CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

This paper aims to explore conceptual relationships between philosophicaldevelopments to support freedom of speech in John Milton´s Areopagitica and Johann Gottlieb Fichte´s Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought. I intend to enhance the philosophical heritance collected andrecreated by Fichte. This paper hypothesizesthat both theories state that freedom ofspeech is a condition for the development of morality. In both cases, moraldeliberation has a public character, given that moral judgment needs the consideration of different viewpoints about thequestion at stake. Finally, in both cases,is defended a republican concept of power, characterized by opposition to moralpaternalism as a form of despotism.