Michael Gottlieb Birckner

Who was Michael Gottlieb Birckner?

Michael Gottlieb Birckner was a Danish priest and philosopher.

Birckner especially explored the subject of Freedom of Speech. The American historian H. Arnold Barton has characterised Birckner, alongside with Niels Ditlev Riegels, as being one of "the most original thinkers" of the radical group of authors in Denmark in this period. The Danish jurist Peter Germer in his book The Nature of Freedom of Speech shows that Birckners ideas was akin to ideas that Scottish-American philosopher Alexander Meiklejohn proposed in his Free Speech and Its Relation to Self-Government.