What are John Milton's arguments in Areopagitica?

Milton's Areopagitica is one of the great classical defenses of free speech. It is also, more narrowly, a defense of unlicensed printing. This means that it specifically argues that a printer should not require the government's permission to produce texts, which would amount to official censorship of the material in question.

Milton begins by pointing out that no system of licensing prevailed in classical Greece or Rome. Even when Rome became Christian, the books of those who were condemned as heretics were only burned after publication, when they had been "examined, refuted, and condemned in the general Councils." Milton says that the system of licensing is a Catholic innovation, instituted by the Spanish Inquisition and since embraced enthusiastically by tyrannical Popes. This, of course, was an argument likely to carry weight with a Protestant parliament.

Milton then discusses the uses of reading. He says that

Moses, Daniel, and Paul, who were skillful in all the learning of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks, which could not probably be without reading their books of all sorts.

God gave everyone the agency to decide for themselves what books to read and even if the arguments are false, the mind is strengthened by learning to refute them. We are therefore weakened by censorship, since we never learn to refute the arguments against our own position.

The licensing order, Milton goes on to argue, will not protect anyone because the ignorant would not read the books it censors in any case and the learned will know how to refute their arguments. However, licensing will cause harm because it will result in books which make important arguments being censored on arbitrary grounds.

Milton is not entirely libertarian in his argument. He stresses that genuinely harmful books may be destroyed, but only after they have been printed and refuted. Censorship before the fact weakens the nation, making us lazy and conformist. He appeals to patriotism by pointing out, in one of the most famous passages, that this is not the natural condition of the nation:

Lords and Commons of England! consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.

Milton argues that censorship is undesirable because it prevents people from exercising critical thinking and reasoning. For Milton, to use one's reasoning is like building a muscle: it must be exposed to challenging ideas and even troubling, problematic content in order to grow strong. Milton argues that if such material is kept away from the average reader under the guise of protecting them, the government will only be ridding people of the capacity to form moral firmness.

This is especially pertinent, since temptation is an ever-present problem. Even if all the so-called immoral material in the world were to be suppressed, people will still face choices between good and evil every day. No matter the precautions taken by the government or even by individuals themselves, people cannot be protected from temptation. And since they cannot be protected from temptation, they must be equipped with a strong sense of moral reasoning—which can only be gained through reading a variety of material, even if said material is potentially dangerous.

He also links censorship with the practices of the Roman Catholic Church (viewed as an enemy in Milton's social milieu) and states that, as Protestants, they need to do much better in upholding intellectual freedom.

How can Milton's Areopagitica be summarized?

Areopagitica is arguably one of the most important defenses of free speech in the English language. The title comes from the Greek word Areopagitikos which refers to a speech given by the fifth-century BC orator Isocrates on the hill of Areopagus in Athens.

The occasion of Areopagitica was the passing by the Puritan Parliament of the Licensing Order of 1643. This brought publishing under the official control of the government. Anyone publishing written work would have to submit it to government censors who would then decide whether or not it was fit to be published.

Milton had been a staunch supporter of the Parliamentary cause during the Civil War, but the issue of censorship prompted a growing disillusion with the direction that the Presbyterians in Parliament seemed to be taking the country. For Milton, as both a writer and a devoted Protestant, censorship was something one associated with the crypto-Catholic regime of Charles I or the officially Catholic governments of Europe. To him, it had no place in a godly Protestant republic.

Milton criticizes censorship and defends free speech on a number of grounds: some practical, some philosophical, others theological. He passionately asserts that God gave human beings reason, and with that reason came the freedom to choose. If you take away that freedom, as censorship does, then not only are you going against God's will, but you don't even remove the desire for freedom, which lingers on regardless:

"Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure, he has yet one jewel left: ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness."

Even if you take a man's riches from him, he'll still desire them; it's the same with opinions. Censoring them won't make them go away.

Freedom of opinion is important because without it there can be no increase in knowledge or advancement in learning:

"Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making."

Opinions should be voiced freely, even plainly incorrect ones. Good and evil are closely intertwined, as Milton so wonderfully showed in Paradise Lost. It was only through eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that Adam and Eve eventually understood the difference between good and evil.

