Diogenes, Free Speech, and the Freedom to Become
By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.
Essay substantially revised on 12 August 2026.
Free speech is not merely a political right, but a condition of freedom of thought—and of becoming fully human. Read what happens to the mind when it is denied.
Once, upon being asked to name the most beautiful of all things, Diogenes the Cynic (d. 323 BCE) replied parrhesia, which in Greek means something like ‘free speech’ or ‘full expression’. In his ethical treatise, the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (d. 322 BCE) presents parrhesia as a trait of the ‘great-souled’ man, or megalopsychos.
The Greeks did not conceive of parrhesia as a right or privilege, but as a virtue or perfection, as well as a moral and social obligation. When Alexander the Great approached Diogenes in Athens and asked whether there was anything he might do for him, Diogenes replied, ‘Yes, stand out of my sunlight.’
Living in a much more oral society, and having but one word, logos, for both speech and reason, the Greeks understood the close connexion between freedom of speech and freedom of thought.
The connexion runs deeper than might first appear. Speech is not merely the expression of existing thoughts. It is also one of the principal means by which thoughts are formed in the first place. By putting an idea into words, we give it shape and solidity; by submitting it to public scrutiny, we expose it to verification and contradiction; and by defending, modifying, or abandoning it, we teach ourselves what we think. Rhetoric, at its best, is not merely the art of persuading other people, but part of the process by which we reason with them, and with ourselves—hence the tradition of sometimes writing two speeches, one in favour of a position, and the other against.
In Athens, parrhesia underpinned the democracy. For a democracy to flourish, or even merit the name, citizens must be free, able, and willing to speak their mind. Free speech not only enables democracy, but also legitimises its laws and protects it from aspiring tyrants. Undermine free speech, and you undermine democracy—which is why free speech is enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Undermine free speech, and you undermine human dignity, which is why free speech is enshrined in Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
‘Free speech’ is something of a misnomer. It includes not only speech but also forms of expression, such as writing a book, drawing a cartoon, or burning a flag. Taking inspiration from the French libre expression, we might more accurately and comprehensively refer to ‘free speech’ as ‘freedom of expression’.
Today, many people, especially younger people, believe that freedom of expression can conflict with minority rights, and ought to be curbed to promote a more inclusive society. Is this argument worth entertaining?
The Freedom to Think
Let’s begin by looking more closely at the benefits of free speech. Often, it is by articulating it to others that we work out our position on a particular issue. And in arriving at our opinion, it helps if we are being encouraged, assisted, and challenged—which is why tutorials and a common table are (or ought to be) an important part of university life.
The same principle operates on the scale of entire societies. Intellectual cultures become sophisticated not simply by accumulating information, but by permitting disagreement. An argument produces a counterargument, the counterargument exposes a weakness, and the original argument either collapses or becomes stronger and more subtle. Socrates made a method of this dialectical process, asking awkward questions in gymnasia and marketplaces until received but misguided ideas about courage, justice, and virtue began to unravel.
Even if an opinion is untrue, it may still serve to clarify or reinforce the truth. Moreover, many misguided opinions contain aspects of the truth. Plato himself doubted his Theory of Forms, which nonetheless remains of immense value. Rousseau, who pushed back against the Enlightenment, may have been wrong to idealise the state of nature, but was right to point out that progress also has downsides. Even when securely established, a living truth risks stultifying into a dead dogma if it is not regularly challenged.
This is one reason censorship can have consequences far beyond the particular opinions it suppresses. When certain things cannot safely be said, people learn to avoid not only certain statements, but also certain questions, associations, and lines of enquiry, corrupting the processes that make complex, sophisticated thought possible. That would be why Nazi ideology could take off without ever being grounded, and why Soviet art criticism under Stalin was seldom very enlightening.
Censorship, in other words, does not merely prevent us from saying what we think. In time, it can prevent us from thinking what we might otherwise have thought. We become, as it were, lame human beings, something less than fully human.
