Summary and Analysis of Chapter 5 of "The Harm of Hate Speech" by Waldron
Chapter 5 of the book “The Harm of Hate Speech” written by Jeremy Waldron in 2012 is called “Protecting Dignity or Protection from Offense?”. In this chapter, the author discusses what concepts the law should protect from the hate speech: a human being’s dignity or offense.
Thesis: The work claims that the law should protect a person’s dignity protection from assault, but not deal with issues of people’s offense since the offense is feeling which occurs in a certain context and may not be connected with the express of indignity.
At first, Waldron compares the similarities and differences of the notions a person’s dignity and a person’s offense. If dignity is supposed to be a social status supported by law in the “form of a public good”, the offense is characterized as a subjective reaction of a person to any words, events, situations (Waldron, 2012, p.106). If the law protects a person’s dignity, it will deal with social aspects of a person’s position in society. In comparison, protecting a person from the offense, the law deals with subjective aspects of a person’s feelings such as hurt, shock, and anger. Waldron noticed that the protection of a human dignity in the society made the law deal with a person’s feelings, but they should not be the target of the jurisdiction questions. However, the author explains that sometimes it is difficult to distinguish indignity and offense in real life cases. Therefore, Waldron provides us with a number of examples in which the difference between protecting the dignity and protecting from the offense is shown. First of all, the author discusses the issues of racial discrimination, by noticing that it is necessary to understand the context of the hate speech and the environment for deciding if a person’s dignity was assault. Secondly, the cases of religious hate speech were studied. Waldron noticed that a person’s civic dignity should be separated from the status of his beliefs. If he thinks somebody’s words were offensive about Koran or Jesus, it does not mean that his dignity is assault.
In addition, the researcher claimed if the law would protect offenses of religious groups’ members, religious freedom could not be provided. In conclusion, it is necessary to say that Waldron gives a clear division between a human being’s indignity and offense and limits the issues which come under hate speech law. This work has an important practical meaning since it allows differentiating cases which the jurisdiction should deal with.
References
Waldron, Jeremy J.,( 2012). The Harm in Hate Speech. Chapter 5.Cambridge: Havard University …
