"He who destroys a good Booke, kills reason itself" : John Milton, Elon Musk and the question of freedom of expression (by way of introduction)

John Milton’s “Speech for the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing” delivered to the Parliament of England in 1644 reflects the intellectual’s impassioned opposition to the same Parliament’s Ordinance for the Regulating of Printing. Published as a pamphlet and distributed freely in defiance of the binding censorship laws, the work is until today considered an important voice in building awareness of and support for freedom of expression as a civil right. Milton’s humanist and religious education equipped him with ample argumentation against censorship from Greek and Roman history as well as the history of the Church. His republican, antiroyalist understanding of the state made him adapt ancient philosophical ideas of liberty to a political discourse that foreshadows the letter and spirit of the Bill of Rights of 1689, a landmark act that defines basic civil rights for the new parliamentary monarchy of William of Orange. The paper looks at Milton's argument in the context of what is known about censorship and the freedom of printing in 17th century England and posits its validity in current debates on the need to control the Internet and modern means of expression. Elon Musk’s tweets on the subject are referred to as popular reverberations of the current debate on the subject.