Stanley Fish, professor of English and Law at Duke University, recently named to head the Duke University Press, has combined previous articles, speeches, an interview, and new material to yield a provocative, frustrating, ultimately engaging book.

Despite its title, the book does not focus on free speech. Only two chapters emphasize free speech issues, although the arguments relative to legal studies, political correctness, literary criticism, and the professoriat clarify his arguments relative to free speech. Taken as a whole, the book offers a feast for those interested in current intellectual issues, philosophical, legal, and political.

Fish does not provide a ringing endorsement of free speech or set forth a theory ala Meiklejohn, O’Neil, Haiman, or Van Alstyne. However, professors and advanced students will find useful challenges to many perceptions or assumptions that undergird approaches to First Amendment issues, particularly by those of an ultra liberal or conservative bent.

Professor Fish forcefully argues that a conception of free speech as absolute is untenable. In his view, terms such as “free speech” function as a code. What is acceptable is defined by power (political) relationships. The objective world of reason is similarly defined by “everything that goes without saying … assumptions so deeply in place that challenges to them are literally unimaginable.” (p. 131). A believer in the absolute literal accuracy of the Bible and the evolutionist cannot come to agreement on creation because each starts with a view that makes the other position incoherent. A grounding of free speech cannot be found in any absolute, unshakable basis shared by all. Fish holds that the First Amendment freedoms must be balanced with other amendments and take into consideration the relevant history. Courts and individuals should ask what is the effect of the speech, whether we want that effect, and whether more is to be gained or lost by curtailing speech in this instance. One balances long term and short term impacts knowing a slippery slope has lots of things to grab onto. Settings matter: universities provide a much higher threshold before regulating speech than the workplace or military unit.

Fish subscribes to the view that “reason” or any other such term operates only within a particular world view. We construct our world and different people construct different worlds. When world views clash, the tensions are to be worked out politically, with consideration of the history, recognition of the power relationships, and, I presume, potentially shared commitments at some level. Is power the final determinant when rhetoric (persuasion) fails?

The author raises numerous interesting questions but the resolution offered is unclear. His analysis, often trenchant and compelling, does not offer adequate means of resolving the dilemmas delineated, in my view.

This collection of essays merits the close reading that the more useful sections demand. Readers will rest less easy, pushed to reflect on a number of significant, disturbing questions. His analysis of typically unstated assumptions about free speech commands attention and the professoriat should engage the other issues as well.