Index Librorum Prohibitorum

[kev67]

I am currently reading A History of Western Thought by Stephen Trombley. I think it does quite a good job at summarising who the most important thinkers were and their main themes. The problem I find, is that although you hear the names a thousand times, you don't know what their big ideas were.

The two things that have stood out so far:

There are about 10,000 professional philosophers in the world. Wouldn't it be cool to have professional philosopher as your job title in your passport?

The Catholic Church was antipathetical to philosophy, because they liked to keep their flock sheeplike. The list of philosophers' writings they banned included:

Galileo Galilei
Francis Bacon
Johannes Kepler
Rene Descartes
Blaise Pascal
John Locke
Voltaire
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Denis Diderot
David Hume
Immanuel Kant
Henri Bergson
Jean-Paul Sartre
Simone de Beauvoir

Strangely, they did not ban Friedrich Nietzsche, Adolph Hitler or Karl Marx. Surely this proves they were idiots.
They did, however, ban Montaigne's Essais. Why would they ban that? I have not read them, but I gather they are rather innocuous.

[YesNo]

Are they currently banning these books?

[kev67]

No, it was lifted in 1966.

[YesNo]

I'm surprised they banned Descartes and Pascal.

Today, with the internet, banning books would mean controlling the internet which I understand can be done if one has the political power. It could also mean blacklisting people so they cannot get jobs or access to funds from grants or a readership if they do get something to publish.

[kev67]

I thought Descartes proved God existed, so I am surprised he was on the list too.

[kev67]

I read about Henri Bergson today. He mistrusted empricism and advocated a philosophy based on intuition. Although he was a Jew, he was attracted to the Roman Catholic Church. Despite this, his books were put on the index librorum prohibitorum.

[kev67]

Like Henri Bergson, Ludwig Wittgenstein was a philosopher of Jewish extraction who was drawn to the Catholic church. Unlike Bergson, Wittgenstein actually converted to Catholicism. Bergson probably would have, but at the time Jews were being persecuted and he wanted to show solidarity. Nevertheless, a Catholic priest said some prayers at his funeral at his request. Wittigstein's parents had converted to Protestantism, so he was brought up a Christian. Why would a philosopher convert from Protestantism to Catholicism?

It's very odd. You have a nenowned philosopher like Bertrand Russell, who argued stridently for atheism. Then you have an equally clever contemporary philosopher who converts to Catholicism.

[YesNo]

Although it depends on what actually happens to you when you get your book banned, it seems that being on a list of banned books overall can be good publicity.

No one can read everything, but if I hear a book has been condemned in some way that signals to me the book threatens those condemning it in some way. Because of that I am more inclined to want to read it than not.

Recently, I've read Thomas Nagel's "Mind and Cosmos" and was attracted to it because one philosopher of mind said it was cute but "not worth a damn". He couldn't have offered better praise for it in my mind since I disagreed with his philosophy. I probably would not have read the book if it weren't for that comment since I am familiar with Nagel's panpsychism already.

I am also reading Rupert Sheldrake's "Morphic Resonance". I was pleased to read in the introduction of that book regarding an earlier edition (1981) that the editor of Nature wrote, "His book is the best candidate for burning there has been for many years." I knew then I picked something worth reading.

Book banning as well as other forms of condemnation by those with some power imply the existence of a threat to those banning the book. The Catholic list has only historical interest now, but it would be interesting to know why they were threatened by the books on their list.