Self-Censorship
1. Auflage Mai 2025
112 Seiten, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
There is no such thing as free, unconstrained speech. Laws and constitutions may protect us from the state when we speak our minds. But the state is just one possible constraint. Glenn Loury, one of America's most outspoken and important intellectuals, provides a provocative and dazzling analysis of the powerful social forces that can prevent speakers from voicing unpopular views in public forums.
Every society, Loury notes, has norms to enforce. That can be a good thing: There ought to be social sanctions for, say, compulsive liars. When, however, a society shows a low degree of tolerance for speech about matters of political importance, self-censorship proliferates and public discourse and policy suffer. The answer, Loury argues, is for as many of us as possible to be braver and more human - to take a risk and unapologetically "live within the truth".
Loury first presented these ideas in the 1990s in a celebrated and prophetic essay about "political correctness." In Self-Censorship he expands and updates the account, deploying his analytical powers and psychological acuity to diagnose our current political climate. The result illuminates prevailing social dynamics with the same brilliant and startling effect that made the paper an instant classic thirty years ago.
Self-Censorship in Public Discourse: A Theory of "Political Correctness" and Related Phenomena
Afterword: Self-Censorship in a Time of War
Cornel West
"Glenn Loury's brilliant essay on self-censorship is as relevant today as when it was first written. It is published here with a new Afterword in which the author argues - through his own poignant example - that the preservation of social esteem through the maintenance of public silence is eventually paid for in the coin of self-respect."
Rajiv Sethi, Columbia University
"Glenn Loury's work on self-censorship merits commendation as being prophetic. It is brilliant and readable scholarship - what a concept! Really, I cannot commend the book highly enough."
Robert P. George, Princeton University
"This is a brilliant and highly important work. It claims, in essence, that restrictive speech conventions arise whenever the signalling function of language crowds out its primary truth-stating function. It is the best close analysis I have read of what has come to be called 'virtue signalling' and related phenomena. It has the potential to be a classic."
Edward Skidelsky, University of Exeter
"Statements by a speaker on a topic (e.g. recent events in Gaza) will lead a rational listener to update their beliefs both about the topic and about the character of the speaker (e.g. antisemitism). This book reprints Glenn Loury's analysis of this mechanism, which will lead a rational speaker to self-censor in order to avoid the inevitable inferences about character."
Stephen Morris, Peter A. Diamond Professor of Economics, MIT
