Final Essay

This paper supports a grounded reading of John Milton's treatise opposing licensing and censorship in Areopagitica and Stanley Fish's "Driving from the Letter: Truth and Indeterminacy in the Areopagitica," maintaining its status as a foundational document on freedom of the press while acknowledging the contradictions and complexities of Milton's argument. Milton is not only a great author and scholar, but a brilliant political orator who, in a subtle attempt to compliment the members of Parliament, expresses a faith that England's leaders would never accept a policy that would demonstrate their country's inferiority to the enlightened ancient societies of Athens and Rome. Milton defends this purpose, holding that to bring forth complaints before the Parliament is a matter of civil liberty and loyalty, because constructive criticism is better than false flattery. Not only does Milton defend the very idea of writing a treastise such as Areopagitica, but he seems to make an attempt to demonstrate how Greek and Roman learning can reside within the boundaries of Christian morality. He concludes his introduction by encouraging Parliament to obey "the voice of reason" and to be "willing to repeal any Act" for the sake of truth and upright judgment. While Areopagitica had no impact in its day (Parliament ignored it), it is widely regarded as one of history's most eloquent and influential philosophical defenses of free speech and expression, and influenced the arguments of many advocates for the abolition of censorship in later years. This was a personal issue for Milton, who had suffered censorship in his attempts to publish tracts in defense of divorce. Though he attempted to create an image as a gentleman poet, Milton held radical opini...

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... opposed to being the very essence of virtue – because he didn't want to simply hand us over the truth; he wanted us to figure it out for ourselves (Milton). To have done so would have been to teach the lesson directly, when his intent of the Areopagitica is to offer itself as the occasion for the trial and exercise that are necessary to the constituting of human virtue; it must become a tool in what Milton later calls “knowledge in the making” (Fish 242). The result is disorienting, for in the process of being disoriented the reader is provoked to just the kind of labor and exercise that is necessary to the constitution of his or her own virtue (Fish 243). Ironically, it is only by permitting what licensing would banish – the continual flow of opinions, arguments, reasons, agendas – that the end of licensing – the fostering of truth – can be accomplished (Fish 246).