In the works of Kant and Rawls, we find an acute sensibility to the pre-eminent importance of freedom of speech. Both authors defend free speech in democratic societies as a private and as a public entitlement, but their conceptions markedly differ when applied to non-liberal and non-democratic societies. The difference is that freedom of speech, for Kant, is a universal claim that can serve as a test of legitimacy of all legal orders, while for Rawls, some legal orders are owed full recognition even if they do not in principle guarantee freedom of speech. I explain Kant’s account of free political speech and argue that the defence of individual rights should be seen as its core feature, both in republican and in autocratic states. I then argue that a much-overlooked shift in Rawls’s development to Political Liberalism likewise ties his account of free speech in democratic societies to issues concerning rights and justice. In a next step, I discuss Rawls’s perspective on some non-democratic regimes in his Law of Peoples, regimes that he understands as well-ordered but which do not guarantee freedom of speech. I criticize Rawls’s account from Kant’s perspective and suggest to introduce a ‘module’ from Kant’s pre-republican thought into Rawls’s conception, aiming to secure a core area of rights- and justice-related speech. My claim is that under Kant’s view of autocratic legitimacy, an important extension of speech rights is called for even in non-liberal, non-democratic states, and that a Rawlsian account should and can adopt it.

中文翻译：

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康德和罗尔斯论专制国家的言论自由

在康德和罗尔斯的作品中，我们发现了对言论自由的卓越重要性的敏锐感受。两位作者都捍卫民主社会中的言论自由作为私人和公共权利，但​​他们的概念在应用于非自由和非民主社会时明显不同。不同的是，对于康德来说，言论自由是一个普遍的主张，可以作为对所有法律秩序合法性的检验，而对于罗尔斯来说，一些法律秩序即使在原则上并不保证言论自由，也应该得到充分承认. 我解释了康德对政治言论自由的描述，并认为捍卫个人权利应该被视为其核心特征，无论是在共和国家还是在专制国家。然后我认为，罗尔斯的发展过程中一个被忽视的转变政治自由主义同样，他对民主社会中言论自由的描述与权利和正义问题联系在一起。下一步，我将讨论罗尔斯在他的著作中对一些非民主政权的看法。万民法，他理解为秩序良好但不保证言论自由的政权。我从康德的角度批评罗尔斯的论述，并建议将康德前共和主义思想的“模块”引入罗尔斯的概念，旨在确保与权利和正义相关的言论的核心领域。我的主张是，根据康德的专制合法性观点，即使在非自由、非民主国家也需要对言论权利进行重要的扩展，罗尔斯的解释应该并且可以采用它。