13. John Milton and his “Areopagitics”

English journalism of the mid-17th century is essentially pamphlet. The English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century, the result of which was the establishment of parliamentary government in the United Kingdom, effectively led to the fact that the censorship that existed until that time had not been canceled, then, in any case, lost its meaning: the books were printed completely freely or censorship constraints. Therefore, at this time there is a huge number of pamphlets devoted to this topic.
Quite interesting ideas are expressed in Milton's pamphlet, and each proves the futility of censorship. “Censorship is useless, censorship is harmful, censorship humiliates human dignity.” Here is the main idea of ​​“Areopagitics”. Milton gives a lot of interpretations about this. If censorship will act against “seductive revolutionary and slanderous books”, i.e. sets as its goal the improvement of manners, “then they must do the same with all the amusements and amusements - with all that gives man pleasure”. Benefit can only be "... not the enforcement laws of virtuous education, religious or civic culture ...". Censors must be people above average. Where to find people who will spend their time on such activities? No one except the squanderers of his time. And if this is so, then it is easy to imagine these people: “then there will be ignorant, powerful and careless people”. The censors will eat out of the books all that does not correspond to their ignorant understanding, or even subject the books to destruction. Here Milton relies on the fact that an educated person, intelligent, with lofty ideals, will not waste his precious time trying to remove any thoughts from the books. Another important point in the “Areopagitics” is the inevitable clash of censorship with culture. Censorship certainly stands in the way of the truth itself, slowing down and hampering the access of this most precious commodity. “Censorship harms even by forbidding harmful books.” Milton wants to say that a person must be a censor for himself, to be able to distinguish the good from the bad. As already mentioned, the censors must be infallible in order to fulfill their direct purpose, but by what parameters the state chooses the censors is not very clear.