Principles and Limits of Freedom of Expression, Simone Weil’s Ethical Insights

This article presents the results of a journey into the work of French philosopher Simone Weil, Oppression and liberty and The Need for roots, in order to identify the conditions and limits to the implementation of freedom of expression. This research project aims at identifying the ethical foundations of freedom of expression in a contemporary context where globalization, the media and social networks facilitate a fast dissemination of numerous individual and collective expressions, while the law cannot discern when to privilege freedom of expression over other human rights. The result of our analysis of Weil notions of “need of the soul” and “obligations towards human being” enable to understand why freedom of expression is individual and not collective and under which conditions it should be protected: as an essential need of our intelligence, rooted in every human being, that must be respected absolutely at an individual level. This principle also makes it possible to legitimize the limitation of certain collective expressions conveyed by organizations, in their external and internal communication, and the authorization of the individual voice of certain stakeholders when they speak out in favor of justice and truth.