Areopagitica

Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England is a 1644 prose polemical tract by the English poet, scholar, and polemical author John Milton opposing licensing and censorship.Areopagitica is among history's most influential and impassioned philosophical defences of the principle of a right to freedom of speech and expression.

Today, Areopagitica is regarded as one of the most eloquent defenses of press freedom ever written – and as one of the most influential, because many of its expressed principles have formed the basis for modern justifications.

Background

Areopagitica was published 23 November 1644, at the height of the English Civil War. It is titled after Areopagitikos (Greek: Ἀρεοπαγιτικός), a speech written by the Athenian orator Isocrates in the 5th century BC. (The Areopagus is a hill in Athens, the site of real and legendary tribunals, and was the name of a council whose power Isocrates hoped to restore). Like Isocrates, Milton had no intention of delivering his speech orally. Instead, it was distributed via pamphlet, defying the same publication censorship he argued against. As a Protestant, Milton had supported the Presbyterians in Parliament, but in this work he argued forcefully against Parliament's 1643 Ordinance for the Regulating of Printing, also known as the Licensing Order of 1643, in which Parliament required authors to have a license approved by the government before their work could be published.