Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography

Front Cover
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997 - 369 pages
"Hailed from coast to coast as an extraordinary and provocative work and compared with the best of Harold Bloom, Joseph Campbell, and Lewis Thomas, Forbidden Knowledge explores two of today's most important moral issues: the explosion of scientific knowledge and the problem of pornography as represented by the recent rehabilitation of the Marquis de Sade. In a compelling synthesis of history and literature, Shattuck challenges the meaning of moral responsibility in our daily life, providing a landmark history of Western culture that will dazzle the reader."--Cover.

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Contents

FOREWORD
1
THE FAR SIDE OF CURIOSITY
13
From Taboo to Science
27
Skepticism Agnosticism Ignorabimus
33
Lust of the Soul
44
Miltons Version
55
Of knowledge within bounds
62
The Downward Path to Wisdom
71
Knowledge as Interference
159
TAKING STOCK
165
SCIENCE
173
Five Cases
183
The Condition of Ambivalence
217
THE DIVINE MARQUIS
227
Rehabilitating a Prophet
236
The Moors Murders Case
256

FAUST AND FRANKENSTEIN
77
Scenes from Faust
86
Scenes from Frankenstein
93
The Principle of Excess
100
MME
109
Aestheticism in Emily Dickinson
121
An Epicurean at The Banquet of Abstemiousness
131
GUILT JUSTICE AND EMPATHY
137
Comparing Two Specimens
144
Understanding Blaming Forgiving Pardoning
151
A Closer Walk with Sade
268
Must We Burn Sade?
283
Truth in Labeling
290
THE SPHINX AND THE UNICORN
301
The Veil of Ignorance and the Flame of Experience
313
SIX CATEGORIES OF FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE
327
THE SPHINX BY FRANCIS BACON
343
INDEX
359
Copyright

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About the author (1997)

Roger Shattuck taught for many years at Boston University and now resides in Vermont. He is the author, most recently, of "Candor & Perversion".

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