Silence and Freedom
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"You have the right to remain silent." These words, drawn from the Supreme Court's famous decision in Miranda v. Arizona, have had a tremendous impact on the public imagination. But what a strange right this is. Of all the activities that are especially worthy of protection, that define us as human beings, foster human potential, and symbolize human ambition, why privilege silence?
This thoughtful and iconoclastic book argues that silence can be an expression of freedom. A defiant silence demonstrates determination, courage, and will. Martyrs from a variety of faith traditions have given up their lives rather than renounce their god. During the Vietnam era, thousands of anonymous draft resisters refused to take the military oath that was a prelude to participating in what they believed was an immoral war. These silences speak to us. They are a manifestation of connection, commitment, and meaning.
This link between silence and freedom is apparent in a variety of different contexts, which Seidman examines individually, including silence and apology, silence and self-incrimination, silence and interrogation, silence and torture, and silence and death. In discussing the problem of apology, for example, the author argues that although apology plays a crucial role in maintaining the illusion of human connection, the right to not apologize is equally crucial. Similarly, prohibition against torture—so prominent in national debate since the events of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib—is best understood as a right to silence, essential in preserving the distinction between mind and body on which human freedom depends.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Beyond cop-show arrests, the right to remain silent has profound and wide-ranging implications, argues this scattershot legal/philosophical treatise. Georgetown law professor Seidman (Our Unsettled Constitution) examines the concept of a right to silence in several contexts, including police interrogations, Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination, public apologies, the Pledge of Allegiance and, less convincingly, the right to die. He approaches these issues from many directions, including Supreme Court jurisprudence and the writings of Aquinas and Camus. Seidman contrasts silence, which for liberals is the bulwark of a mental private sphere free from government intrusion, with a republican duty to speak. But the question of whether one can really choose to remain silent, he says, is complicated by pervasive determinism, which considers that choices are compelled by social forces and power relationships, and radical libertarianism, which insists that choice is necessary in a meaningless universe. Seidman is a gadfly "he favors scrapping Miranda rules in favor of public interrogation in the presence of counsel, backed by contempt charges against suspects who won't talk "and delights in tripping up conventional wisdom in logical paradoxes; the book sometimes feels like a debate between the dormitory existentialist and the sophomore who proves free will doesn't exist. It's often stimulating, but too abstruse for the average reader.
