Question- Write a summary of the Areopagitica by John Milton.

Answer -

A speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing, to the parliament of England. It is a 1644 prose polemic by Milton.

Polemic : It is contentious rhetoric that is intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and undermining of the opposing position. It takes its title in part from Areopagitica, a speech written by Athenian orator Isocrates in the 4th Century BC. It opposes licensing and cersorship. It was distributed via pamphlets.

Areopagitica is among history's most influential philosophical defences of the principles of right to freedom or speech and expression. Milton argued peacefully against Parliament's 1643 ordinance for regulating of Printing, also known as the liscensing order 1643, in which parliament required authors to have a license approved by the government before their work could be published.

Milton begins his written speech quote from the suppliants, a play by the Greek tragedian, Euripides, "This is truly liberty when free-born men/having to advise the public may speak free".

In 1643 passed a licensing order that mandated "no book, pamphlet, or paper shall be henceforth, printed, linless the same be first approved and licensed by such. "Milton is fervently opposed to parliament's order - at least the part that requires pre-publication licensing. He supports the portion of the order that, "preserves justly every man's copy to himself", and argues that "the utmost bound of civil liberity" is attained only when "complaints are freely heard, deeply considered and speedily reformed".

Milton says books were freely distributed earlier. Milton contends, pre- publication licensing was born "from the most antichristian council, and the most tyrannous inquisition that ever enquired. Milton is referring to the Roman Catholic Church and the Spanish inquisition and he is speaking directly to an overwhelmingly Protestant parliament. Books and ideas were not censored in biblical times to such an extent either unless they were found to be heretical or defamatory. The English parliament meant to suppress books they considered bad or evil, and Milton asserts this is not only impossible but an affront to God as well. God trusts man that why he provides him the reason to choose what suits him the best i.e., gave him freedom to choose without evil to reject Adam i.e., human is a mere artificial, Adam then how his virtue will be tested. Milton maintains that parliaments licensing order violates God is divine authority and plan as well. Milton continues his argument by pointing out if parliament wants to regulate printing to spare citizens from evil then they should also regulate all recreations and pastimes, music, gestures and motions of dance, household gluttony, gossiping one cannot "remove sin by removing the matter of sin" Milton posits. A man may be a heretic in the truth, and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his beliefs be true, yet the very truth he holds, Milton warns, "becomes his heresy". Milton contends that truth, "may have more shapes than one", and he implores parliament to lend equal weight to all shapes of truth and not, "fall again into a gross conforming stupidly", which "is more to the sudden degenerating of a church than many subdichotomies of petty schisms". He argues for more Christian beliefs to" be tolerated, rather than compelled. "He does not mean to tolerate" popery, and open superstition.

While Milton argues against the prepublication censorship of books, he supports the censorship and full eradication of the catholic church. Milton maintains that Parliament's new practice of suppressing books "Is the worst and newest opinion of all others, and true knowledge is kept at a distance from us". He intreats parliament "to redress willingly and speedily what hath been erred" in the passing of the Licensing order of 1643.

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