Censorship in the arts
Kaczyński is right, insofar as liberal freedom of speech should grant the right to speak against liberal freedom of speech in spite of liberal prejudice. I therefore accept his invitation and am most happy to take up this forbidden subject.
Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote the most serious arguments in favor of moral censorship in the arts.
In Lettre sur les Spectacles, Rousseau proposed that the virtue of the citizens of Geneva would be corrupted if a theater were opened in the city. He believed art was fit for corrupt subjects in Paris but not for free, self-governing republicans in Geneva.
This is because art is always hyperbolic, but self-government requires the virtue of moderation, and must guard against the emotionalism of drama.
Parisians, wrote Rousseau, were already corrupted and could not be hurt by art. Genevans, free and virtuous, would be hurt by art.
Kaczyński and his colleagues believe that Polish youth are corrupt and the government must teach them morality through culture. Censorship is supposed to be a necessary part of this teaching.
However, we see from Rousseau that moral censorship cannot save an immoral people. On the contrary; absolute freedom in the arts is the only way to stir a corrupt people to thinking about morality, and hopefully to becoming moral.
Kaczyński and his colleagues claim Poland's youth is corrupt, and that they require moral censorship. But if Rousseau is right, then the fact that Poland's youth is corrupt bars moral censorship from having any positive impact in lessening their corruption.
Therefore, our corrupt people require freedom in art to make them think about morality, and thus make them less corrupt.
Pope John Paul II, himself a theater actor and artist, would have agreed, and the teaching of the Catholic Church also supports this viewpoint.
The church teaches that God gave man free will in the hope that man might love. If God did not censor man's free will, what right does government have to do so?
Peter S Rieth, Zbigniew Raszewski Theatrical Institute
