Freedom of Thought as a Basic Liberty

The Importance of Thought

Thinking is a deeply important part of human life. Reflection and cogitation sparkle in the realm of thought, and it is in thinking that ideas take shape. Thinking connects to action, conditioning behavior and contributing to the generation of outward activity. People’s social and political exchanges involve and imply thoughts. When people air their opinions, they employ their mental faculties, their expressions often reflecting the ideas and views they possess. Thinking matters also when one disengages from conversation. People spend a considerable amount of time alone with their thoughts; some of this may be taken up in rumination or imagination, some spent evaluating desires and assessing goals.

Thinking reveals additional significance when one considers what it might be like not to think at all. It is common enough for authors to decry the lack of careful thought in democratic majorities, or to bemoan citizens’ disuse of their mental capacities. But critics chide the public for not thinking well, or enough, or about the right things; or they voice concern about citizens drawing unjustified or false conclusions and circulating them as though the points were warranted and true. The critics’ concerns are not that citizens do not think at all. To be devoid of thought would be not to exist as a social being, in a normal, human sense of the word. Literally not to think would be to sleepwalk dreamlessly through life; it would be to suffer exile from the fellowship of mankind, as Philoctetes might say, marooned without even the quiet company of one’s mind.

The Idea of Freedom of Thought

Like thinking itself, the idea of freedom of thought proves to be a weighty concern garnering support from many points on the political spectrum. Rosa Luxemburg remarks that freedom is “always the freedom of one who thinks differently.” ¹ Charles Fried touches upon the importance of freedom of thought in his heady discussion of “liberty of the mind.” ² The American founders laud the importance of freedom of thought: Benjamin Franklin endorses it in a notable aphorism, contending that without freedom of thought there can be “no such thing as wisdom.” ³ More emphatic still is Thomas Jefferson’s sweeping declaration that he has “sworn upon the altar of god [sic], eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” ⁴ The statement reflects Jefferson’s antagonism towards illegitimate coercion and fear of reprisal, both of which powerful rulers have deployed to control populations and to silence dissent.

One finds freedom of thought eulogized in the liberal tradition, most notably in prominent philosophical statements on the nature of the central liberties. Consider, for example, John Stuart Mill’s treatment in On Liberty. Mill invokes freedom of thought at the outset, mentioning it in his delineation of the appropriate realm of human liberty. As Mill describes it, that sphere includes

the inward domain of consciousness, demanding liberty of conscience in the most comprehensive sense, liberty of thought and feeling, absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. ⁵

This domain comprises the “first” realm of human freedom, Mill proposes. ⁶ His description does not imply that liberty of thought is identical to liberty of conscience, nor does it suggest that the latter encapsulates the former. To the contrary, Mill’s depiction suggests a difference between freedom of thought and freedom of conscience, that the two are not identical liberties. Also noteworthy is his recognition of freedom of sentiment, a freedom that, he suggests, manifests qualities different from that of opinion. The distinction is sensible: how one thinks or feels about something can be different from the opinion one holds on the subject, and both are distinguishable from what one opines to others, a point that Mill appears to have understood quite well. ⁷

The freedom to express and publish opinions, Mill reflects, might “seem to fall under a different principle [than liberty of thought]” because it involves conduct that often concerns others. ⁸ However, Mill adds that the freedom to express and publish opinions is “practically inseparable” from freedom of thought, and “almost of as much importance as the liberty of thought itself.” ⁹ His statements are highly provocative, especially given Isaiah Berlin’s portrayal of Mill as the “greatest champion” of liberty and the founder of modern liberalism. ¹⁰ In the first place, to say that freedoms of thought and speech are practically inseparable is not to propose that those freedoms are analytically or logically indistinguishable. Second, Mill claims that freedom of thought is more important than the freedom to express and publish opinions; this gives reason to think that, for Mill at least, the respective freedoms are indeed divisible analytically, whether they may be distinguishable in practice. Third, and perhaps most interestingly, Mill proposes that at least some features or forms of freedom of expression, if not all of them, are less important than freedom of thought. For the liberal champion of freedom of speech, this is a noteworthy statement, indeed. ¹¹

