Overview

The essays in this volume portray the debates concerning freedom of speech in eighteenth-century France and Britain as
well as in Austria, Denmark, Russia, and Spain and its American territories. Representing the views of both moderate and radical
eighteenth-century thinkers, these essays by eminent scholars discover that twenty-first-century controversies regarding the extent of permissible speech have their origins in the eighteenth century.

The Cultural Context

The economic integration of Europe and its offshoots over the past three centuries into a distinctive cultural product, “the West,” has given rise to a triumphant Enlightenment narrative of universalism and tolerance that masks these divisions and the disparate national contributions to freedom of speech and other liberal rights.