Censorship, No-Platforming, and Cancel Culture
So far, we have been talking about the kind of constructive, co-operative discourse that graces academia. But are resentful bigots also entitled to freedom of expression? Or to put it more neutrally, do the intolerant also warrant tolerance?
If bigots were unable to air their opinions, or simply denied a platform, these and they would go unchallenged. Feeling vindicated and persecuted, the bigots would recast themselves as tellers of uncomfortable truths, and, in time, recruit followers. Feeling unheard and unrepresented, this growing mass may resort to violence and destruction, including sabotage of the political system.
Censoring bigots also risks giving their opinions greater appeal and publicity. Prosecuting David Irving for Holocaust denial put him onto the front pages, and turned him from obscure and discredited historian into a free speech martyr. Banning The Satanic Verses and issuing a fatwa to kill the book’s author and publishers turned the book into a cultural icon.
Conversely, those who engage in ‘cancel culture’ are likely to invite resentment and, in so doing, undermine their cause—to say nothing of the extra-judicial and often disproportionate damage done to the reputations and careers of their targets. In such a climate of fear, self-censorship, even by well-meaning academics and liberals, makes it difficult to calmly and rationally discuss sensitive topics such as immigration and transgender rights.
And here the distinction between free speech and free thought begins to break down. If an academic has an idea but dare not voice it, the idea cannot be tested against the opinions and objections of colleagues. If a student has a doubt but dare not express it, the doubt remains inchoate. If an entire culture learns to avoid certain questions, it may eventually lose not only the answers but even the questions themselves. This is, of course, what some people would like. But to forbid a question is to forbid whatever truths might lie around and beyond it.
Policing Free Speech
Of course, we do already police free speech. In Schenck v. United States (1919), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously argued that free speech does not extend to falsely shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre. John Stuart Mill (d. 1873) drew the line at incitement to physical violence.
But beyond this (and a few other cases such as libel, threats, and false advertising), where might we redraw the line between the acceptable and the unacceptable? Socrates, Christ, and Giordano Bruno all lost their lives expressing what came to be regarded as seminal ideas.
Once we had redrawn the line, would the temptation not be to keep redrawing it? The Spanish Inquisition began as one thing and slid into quite another. And it mattered little if some of the inquisitors were well-intentioned.
There is a deeper difficulty. The people empowered to decide which opinions are too dangerous, offensive, or mistaken to be expressed must themselves hold opinions, and their opinions are no more guaranteed to be correct than anybody else’s. To censor an opinion is therefore not to remove judgement from public discourse, but to privilege one judgement over another—and, in many cases, to protect it from the very criticism that might correct it.
Today, the public square has moved online, and it is unaccountable tech giants, rather than the church and state, that are being expected to police free speech—when they might simply begin by ensuring that each individual user is genuine and accountable.
As they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant. The best response to a bad opinion is not censorship, but good argument and rhetoric. And yes, this might sometimes include mockery and derision and causing offence—although we should not go out of our way to cause offence, as with ‘hate speech’. Our focus ought to be on the facts, and not on the characteristics (although maybe the character) of our opponent.
This brings us back to parrhesia. To the Greeks, speaking freely required more than permission. It required courage: the willingness to say what one believed to be true despite the possibility of ridicule, retribution, or mere umbrage. Socrates exercised that freedom in the face of death; Diogenes before a bloodthirsty king.
In a society in which suffering is medicalised, there is a tendency to conflate psychological offence with physical violence, with the implication that retaliatory physical violence might be justified. But ‘free speech’ includes the right not to listen. Taking offence, as the Stoics insisted, is always a choice. Offence exists not in the insult but in our reaction to it, and our reactions are completely within our control. It is unreasonable to expect a boor to be anything but a boor; if we take offence at his bad behaviour, we have only ourself to blame.
Diogenes called parrhesia the most beautiful thing in the world because freedom of speech is more than the freedom to make a noise. It is the freedom to question, to contradict, to make mistakes, to change our minds, and to find out who we are and who we might be. Without it, rhetoric falls into propaganda, truth into dogma, and thought itself is strangled.
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