Mill’s discussion of freedom of thought owes a debt to the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt, who, in The Limits of State Action, emphasizes the significance of freedom of thought to free inquiry and enlightenment. Humboldt warns that “pernicious results [arise] from restrictions on freedom of thought,” noting that free inquiry is imperative for “our whole manner of thinking, and even acting.” ¹² While the use of reason arouses doubt in an inquiring mind, intellectual investigations can be part of enlightening and liberating experiences. ¹³ The power and value of thinking are generally more important than the particular results or conclusions one reaches in thought, Humboldt suggests—and one should not suppose that further ideas or truths depend necessarily on established conclusions. ¹⁴ That outlook tends to stifle inquiry and bring it to a halt; this prompts one to appreciate why freedom of thought is “so vital,” with anything that diminishes it being “so fatal.” ¹⁵ And while Humboldt praises the “self-reliance and firmness [of] the inquiring thinker,” he submits that freedom of thought and enlightenment are not “for a few only”; instead, they spread their purpose and worth across the body politic. ¹⁶ A well-formed society should allow “complete” freedom of thought, he concludes: so doing can improve “the mind and character of [an] entire nation,” extending beneficial results “even to [the] humblest individuals.” ¹⁷

John Rawls adds further important statements on freedom of thought to the liberal catalog. Like Mill, Rawls suggests that freedom of thought is central to the basic structure of a just society. In Political Liberalism, he proposes that one should include freedom of thought as part of what he calls a “fully adequate scheme of basic liberties.” ¹⁸ Rawls is clear that freedom of thought counts among the basic liberties—he places it first on the list—and he suggests that the basic liberties jointly hold the status of a primary good. ¹⁹ Freedom of thought does not appear to be a political liberty for Rawls, however. One infers this from his comment that “the equal political liberties and freedom of thought” have a special role in securing “the free and informed application of the principles of justice, by means of the full and effective exercise of citizens’ sense of justice, to the basic structure of society.” ²⁰ Rawls draws a nearly identical distinction nearby in the text: he proposes that “the political liberties and freedom of thought” have an essential role in specifying a “just political procedure,” ²¹ maintaining that the constitution of a well-ordered democracy must guarantee freedom of thought in order for political liberties to be exercised in a “free and informed” manner. ²²

Rawls’s account of the basic liberties includes requirements of representative democracy and protections for freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and free association. ²³ Freedom of thought and liberty of conscience figure prominently in Rawls’s argument, however; this coheres with his case in the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, wherein Rawls emphasizes the “high place [that] must be accorded to liberty of conscience and freedom of thought.” ²⁴ He clarifies this position by proposing that, from the perspective of the “constitutional convention,” arguments for equal liberty of conscience support regimes “guaranteeing moral liberty and freedom of thought and belief, and of religious practice, although these may be regulated as always by the state’s interest in public order and security.” ²⁵ One notes Rawls’s allowance that government may potentially or actually regulate freedom of thought, even though he does not describe exactly how regulation of that kind might proceed.

Rawls extends these positions in his 1993 essay “The Law of Peoples,” arguing in favor of a measure of liberty of conscience and freedom of thought for peoples around the globe. ²⁶ In his subsequent book-length treatment of the subject, he contends that the basic human rights include “a sufficient measure of liberty of conscience to ensure freedom of religion and thought.” ²⁷ These freedoms are not irreducibly liberal or particular to Western tradition, Rawls maintains; neither are they “politically parochial,” ²⁸ and any decent society must respect them. ²⁹

Rawls’s discussions of freedom of thought, and of closely related liberties and rights, track larger trends and developments in international human rights discourse. His standpoint on freedom of thought fits with language expressed in Article 18 of the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), for instance, which proposes that

everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. ³⁰

The UDHR places freedom of thought in close proximity to freedom of conscience. Article 18 includes direct mention of freedom of religion, as well, suggesting that the three freedoms are meaningfully distinguishable even if they are all subsumed under one single right. The language of the UDHR neither expressly requires nor conveys the sense that the three freedoms are identical; nor does Article 18 indicate that either freedom of conscience or freedom of religion, respectively, covers freedom of thought. With Mill and Rawls, Article 18 implies to the contrary: that the three freedoms are meaningfully different from each other in at least some respect. One notes furthermore that the language of Article 18 proposes that the right in question “includes” the freedom to change one’s “religion or belief”; so it is not obviously exhausted by modifications of that kind, and freedom to hold a variety of thoughts, or to change them, could reasonably be argued to be covered under the UDHR.

