WHEN you attend your first class in political philosophy at any Western university, (hopefully in China and India, the curriculum is different) you are assigned the books of the ancient Greek philosophers of which Plato’s The Republic must be digested thoroughly.

In your next course, you are introduced to philosophy during the Roman Empire of which Cicero stands out. From the ancient Greek city states to the most important philosophy books of the 20th century which include the French philosophers and the Frankfurt School in Germany, to the most recent philosophy books of which stand out John Rawls’ “A theory of Justice”; Amartya Sen, “The Idea of Justice” right down to a few years ago with a

masterpiece by a Jamaican philosopher, Charles Mills and his breath-taking book, “The Racial Contract,” I have not read or seen about any book that argues that free speech is an unconditional, inherent right.
What philosophers have argued is that humans are born with natural rights to justice, but justice must not be dispensed in an unequal manner and that rights have contexts. The most important context is the obligation to acknowledge that others must have the rights you seek and in pursuit of justice, the rights of others are not taken away.

Socrates whose philosophy was so genius-like lives through the work of his student, Plato. Socrates was charged for treason and put to death. The Athenian rulers accepted that Socrates was using free speech to overthrow the state. Since Socrates’ trial and death penalty, there has been a raging debate about the wholesomeness of free speech and the debate will never end.

In the paroxysm of free speech debate, the consensus emerged hundreds of years ago that free speech cannot be used to harm others. Out of that outline came the political acceptance hundreds of years ago that the right to self-expression carries societal responsibilities.

The jury in Socrates’ trial found him arrogant in that Socrates’s defence was based wholly on the right to free expression. But when told that free expression does not involve denigrating the sacred values of Athens including its gods and religions, Socrates insisted that he had a right to condemn them.

Today, even if society disagrees with the execution of Socrates, the historic and present-day acceptance is that the right to express how you feel cannot be done without being careful that the expression can hurt another person. It is for this reason that

the laws of libel have been accepted by society a very long time ago.
If you were to examine the prosecution’s case against Socrates, the arguments in that court room thousands of years ago should be used against Baby Skello and Vybz Kartel should they be charged. What Skello and Kartel did was not to disagree with Hinduism and Christianity but to offend the deep religious sentiments of the adherents of those religions.
I am not a religious person though I have been married to one such person, over 46 years now. Karl Marx argued that religion is the opiate of the people but though one can adumbrate a criticism of religion based on science, it is not for any human to judge another’s acceptance and importance of their religion to his/her life.

This was the point the prosecutor made to Socrates. The 500-person panel of jury told Socrates that he was devastating institutions and cultures in Athens that were important to the existence of Athenians. Religion is just not another value in the life of a person. It stitches together the disparate parts of the mind and allows that mind to become one functioning unit on which existence is predicated.

I am not a believer but the essence of the philosophy of existentialism more so in John Paul Sartre than Martin Heidegger (though I believe Heidegger is in a class of his own) allows me to understand how important religion is to the human soul. Sartre replaced religion and God with what he calls “The Project.” The Project of the non-believer performs the same purpose as religion. Therefore, if you are an existentialist you should be able to understand the importance of religion to one’s existence.

It is in this context Skello and Kartel should have faced criminal charges. Their songs have been banned from this country, and Guyana is in no position to prosecute Kartel but they can charge Skello. No one can convince me that Skello did not know that there were racial, cultural and religious insults in his mediocre, silly rambling. He had to know who he was singing about. Why he chose a Hindu goddess and not Lady Chatterley’s lover?

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.