Areopagitica - Milton's appeals to ethos

Introduction

Areopagitica is sometimes all but worshipped as a key influence on modern freedom of speech laws. It's certainly true that the arguments Milton formulates in the text had a profound impact, most famously on Thomas Jefferson and James Madison when they were drafting the US Constitution.

Discussion

Milton's tract is a direct response to the Licensing Order of 1643 which reinstated much the same sort of pre-publication censorship once exercised by the Star Chamber and other earlier censors, royal and ecclesiastical. Milton does not argue here for free and unregulated speech or printing, but simply those books should not be suppressed before publication. Treasonous, slanderous and blasphemous books, he allows, should be tried according to law, then suppressed and their authors punished (Altschull, 48).

Milton's tract is a direct response to the Licensing Order of 1643 which reinstated much the same sort of pre-publication censorship once exercised by the Star Chamber and other earlier censors, royal and ecclesiastical. Milton does not argue here for free and unregulated speech or printing, but simply those books should not be suppressed before publication. Treasonous, slanderous and blasphemous books, he allows, should be tried according to law, then suppressed and their authors punished.

The counter-examples Milton offers to those enlightened societies of Greece and Rome are the tyrannical societies of Catholic Spain and the Papacy. Milton offers the members of Lords and Commons a clear choice: either imitate Popery or institute freedom. By making the counter-example to enlightened policy Catholicism, Milton once again demonstrates an acute understanding of his audience. Parliament during Milton's time, especially the House of Commons, was largely Puritan. The thought that any of their orders might have a door of unreformed Catholicism about it was distasteful, especially during the particularly tumultuous days surrounding the civil wars, when accusations of Catholic sympathy flew as regularly as the pigeons of Hyde Park. Areopagitica demonstrates Milton to be not only a great wordsmith and scholar, but also a brilliant political orator.

Milton's Areopagitica had virtually no political impact in its day: Parliament ignored it. However, as the first major treatise on freedom of the press, it influenced the arguments of many later advocates for the abolition of censorship. Even the United States Bill of Rights can be viewed as a direct descendent of Milton's Areopagitica. Part of the reason that it was ignored in its day may be that Milton had already challenged Parliament and popular opinion with other unorthodox arguments, such as the one presented in the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce and its defences (Tetrachordon, Colasterion). Though he attempted to cultivate an image as a gentleman poet, Milton held radical opinions which challenged societal norms and was even accused of heresy by some of his rivals and targets. In Areopagitica we have a prime example of the nature of Milton's genius: heavily inflected with biblical and classical knowledge, but too unorthodox for mainstream acceptance, at least in his day.

First off, in Areopagitica Milton wasn't writing about freedom of speech in a general ...