The UDHR’s affirmations have generated subsequent United Nations provisions reiterating the importance of freedom of thought. For example, Article 18 of the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights (ICCPR) maintains that the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion includes freedom “to manifest [one’s] belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching,” and it provides that “[n]o one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice.” ³¹ The Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief ³² (EAFIR) follows the ICCPR. It affirms, in the second paragraph of its preamble, that the UDHR and the International Covenants on Human Rights “proclaim the principles of non-discrimination and equality before the law and the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief.” ³³

I wish to emphasize three points that emerge from the analysis to this point. First, freedom of thought enjoys strong support in the philosophical statements of Humboldt, Mill, and Rawls. Not only is freedom of thought included on their lists of basic liberties, often it is mentioned first. Second, United Nations declarations and covenants repeatedly affirm the value of freedom of thought, striving to convey the sense that something valuable and distinctive graces that freedom’s nature. Third, while these factors may give presumptive reason to think that freedom of thought is a highly important liberty, they do not establish that it is a basic liberty. The canonical declarations are helpful and suggestive but they do not give clear reason to hold that freedom of thought is a liberty of the basic kind. Freedom of thought could prove superfluous, for instance, were it subsumable entirely under other well-established liberties. Another possibility is that freedom of thought is only of minor significance. A further prospect is that freedom of thought lacks content: it might turn out to be only a putative liberty, one that speakers invoke for rhetorical purposes but which, upon examination, connotes nothing special or distinctive.

What Does Thinking Include?

I have thus far outlined a prima facie sense of the importance of freedom of thought and noted the prominence of that freedom in canonical statements in political theory. It serves at this point more precisely to define what one might mean by “thought” and “thinking,” for the sake of clarity. So doing helps to bring the idea of freedom of thought into focus alongside associated rights and liberties. An appropriate definition of “thinking” enables one to consider possible distinctions between freedoms of thought, conscience, expression, and religion, furthermore, a step useful for illuminating the qualities of freedom of thought itself.

For purposes of analysis, I define “thinking” as “mental activity,” and I shall use “thinking” and “thought” interchangeably. This definition is purposefully broad. It encompasses a wide range of mental phenomena: examples of thinking include deliberation, imagination, belief, reflection, reasoning, cogitation, remembering, wishing, sensing, questioning, and desiring. According to this definition, thinking runs the gamut: it can be directed toward a wide variety of objects, and it may be more or less rational or imaginative. This conceptualization allows that some thoughts may be about social or political phenomena; that others have a more interpersonal focus; that thoughts may or may not be religious; and so on.

The definition I provide is unadorned and unremarkable. It appears appropriate and apt for philosophical and legal analysis of freedom of thought, furthermore: the definition does not mark out an uncommon understanding of “thinking,” and neither does it bias the analysis in favor or against freedom of thought turning out to be a basic liberty. The conception of thinking that I employ is broader than Martha Nussbaum’s, because it includes “imagination” and “sensing” under its rubric. ³⁴ I do not object to Nussbaum’s distinctions between thinking, imagining, and sensing; my account does not depend on the denial of those distinctions. The case that I furnish could in principle exclude sensing or imagining from what counts as thinking without affecting the structure of the argument. But a broader allowance is useful for bringing the parameters of freedom of thought clearly into view.

Naturally compatible with the idea of thinking as mental activity is the observation that thoughts often coincide with outward physical action. Thinking and acting regularly go hand-in-hand: people often think and act in concert, with activities in the two spheres operating in combined and cooperative ways. Even so, I limit discussion in the first instance to the “inward domain of consciousness” that Mill describes. ³⁵ This is because situations in which thoughts manifest in action raise independent moral and political considerations. Cases in which individuals both think and act risk confusion because they involve other liberties pertinent to the outward acts that the individuals perform. A person’s outward actions broach spheres of movement, of expression or association, and so forth, drawing in related rights and liberties in those respects.

