It’s important to note that like so many others before him, Spinoza’s free speech doctrine was not all-encompassing. He too had his “buts,” since unlimited free speech “would be most baneful.” He put a premium on calm and reasoned intellectual debate and distinguished between criticism of laws based on (permissible) “good sense” and (impermissible) sedition—a problematic distinction, open to abuse, that undermined his otherwise robust “overt acts” theory and raised the thorny question of who gets to determine what constitutes “good sense” and “sedition.” Still, at this point in history, very
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