might be false, and some other opinion therefore true; or that, when the accepted opinion is true, confronting opposing errors is essential to clearly understanding and deeply feeling its truth. But there is a more common case than either of these: when conflicting doctrines, instead of being simply true or false, share the truth between them. In this case, the dissenting opinion is needed to provide the missing pieces of truth, of which the accepted doctrine contains only a portion.
Popular opinions on matters not immediately obvious to the senses are often true, but rarely or never the complete truth. They represent a portion of the truth—sometimes larger, sometimes smaller—but this portion is usually exaggerated, distorted, and disconnected from the related truths that should accompany and limit it. Controversial opinions, on the other hand, typically represent some of these suppressed and neglected truths breaking free from constraint, either seeking harmony with the truth contained in common opinion, or opposing it as enemies and claiming, with similar narrow-mindedness, to be the whole truth themselves. The latter case has so far been more common, as human minds tend toward one-sidedness rather than considering multiple perspectives. As a result, even when opinions change dramatically, one partial truth typically sets while another rises.
Even progress, which should add to our understanding, usually only substitutes one partial and incomplete truth for another. Improvement mainly consists in this: that the new fragment of truth better suits the needs of the time than the one it replaces. Given this partial nature of prevailing opinions, even when they rest on a true foundation, every opinion that captures some portion of truth overlooked by common wisdom should be considered valuable, regardless of how much error and confusion that truth may be mixed with.
No clear-headed observer of human affairs should feel outraged when those who force us to notice previously overlooked truths happen to overlook some truths that we already see. Instead, they should recognize that as long as popular truth remains one-sided, it's actually beneficial for unpopular truth to have one-sided advocates too. Such advocates are usually the most passionate and the most likely to force reluctant attention to their fragment of wisdom, even if they present it as the whole truth.
In the eighteenth century, nearly all educated people, and those uneducated who followed their lead, were captivated by what they called 'civilization' and by the wonders of modern science, literature, and philosophy. While greatly exaggerating the differences between modern and ancient peoples, they believed all these differences worked in their favor. Into this environment, Rousseau's paradoxes exploded like bombshells, shattering this rigid mass of one-sided opinion and forcing its elements to recombine in better forms with new ingredients. Not that the common opinions of the time were actually further from the truth than Rousseau's -- quite the opposite. They were closer to the truth, containing more factual accuracy and far less error.
Nevertheless, Rousseau's teachings contained, and have passed down through the current of opinion, a significant share of exactly those truths that popular opinion was missing. These truths remained as a deposit after the flood of his ideas subsided. Since Rousseau wrote, educated minds have never completely forgotten certain ideas: the superior value of a simple life, and how the constraints and pretenses of artificial society weaken and corrupt us. These ideas will eventually have their full impact, though they need to be championed as strongly as ever today -- and championed through actions, since words on this subject have nearly spent their force…
Truth, in life's major practical matters, is so much a question of reconciling and combining opposites that very few people have minds broad and fair enough to reach even an approximately correct balance. Instead, this balance must be achieved through the rough process of struggle between opponents fighting under opposing flags... When we find people who break from the world's apparent consensus on any subject -- even when the world is right -- it's always likely these dissenters have something worthwhile to say. Truth would lose something by their silence.
Someone might object: "But some accepted principles, especially regarding the most important and vital subjects, are more than half-truths. Christian morality, for instance, represents the complete truth on that subject, and anyone teaching a different morality is entirely wrong."... But when part of the truth claims to be the whole truth, this must and should be challenged. And if the resulting pushback makes the challengers unfair in turn, this one-sidedness, like the other, may be regrettable but must be accepted. If Christians want to teach non-believers to be fair to Christianity, they should themselves be fair to non-belief. Truth is not served by ignoring the fact, known to anyone with even a basic knowledge of literary history, that much of the most noble and valuable moral teaching has come not only from people who didn't know the Christian faith, but from those who knew and rejected it.