To clarify the analysis, three qualifications are in order. First, I exclude cases in which people express their thoughts to others. ³⁶ This exclusion covers spoken language, written messages or tracts, artistic works, publications, and any other expressive acts presented to others or performed with the intention of reaching other people after some period of time. ³⁷ I set these examples aside because they do not represent instances of thought alone. Examples in which people communicate with others and express their views, or where people make their opinions known publicly, involve issues of freedom of expression that pull focus away from thinking and from whether freedom of thought is a basic liberty. In listing deliberation as a form of thinking, therefore, I mean to include only intrapersonal deliberation. This coheres with Philip Pettit and Michael Smith’s suggestion that “thinking itself is a kind of intrapersonal conversation,” ³⁸ but it may be noted that intrapersonal deliberation remains just one form of thought, on the conception that I employ here. This analytical strategy serves an important heuristic purpose; and whereas some may question whether any crisp distinctions separate thought from other forms of human activity, the broader case that I marshal in favor of freedom of thought as a basic liberty should prove compatible with, and affirmable within, a variety of philosophical views.

Second, it is important to distinguish between a person’s thoughts and the manner in which others gain familiarity with them. One needs generally to rely upon another’s speech, emotional expressions, or other outward acts—phenomena other than the person’s thinking per se—in order to draw inferences about their thoughts. But one should not confuse thinking itself with the phenomena used to infer or to ascertain it, and this is important to keep in view for the present study.

Third, there is a difference between the question of whether freedom of thought is a basic liberty, on one hand, and what criteria or conditions must be met in order to make someone capable of thinking, or of thinking well, on the other. Important though the latter questions happen to be, one must not be sidetracked by them. I do not dispute that people need language, communicative capabilities, a history of interpersonal association and agency, and a relatively rich environment in order to become capable of various forms of thought. But I set these points aside because the conditions do not obviously remain necessary for a person to engage in thinking, once he or she has become capable of thought, and answering the question whether freedom of thought is a basic liberty does not appear to necessitate treatment of just what capabilities people may require in order to think effectively.

Is Freedom of Thought Distinctive?

In order to gain purchase on the issue of whether freedom of thought is a distinctive liberty, it serves to consider whether that freedom has a robust and separate set of qualities when compared against other liberties that people commonly affirm. I mean to pick out liberties that are broadly acknowledged and upheld in scholarly literature, and which are largely uncontroversial. This investigative strategy is useful variously, not least because thought is elusive and hard to see. Thinking is easily overlooked when one sets it against more prominent and visible practices of expression, association, movement, and so forth. And it is plausible that whether freedom of thought deserves status as a fundamental liberty depends partly on the extent to which it is distinguishable from established and accepted liberties of the basic kind.

I have noted that freedom of thought has close connections to a variety of established freedoms, each of whose political and legal significance proves foundational to constitutional democratic orders. Freedom of thought and liberty of conscience are often mentioned in same breath; both appear to be linked to freedom of religion, and each one connects to freedom of expression. These freedoms are quite plausibly interdependent in practice. For instance, it is hard to see how a society could reliably institute and guarantee religious freedom without protections for freedom of speech or liberty of conscience. And scholars often suggest that, as a political and legal matter, people need these freedoms together, along with cognate freedoms of association, of petitioning government, of the press, and so on, in order to generate stable and well-functioning democracies. Freedoms of religion, conscience, and expression tend to come bundled, it seems, such that societies must develop protections for them as a group, if any of the freedoms are to flower.

