Censorship Moments

Reading Texts in the History of Censorship and Freedom of Expression

Geoff Kemp

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781472512840
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781472505439
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.

Censorship in varying forms has been part of human experience for 2,500 years and has proved itself to be a recurring presence for political thought, whether as active repression, a shaping context for expression, or as itself a subject for analysis and argument. From the death of Socrates to the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, attempts to silence thinkers and writers have provoked passionate and often penetrating responses that speak of their historical moment.

Censorship Moments will provide short, accessible and stimulating access to a variety of these responses. Each chapter will couple a short textual 'moment' of writing on censorship and freedom of expression by a past writer with analysis by an expert current scholar. The book's main focus is the public political dimension of censorship, in its relation to political authority and political thought, while also reflecting on the porous boundary to literature and other areas such as law and the media.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• List of Illustrations
• Contributors
• Series Editors’ Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. Cato the Censor and Socrates the Tyrant
• 2. The Case of Cremutius Cordus: Tacitus on Censorship and Writing under Despotic Rulers
• 3. The Peace of Babylon (and What it Censors): St Augustine of Hippo’s City of God
• 4. The Regulation of Language in Medieval Theology: The Summa Theologica of St Thomas Aquinas
• 5. William of Ockham on Ecclesiastical Censorship
• 6. ‘Whether to Confiscate, Burn and Destroy All Jewish Books’: Johannes Reuchlin and the Jewish Book Controversy
• 7. To Kill a Heretic: Sebastian Castellio against John Calvin
• 8. Paolo Sarpi, the Papal Index and Censorship
• 9. Areopagitica’s Adversary: Henry Parker and the Humble Remonstrance
• 10. Text and Image: William Marshall’s Frontispiece to the Eikon Basilike (1649)
• 11. Rara temporum felicitas: Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise
• 12. Roman Censorship, Spartan Parallels and Modern Uses in Rousseau’s Social Contract
• 13. Censorship from Rulers, Censorship from Book Piracy: The Strategies of Immanuel Kant
• 14. The ‘Censorship of Public Opinion’: James Madison, the Sedition Act Crisis and Democratic Press Liberty
• 15. The ‘Spirit of Independence’ in Benjamin Constant’s Thoughts on a Free Press
• 16. The Royal Shambles (1816): Hiding Republicanism in Plain Sight
• 17. Mill and Censoriousness
• 18. ‘Every Idea is an Incitement’: Holmes and Lenin
• 19. Orwell: Liberty, Literature and the Issue of Censorship
• 20. Sphinx with a Secret: Leo Strauss’s ‘Persecution and the Art of Writing’
• 21. The Silencing of Women’s Voices: Catharine MacKinnon’s Only Words
• Notes
• Suggestions for Further Reading
• Index
• Imprint