Critical Civility: A Critical Republican Approach to Harmful Speech

In political theory, debates surrounding the proper limits and scope of a free speech principle tend to focus on a negative conception of freedom. In this sense, I am free in my exercise of speech to the extent that the state does not interfere with me through censorship or punishment for what I choose to say. While such a conception proves invaluable for understanding state-citizen obligations when it comes to free speech, such an account offers little guidance as to how citizens ought to express themselves towards one another. For instance, do bystanders have an obligation to intervene when witnessing a public act of misogynist abuse? Is the practice of ‘no platforming’ a justifiable way of protecting the equal status of minority groups on university campuses? And, relatedly, what duties (if any) do we as citizens have to engage in counter protests against certain hate groups? In building on the neo-republican revival, this paper argues that a critical republican conception of civility offers a substantive understanding of the way in which citizen-citizen exchange contributes to the undominated status of individuals. While long committed to the notion that we require both robust institutions and social norms in order to enjoy social freedom, the republican literature has to date said little about what such a ‘dual track’ approach to civility would actually look like in practice. This paper aims to fill this gap by showing how critical civility, a value which outlines the responsibilities of individual citizens to contest and shape the norms of the surrounding community, provides a lens through which we can address these issues effectively without sacrificing the protection of free speech.