Page 11 - GALIET AREOL.AGIT.ICA: Milton IV

Light. The Cross. Light. Censorship. Light. Death. Light: el manto de Dios. In his Aeropagitica,2 John Milton addresses the Parliament of England in order to argue “for the liberty of Unlicensed Printing.” His argument for freedom of the press rests on his profound conviction that Truth, in having “... more shapes than one...” (563), is not absolute but rather partial and fragmentary and therefore, in order to find it, we must exercise our free will and freedom of choice.
For Milton, liberty and the supremacy of reason are primordial and at the very center of what constitute a moral being. It is Milton’s view that if we want to strive for Truth, we must have liberty to exercise our freedom of choice in relation to liberty of the press “... it is the liberty, Lords and Commons, which your own valorous and happy counsels have purchast us, liberty which is the nurse of all great wits; this is that which hath rarify’d and enlightn’d our spirits like the influence of heav’n...” (559). Therefore, Milton’s main argument rests not only on the importance of liberty but equally on the significance of evil: that humankind can know the good only by knowing what is evil and that God has given us reason in order that we may exercise our freedom of choice accordingly. In addition, it is imperative that we understand how crucial it is for Milton that Truth be represented as a force of living energy, an everlasting fluidity in our constant struggles between good and evil for “Truth is compar’d in Scripture to a streaming fountain, if her waters flow not in a
2 Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. By Merritt Y. Hughes. Areopagitica. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1957.
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