One of the most conspicuous elements of Shaftesbury’s belief in the benefits of free speech and other forms of liberty is his “Test of Ridicule” (C 1.11). He argues that the state should allow the people to engage in public ridicule because it will ultimately expose the problems in faulty views and leave unscathed the strengths of reasonable views. As Lund (2012) and Amir (2016) point out, Shaftesbury never says explicitly that ridicule is the test of truth, but he makes statements that are very