At a more involved level of observation, one notes that writers have often muddled discussions of freedom of thought with more commonly recognized basic liberties. The problem is evident in J. B. Bury’s A History of Freedom of Thought, which, for all its merit, jumbles freedom of thought with related freedoms of expression, conscience, and religion. ³⁹ Justice Benjamin Cardozo provides another example, running together freedoms of thought and speech in a famous and influential United States Supreme Court decision. ⁴⁰ I do not know quite what accounts for this tendency. Perhaps writers lump freedom of thought in with cognate freedoms because, as a political or legal matter, freedom of thought has seemed relatively secure when some combination of freedoms of expression, conscience, association, and religion are guaranteed. Another possibility is that freedom of thought has been overlooked because thought is subtle and difficult to see. ⁴¹ One can add to this the fact that people gain familiarity with others’ thoughts through speech and behavior, for which there already exists an established moral discourse of rights and liberties. These factors could account in part for the neglect of freedom of thought, or for what Neil Richards describes as the “relatively little attention [given] to the processes by which speakers develop their ideas.” ⁴² Whatever the reasons for failing to give freedom of thought its due, writers appear not even to have looked to see whether or how this freedom might be a distinctive liberty in its own right. And here it may be noted that one cannot take for granted that guarantees for other basic freedoms suffice to protect freedom of thought, just as one should not suppose that close correlation between two phenomena implies that they are identical. Freedom of thought might not be a liberty that is as easy to grasp as the others, but one cannot fairly assume that the various qualities of this liberty are completely covered by other freedoms, nor is it sensible to decline to give freedom of thought the discrete analytical treatment that it deserves.

Consider how freedom of thought relates to freedom of expression. Even though the two are closely linked, freedom of thought appears different, sufficiently so to leave it unable to be fitted within the framework of free speech theory. ⁴³ The central reason for this is that one can think a wide variety of thoughts without ever expressing them. People are capable of thinking things that they do not disclose to others, and this marks a decisive difference between thought and expression. Bury suggests that people wish naturally to express their thoughts to others; ⁴⁴ that is a fair point, but it does not hold for all the thoughts people generate. Furthermore, whether someone wishes to state or otherwise to convey what he or she desires, believes, imagines, assumes, feels, expects, or remembers, the thoughts themselves are different from their expression. These considerations scuttle attempts to subsume, as a conceptual matter, freedom of thought under freedom of expression.

The idea of freedom of thought is special. It captures the sense of being able to engage in mental activities without legal penalization for one’s thoughts, and without undue incursion into one’s mental life. This marks off a further difference between the respective freedoms of thought and speech. The latter is commonly understood to consist in the ability to engage in discussion, to air opinions, to express views artistically or through deployment of symbols, and so forth, without facing legal punishment for so doing, or without having the expressive acts undermined (e.g., newspapers confiscated, artwork destroyed). Alexander Meiklejohn makes an impressive attempt to include freedom of thought within the protections of the First Amendment, ⁴⁵ but no realistic freedom-of-speech concern exists in cases in which nobody desires, attempts, or performs an expressive act, whereas freedom-of-thought concerns can and do obtain in precisely those circumstances. Thought and action may go naturally together, but in situations in which no speech act has been attempted and none is quashed, no display of opinion made or even desired, nothing said and things only thought, freedom of speech theory is silent.

To illustrate the point, consider Mill’s complaint regarding situations in which people are permitted only to hold opinions “in secret.” ⁴⁶ Even in conditions in which people cannot speak freely, a liberty to generate and to hold opinions appears different and distinctive because people could have that freedom whether they were permitted to express themselves. I do not mean to say that one should expect people to think especially well when they live in constant fear of reprisal for discussing forbidden topics or for airing unapproved views. It is difficult to inform one’s thoughts without the freedom to express oneself and to exchange information; and freedom of thought is important in order for one to form something to express in the first place. ⁴⁷ But those are independent issues with their own philosophical contours.

Other basic freedoms are more readily distinguishable from freedom of thought. Consider how freedom of thought compares to freedom of conscience, where one understands conscience to be a capacity to bond with notions of what is right and good. ⁴⁸ First, the variety of mental activity included under the rubric of thought is considerably broader than that which pertains to conscience. Thinking encompasses a broad range of moral and non-moral beliefs and desires, along with imaginings, remembrances, and so forth, and many instances of thought may not be constitutive of conscience or its affirmations. This gives cause to hold that freedoms of thought and conscience are, respectively, meaningfully distinct. Second, one can inform or persuade a person’s conscience in ways qualitatively different from merely changing someone’s thoughts. Not all modifications to a person’s thoughts are alterations to their conscience, and the hallmark ability of conscience to bond to ideas of what is right and good distinguishes it from forms of mental activity that thinking includes. Third, while individuals can act against the dictates of their consciences, they may face significant emotional or cognitive obstacles in their attempts to do so. Acting contrary merely to what one thinks, in contrast, need not be an especially difficult task; this is yet another way in which thought and conscience are distinguishable. Finally, with regard to direct differences between freedom of thought and freedom of conscience, the latter involves external action in a way that the former need not. An important part of freedom of conscience is the ability to act, or to refrain from acting, based on one’s conscientious commitments, whereas that is not an essential element of freedom of thought.

