Versions of Censorship

Voorkant
John McCormick, Mairi MacInnes
Transaction Publishers, 1 okt 2006 - 374 pagina's

Censorship and all it implies in terms both of our historical understanding and of issues of enormous moment in contemporary life defies brief definition because it is an idea that always engages our prejudices, penetrates to the dim regions where our manners and mores take form, and shapes our attitude to the rule law, while at the same time the responses it evokes, whether pernicious or benevolent, depend upon the actualities of the historical moment. Censorship is fascinating because its theory demands some decision on its practice whenever there is an intellectual or political crisis; it is a measure of individual rationality and liberalism. History, which has accelerated so powerfully in recent decades, has diffused our attention, and we tend to overlook the most urgent of the threats to ourselves from ourselves.

Censorship is one of the gauges of civilization, and it has always aroused men's most passionate and partisan feelings. The issues involved exploded into the modern world with John Milton's Areopagitica in 1644, and have become ever more pressing as our world has grown smaller and smaller. This anthology is therefore of urgent relevance to our own lives and times.

Milton's thesis rests upon the issue of religious belief, and it introduces the book's first part, "Censorship and Belief." With "Censorship and Fact," the book moves to the conflict of the interests of science and freedom of speech with those of the state. In "Censorship and the Imagination," the issue turns on the question of what art is and how it functions in society. And, finally, comes "Self-Censorship," with Dostoievsky and Freud opening up that modern vista where neurosis and politics meet.

John McCormick was for five years Professor of American Studies in the Free University, Berlin, and is at present Professor emeritus of Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. He is also a Honorary Fellow of English and Literature at the University of York.

Mairi MacInnes was educated in England and has published a novel and a book of verse there and poems in British and American magazines.

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Inhoudsopgave

Areopagitica On the Background of
1
Areopagitica by John Milton
6
On Whether Plato Would Have Expelled Milton from the Republic
33
On Miltons Intolerance of the Roman Catholic Church
42
The Index Librorum Prohibitorum from The Vatican Story by Bernard Wall
46
On Reason Truth and Church Policy
50
The Condemnation and Recantation of Galileo
54
On the Historical Galileo and the Figure of Parable
61
On the Dangers of Preventing the Questioning of Authority
164
Corruption of the Poor and Unlearned by Certain Opinions from Report of the Arguments of the Attorney of the Commonwealth at Trials of Abner ...
165
On Freedom of Speech
169
Freedom of Speech and the First Amendment from Free Speech in the United States by Zechariah Chafee Jr
170
On Restricting the Sale of Pernicious Material
199
Smut Corruption and the Law by Patrick Murphy Malin
201
CENSORSHIP and IMAGINATION
217
COMMENT
219

A Few Tips About Science from The Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht
64
On Political Freedom and Other Peoples Beliefs
71
The Expediency of Toleration from Tractatus Theologico Politicus by Benedict de Spinoza translated by A G Wernham
73
CENSORSHIP and FACT
83
COMMENT
85
Of the Liberty of Subjects from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
87
On the Exercise of Government and the Exercise of Science
90
Soviet Genetics The Real Issue by Sir Julian Huxley
94
On Governmental Direction of Science
114
Natural Science and National Security from In the Matter of J Robert Oppenheimer quoting John J McCloy et al
116
II CENSORSHIP and the NEWS
121
On What News Is
125
A NineteenthCentury Opinion of Newspapers from a letter of Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell June 11 1807
127
On the Function of the Modern Newspaper
129
The Factual Heresy from A Discord of Trumpets by Claud Cockburn
131
On Opinion and the Public
137
Liberty of the Press in the United States from Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
139
The Unlimited Power of the Majority from Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
144
On the Emergence of Popular Opinion as a Curb on Power
148
The Wilkes Affair from Memoirs of the Reign of George III by Horace Walpole
150
Defence of the Freedom to Read a letter to the Supreme Court of Norway in connection with the Sexus case by Henry Miller
221
On the American Legal Attitude to Obscene Literature
229
Opinion by Judge Bryan on Lady Chatterleys Lover
230
On Political Influence and the Writer
249
Ketman from The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz translated by Jane Zielonko
251
On Political Persecution of Writers
274
Preface to De VAllemagne by Germaine de Stael
276
On Literature and Nationalism
282
The Prevention of Literature by George Orwell
283
COMMENT
298
From Letter to M dAlembert by JJ Rousseau translated by Alan Bloom
301
On the Theatre as a Forum
316
Speech Against Licensing the Stage by the Earl of Chesterfield
317
On George Bernard Shaw and Theatre Reform
331
The Necessity of Immoral Plays from the Preface to The ShewingUp of Blanco Posnet by George Bernard Shaw
332
COMMENT
345
DreamCensorship by Sigmund Freud
347
On Authority and Freedom
356
The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov by Feodor Dostoyevsky translated by Constance Garneti
357
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