'Croatian Philosophical Society (Hrvatsko filozofsko drustvo)'
Abstract
The aim of my paper is to show some elements in Milton’s and Locke’s political writings,
depending on their attitudes to different media. Milton in his argumentation against
censorship must demonstrate that all the ancient instances for censorship, usually cited
in his century, can be interpreted as examples of another phenomenon. However, Milton,
analysing loci of Plato’s Republic and some Scriptural topics, recognises the scope and
significance of non-conceptual, non-printed, non-verbal forms of communication; he describes
them as signs of childish, female or uneducated behaviours, as valueless phenomena
from the point of view of political liberty incarnated in the freedom of press. John Locke’s
attitude is the same. I will show a chain of ideas, similar to Milton’s one, in his Two Tracts
on Government and in his Epistola de tolerantia, focusing the analyses on the concept of
adiaphora (indifferent things)