Like freedom of conscience, freedom of religion consists partly in the ability to engage in outward activities, and it, too, can be distinguished from freedom of thought. Part of freedom of religion is the ability to believe in such things as otherworldly powers without facing persecution for those affirmations. However, freedom of religion also encompasses protections for worshipful practices and other outward behavior understood as part of religious expression. Furthermore, while some forms of thinking may be religious in nature, not all thinking has that quality. For instance, a person’s opinion of a political official might possess no religious qualities if the opinion were neither derived from any religious idea or belief, nor composed of any essentially religious content. ⁴⁹ One can distinguish freedom of thought from freedom of association, furthermore, and more readily still. Freedom of association consists in the ability of people to congregate, with outward actions being one of that freedom’s central concerns. The individual capability of forming, expressing, or improving one’s thoughts may of course benefit from associational liberty, and perhaps even depend upon it, but that is again a separate consideration. Finally, one notes that Part III of the ICCPR seeks to distinguish between these various freedoms, giving separate mention to freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Article 18); to the right “to hold opinions without interference” (Article 19); to the right of peaceful assembly ⁵⁰ (Article 21); and to the right to freedom of association (Article 22).

Freedom of Thought as a Basic Liberty

I have to this point argued that freedom of thought can be distinguished from closely related freedoms of expression, conscience, religion, and association. This does not suffice to show that freedom of thought qualifies as a basic liberty, however. The freedom to drive a motorized vehicle is different from any of the aforementioned liberties and yet one would hardly call that liberty basic. What is needed is an argument to the effect that freedom of thought warrants recognition as a basic liberty, given its distinctive qualities and in keeping with its purported esteem.

A key reason for holding that freedom of thought enjoys the “status of substance” of a basic liberty is that freedom of thought appears critically important for a person’s enjoyment of other basic liberties and rights. ⁵¹ Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of any rights or liberties whose very meaning and enjoyment do not involve thinking, or which do not depend otherwise on complex mental activity in some critical way. Security and subsistence rights appear this way, as do related basic liberties. Humboldt’s reflections on the centrality of freedom of thought are helpful on this front: he contends that freedom of thought, and the enlightenment it produces, are “the most efficient of all means for promoting security.” ⁵² Humboldt might overstate his case, but it is sensible to suppose that freedom of thought plays a key role in the promotion of security, that it is necessary for the enjoyment of other rights and liberties, and that it is part of a minimally decent human existence. To be clear, one could have some subsistence rights in place without protecting freedom of thought. For example, government could respect a basic right of freedom from assault in situations in which someone has no thought at all. ⁵³ But that would not rise to the level of meaningfully enjoying freedom from assault. Merely shielding people from physical attack, without also protecting freedom of thought, would be to treat them more like sheltered animals than as human beings. It is therefore reasonable to propose that freedom of thought is a basic liberty, and one that is constitutive, if not solely and entirely so, of cognate basic liberties and the enjoyment thereof. ⁵⁴

To exemplify, consider a scenario in which a country’s public officials punish citizens found to have contrarian political ideas or antisocial sentiments. In a society with punishments for thought, each of the freedoms of expression, association, and religion would be severely stunted, the more dramatically so the greater the assault on freedom of thought, ceteris paribus. Sanctions on contrarian or unapproved thoughts would hamper citizens’ moral and intellectual development. Punishments of that kind would make it all the more difficult for people to reckon with their various thoughts, impeding their ability to decide for themselves how to proceed. The limitations would risk rendering people’s expressions inauthentic, furthermore, undermining the meaningfulness of discourse. Sanctions on thought would also deaden civil society, whose many secondary associations would be hampered by fear of the ideas and views they might produce. After all, were such associations to generate incorrect thoughts in their membership, the citizens could be subject to prosecution even if their behavior were not out of line. This example shows how freedoms of speech, association, conscience, and religion all depend on freedom of thought: undercutting freedom of thought diminishes other vital freedoms.