I don't claim that allowing complete freedom to express all possible opinions would end the problems of religious or philosophical tribalism. When narrow-minded people become passionate about a truth, they inevitably proclaim, teach, and act on it as though it were the only truth that exists, or at least as though no other truth could modify or constrain it. I acknowledge that free discussion doesn't remedy this tendency toward dogmatism -- indeed, it sometimes intensifies and inflames it. When those we consider opponents advocate truths we should have recognized, we often reject these truths even more adamantly.
But this clash of opinions has its beneficial effect not on the passionate partisan, but on the calmer and more objective observer. The real danger is not the fierce conflict between different parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it. There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides. It's when they hear only one side that errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself loses its power as truth by being exaggerated into falsehood. And since few mental qualities are rarer than the judicial ability to make an intelligent judgment between two sides of a question when only one side has an advocate present, truth has no chance except to the degree that every aspect of it -- every opinion containing even a fraction of truth -- not only finds advocates, but is advocated well enough to be truly heard…
Before concluding our discussion of freedom of opinion, we should address those who argue that while all opinions should be freely expressed, they must be presented moderately and within the bounds of fair discussion. Much could be said about the impossibility of defining these supposed bounds. If giving offense to those whose views are challenged is the criterion, experience shows that people take offense whenever their beliefs face effective and powerful challenges. To those being challenged, any opponent who presents forceful arguments that are difficult to counter appears unreasonable, especially if they show any passion for their position.
But this concern, though practically important, leads to a deeper objection. Certainly, the way someone expresses an opinion, even a true one, can be very objectionable and deserve harsh criticism. However, the main offenses of this kind are usually impossible to prove unless someone accidentally reveals their own guilt. The most serious of these offenses are: using cleverly deceptive arguments, hiding facts or arguments, misrepresenting the basic elements of the case, or distorting the opposing view. But all of this, even to an extreme degree, is so often done in complete sincerity by people who aren't considered -- and in many ways don't deserve to be considered -- ignorant or incompetent, that it's rarely possible to honestly label such misrepresentation as morally wrong with any certainty. And it would be even less appropriate for law to try to regulate this kind of misconduct in debate.
Regarding what people usually mean by intemperate discussion -- that is, insults, sarcasm, personal attacks, and such -- the condemnation of these tactics would deserve more sympathy if anyone ever proposed banning them for both sides equally. But people only want to restrict their use against mainstream opinion: when used against minority views, these tactics not only escape general disapproval but likely earn their user praise for honest zeal and righteous indignation. Yet the harm from using such tactics is greatest when they're used against those who can't easily defend themselves, and whatever unfair advantage can be gained from this style of argument benefits almost exclusively those opinions that are already widely accepted.
The worst offense a debater can commit is to brand those who hold opposing views as bad and immoral people. Those who hold unpopular opinions are especially vulnerable to such slander, because they are generally few and powerless, and no one but themselves cares much about seeing them treated fairly. But this weapon is, by its very nature, unavailable to those who challenge mainstream opinion: they can't use it safely themselves, and even if they could, it would only damage their own cause.
Generally, opinions that challenge mainstream beliefs can only gain an audience through carefully measured language and scrupulous attention to avoiding offense. Even minor deviations from this careful approach cost them support. Meanwhile, those defending conventional views can freely use hostile language, which effectively silences dissenting voices and discourages others from listening to them. Therefore, in the interest of truth and justice, restricting abusive language from the mainstream is more crucial than restricting it from dissenters. If forced to choose, for instance, there would be greater value in discouraging attacks against non-belief than against religion.
It's clear, however, that law and authority have no business restricting either side, while public opinion should judge each case based on its specific circumstances. It should condemn anyone, regardless of which side they take, whose style of argument shows a lack of honesty, malice, narrow-mindedness, or intolerance. But we shouldn't assume these faults exist just because someone takes the opposite side from us. Instead, we should give deserved respect to anyone, whatever opinion they hold, who has the composure to see and the honesty to state what their opponents and their opinions truly are -- exaggerating nothing that discredits them, hiding nothing that supports them or might support them.
This is the true ethical standard for public debate. And while it's often violated, I'm happy to think that many debaters largely follow it, and an even greater number sincerely try to reach it.