I offer you a little leap in time…
light…
until… Antiquity…
there you have it, a leap of five millennia…
Back in the days as we said with my Secret Service colleagues…
Greek thinkers theorized freedom of thought and freedom of expression as fundamental rights of the individual…
among these clever little ones… Socrates and Plato…
We leave the Greeks…
for Italy…
In the Middle Ages, another philosopher reaffirms the importance of freedom of expression…
Thomas Aquinas… now called Saint Thomas Aquinas… it’s more slap…
For Thom… freedom of expression is necessary in the search for truth…
And since that distant time, has the concept of freedom of expression evolved?
Each time, you amaze me with your questions so relevant…
As you sense…you being so omniscient…the notion has indeed evolved…
and freedom of expression as it is understood today has its origins in the 18th century…
in two revolutions… the American… and ours… the French…
The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America of 1776…and the Declarations of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789 each state that freedom of expression is a fundamental right…
But it is not enough to be enshrined in the Constitution not to be called into question…
From the 19th century… here is this dear freedom of expression attacked by laws which limit it… for political and religious reasons in particular…
Nowadays too… the life of freedom of expression is not a long calm river…
we wonder about its exceptions, its limits, the outrages it allows… the violence it can cause… the wounds it can inflict…
Freedom of expression… is it still relevant?
That’s what we’re going to see for an hour…