Rawls’s reflections on the significance of basic liberties are also instructive, helping further to establish that freedom of thought is a liberty on which other rights and liberties heavily depend. I have already described how, in Rawls’s view, freedom of thought is a basic liberty that is partly constitutive of a primary good. ⁵⁵ Rawls reflects that the significance of any basic liberty depends on “whether [the liberty] is more or less essentially involved in . . . the full and informed and effective exercise of the [two] moral powers.” ⁵⁶ On the account of moral powers that Rawls provides, freedom of thought qualifies as a highly important basic liberty. First of all, an individual cannot form, revise, or pursue a conception of the good without thinking, because each element of that moral power irreducibly includes thought on the part of the individual who has it. Conceptions are held in the mind, after all, and an individual’s pursuit of her conception of the good logically entails more or less well-conceived values and ends. Second, to the extent that others may be capable of interfering with one’s thinking, and so able to hamper one’s pursuit of the good, so conceived, it appears reasonable to suppose that the first moral power essentially involves freedom of thought. Third, the capacity for a sense of justice—the second moral power, according to Rawls—implies at least working familiarity with notions of right and wrong, a familiarity that cannot be achieved or maintained without thinking. People employ a variety of forms of thought in developing a sense of justice and coming to appreciate its moral weight. Fourth, parties external to an individual can incapacitate that person’s thinking, thereby hampering the individual’s capacity to develop a sense and understanding of justice. ⁵⁷ The possibility of wrongful interference in one’s moral thinking adds weight to the notion that freedom of thought enjoys special value. Each of these considerations affords greater credence to the idea that freedom of thought is highly substantial, and that this freedom merits status as a basic liberty.

Further support for the idea that freedom of thought qualifies as a basic liberty issues from the fact that existing rights, which protect other basic liberties, do not provide adequate security for freedom of thought. For instance, free speech guarantees prove inadequate in this regard. ⁵⁸ The example of the society that punishes citizens who have undesirable thoughts prompts one to see how this is so. That society might simultaneously defend the right of its citizens to express a broad range of statements and views; it simply prosecutes people found to have pernicious or wayward ideas. Such a society could be willing to tolerate a great deal of speech and expression but still aim to probe or to change people’s thoughts, in combination with levying penalties for ideas or beliefs deemed unacceptable. An approach of that kind may be unpalatable but it is not obviously irrational. Government officials might find it efficacious to focus on people’s thinking, proceeding on the operating principle that mental activities are wellsprings of various social and political ailments. They may suppose that methods calibrated to alter citizens’ thoughts could assuage social ills spanning from citizen disengagement and apathy to antisocial behavior and subversive action. Such efforts might even be made to try to dissolve rebellious or revolutionary ideas before they take hold in the citizenry. To treat the diseases afflicting their society, the idea might be, state institutions should go after the root cause—the thinking—instead of focusing energies on citizens’ speech acts, which are symptomatic of underlying problems.

The idea of political authorities attempting to punish people for what they think might seem merely hypothetical and farfetched. However, punishments for thought have in many times and places been available to courts and councils, and to ruling authorities generally. For instance, in England it was formerly the case that thinking of regicide was a punishable offense. ⁵⁹ The Treason Act of 1351 made it a treasonable offense to “compass or imagine” the death of the King, his wife, or his eldest son and heir. ⁶⁰ The language of the Treason Act operated for a considerable period; in the latter half of the eighteenth century, William Blackstone came to say that its words were meant to be “declatory.” ⁶¹ Jeremy Bentham vigorously attacked what ultimately became the revised Treasonable Practices Act, ⁶² proposing that it was unsound to make illegal people’s mere imaginings. ⁶³ However, as John Barrell points out, even “imagining [the King’s death] in a weak sense” was argued to suffice for treason in England, in the 1790s. ⁶⁴ Further examples protrude from the former Soviet Union, spurting from under the heel of Stalinist repression during the latter half of the 1920s and in the Great Purge of 1936–1938. Robert Tucker describes Stalin’s preoccupation with rooting out dvurushniki (“two-faced people”) from party ranks: a dvurushnik outwardly professed party loyalty but was believed to hold antiparty sentiments or ideas, and thus was determined to be insufficiently enthusiastic for Stalin and his leadership. ⁶⁵

