""Fahrenheit 451" and the debate on the limits to freedom of expression

Abstract

Considered a classic of dystopian literature of the twentieth century, Fahrenheit 451 still reveals a narrative full of questions for jurists, enabling several reading paths. If, by tradition, the burning of books by the Firemen refers to the censorship of authoritarian or totalitarian states, Ray Bradbury’s work is also capable of eliciting legal reflection on the crucial issue of the limits to freedom of expression in the democratic and pluralistic states, highlighting central and highly relevant problems such as freedom of education in public schools and the criminalization of hate speech to protect minorities in western constitutional systems. The question that Fahrenheit 451 seems to direct to law ultimately revolves around the relation between freedom and authority and the determination of the conditions of coexistence in the face of diversity in contemporary plural societies..

Keywords

• “Fahrenheit 451”
• libertà di espressione
• libertà di insegnamento
• hate speech
• Stato democratico-pluralistico.