The July 20 edition of the London Review of Books has a review by Jeremy Waldron of a recent book by John Durham Peters, Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition. Waldron notes: “Courting the Abyss is about free speech generally, but it focuses on this suggestion that we all become better people through tolerating the most hateful and diabolical speech, by staring at and listening to the Nazis and the racists in our midst.” Though Waldron—a law school professor—wishes for a book that is more analytical and less literary—Peters’s discipline is communication studies—Waldron’s engaging review nonetheless allows that the book is “interesting and provocative.”
An excerpt will acquaint you with both the literary and provocative nature of the book.