Lest one suspect that only freedom of speech guarantees do not adequately shield freedom of thought, it may be observed that freedoms of association, religion, and conscience are similarly limited. Mechanisms for protecting each of those important liberties cannot protect key elements of thinking. Government might allow citizens freely to associate and to worship as they please, for instance, but still use its coercive and persuasive powers to try to modify people’s thoughts, employing various invasive or excessive means to do so. Officials might attempt to change people’s thinking by invading their mental life and quashing unpalatable thoughts at the source, so that people do not even wish to associate or worship with others in ways deemed undesirable, and indeed so that the population may not much want to associate in groups at all. ⁶⁶

It might be objected that freedom of thought cannot qualify as a basic liberty because it is impossible to violate it. Consider how freedom of thought fares in comparison to freedom of association, for example. The objector may note that there are clear and multiple ways in which to abrogate the latter freedom: by shutting down meeting places illegally, by breaking up peaceful organizations for sinister political reasons, and so forth. Thinking is different, it appears. There is no way in which to interfere with what people think, strictly speaking, no way to breach the walls of that inner citadel. ⁶⁷ As such, the objector may state, there is little cause to believe that freedom of thought proves substantial and meaningful. Any putative freedom that is by its nature inviolable, in the sense that nothing could be done to undermine or to abrogate it, is a liberty that warrants no real concern.

The problem with this objection is that it vastly overestimates the protected nature of the inner realm of thought. There appear to be numerous ways in which to abrogate freedom of thought and multiple categories of action in which such violations can occur. It is beyond the scope of this analysis to provide a complete register of freedom-of-thought violations, but one can offer some notable kinds of examples. First, it seems possible to violate people’s freedom of thought in investigative procedures, as where parties inquire excessively about someone’s beliefs or try wrongfully to force an individual to disclose what she is thinking. If there are improper ways in which to investigate people’s thoughts, there are plausibly freedom-of-thought violations that inquiring parties can commit. Belief modification is a second category in which parties appear able to violate others’ freedom of thought. Violations in this area may occur when people employ invasive psychological or medical procedures to try profoundly to alter someone’s thoughts or ways of thinking. To the extent that belief-modification procedures can effectuate extreme changes in people’s thinking, or be implemented wrongly or without subjects’ consent, a second way in which to violate freedom of thought emerges.

Third, it seems that public officials can abrogate freedom of thought by imposing sanctions on people based merely on the thoughts that the individuals in question happen to have. That is, there are at least prospective violations of freedom of thought when officials mete out punishments just for what one believes, or merely for the ideas or desires one has, and when one has engaged in no problematic outward action whatsoever. The idea of people receiving punishment for their thoughts alone may not be especially palatable in modern democratic life. But it appears no less to be a risk in pluralistic social and political conditions. And there is special cause for concern, here, given ongoing worries about terroristic and other kinds of malfeasance, along with official efforts to root out those who sympathize with terrorist groups, and given new technologies under development that may assist in inferring people’s thoughts independent of their speech or behavior. ⁶⁸

Conclusion

Freedom of thought is a distinctive and basic liberty, a key star in the constellation of freedoms that democracies enshrine. I have described the fundamental importance of that freedom, in this article, analyzing a series of differences between freedom of thought and cognate liberties. I have not addressed the question of how best to protect freedom of thought; neither have I considered in detail how often or in what ways this liberty can be violated by government agencies or by private parties. The treatment I provide allows that freedom of thought might legitimately be regulable by government, furthermore, in at least some respects, as is the case for other basic liberties. Whether there is a right to freedom of thought—and, if so, what kind of a right it may be—is another topic that I have not scrutinized. The idea of a right to freedom of thought raises questions requiring further analysis. However, the case that I generate furnishes groundwork with which to address these matters anew. And the finding that freedom of thought is a basic liberty lends weight to the notion that a right to freedom of thought exists, one ready for recognition and inclusion among the cardinal values of democratic life.