Furthermore, Milton argues that for a book to be officially sanctioned is to slap a badge of dishonor upon it:

"[W]hen every acute reader, upon the first sight of a pedantic license, will be ready with these like words to ding the book a quoit's distance from him: "I hate a pupil teacher; I endure not an instructor that comes to me under the wardship of an overseeing fist. I know nothing of the licenser, but that I have his own hand here for his arrogance; who shall warrant me his judgment?"

As soon as we see that a book has been officially licensed by the government, then as discerning readers we'll want nothing to do with it. The state may have the right to govern, but it has no right to censor thoughts. And by censoring what people can and can't say, it actually undermines the state's proper authority by bringing it into disrepute.

Milton believes that the truth will always ultimately come out. But it can only do so if false opinions are given as much free reign as true ones. Truth doesn't just suddenly drop down from heaven fully-formed; it needs to be fought for, and that can only happen if there is freedom of opinion:

And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing.

In a contest between truth and falsehood there can only be one winner. So why should we even think of censoring false opinions? The best way to suppress falsehood is not through state-sponsored censorship but by exposing it to the light of truth. Milton rightly senses that the Presbyterians in Parliament who support censorship are somewhat insecure in their opinions and so see censorship as the only way to defend them.

Finally, Milton argues that if you start censoring books and opinions then there's no telling where it might lead:

If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man. No music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and Doric. There must be licensing of dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth, but what by their allowance shall be thought honest . . . 

Parliament has embarked upon a dangerous path. The crude extirpation of falsehood by the blunt instrument of censorship can just as easily be applied to other forms of human expression. Where will it all end?

What argument is presented in John Milton's Areopagitica?

John Milton's Aeropagitica was penned in response to the Licensing Order of 1643, which in effect gave Parliament the power to exercise what has become known as prior restraint on controversial or subversive publications. Milton argued that the prior restraint of publications was a practice more befitting a Catholic government, and provides examples from classical antiquity and the current state of affairs in Catholic countries (including an account of a meeting he had with Galileo) to demonstrate his argument. But above all, Milton appeals to the principle of intellectual freedom to argue that squelching ideas at their source is sinful:

...as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye.

Milton is not arguing for free speech or expression. He admits that heretical or especially blasphemous ideas ought to be punished if expressed publicly in print. But he also argues that attempts to shield people from bad ideas in an attempt to make them virtuous will actually weaken their virtue. He also argues that reason is a God-given virtue, and that censorship attacks that virtue at its source. "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, according to conscience, above all liberties,”  Milton argued. 

What is Milton's prose work Areopagitica about?

The "Areopagitica" was Milton's response to government's plans to enact censorship laws on writers. He did not want the government to be given control of publishing because he felt, and rightly so, that this could lead to the suppression of thoughts and ideas. He preferred that accountability for writing should be controlled by other means, at the editorial level within the publishing cycle, for instance, instead of at the governmental level.

Milton felt that freedom of expression was an integral aspect of education and learning, of the development of humankind. He writes:

Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.

He also believed that taking control of thought away from thinkers, researchers, teachers and the like would render that thought useless to the world, stating:

And how can a man teach with authority, which is the life of teaching, how can he be a doctor in his book as he ought to be, or else had better be silent, whenas all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal licenser, to blot or alter what precisely accords not with the hidebound humour which he calls his judgment?

Lastly, he thought that the censoring of writing was just the first step on a slippery slope that would lead to the censoring of all artisitc expression:

If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man. No music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and Doric. There must be licensing of dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth, but what by their allowance shall be thought honest

Knowing what we now know of the long legal history of battles against artistic censorship, one cannot help but see that Milton's fears were quite accurate!

What are John Milton's assumptions in his Areopagitica appeal to Parliament?

Areopagitica is written as an appeal to the English Parliament asking they rescind a new law to bring the burgeoning printing and publishing enterprises under government control. It was called the Licensing Order of June 16th, 1643.

Milton assumes that liberty in a democracy--built as it is on the models of Greece and Rome--is most fully honored and present when citizens have full power of expression without intervention of government control.