(けんえつ censorship)
The first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good, and reject the bad; and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorized ones only. Let them fashion the mind with such tales, even more fondly than they mould the body with their hands; but most of those which are now in use must be discarded.
--Plato, Republic
John the Grammarian, a famous Peripatetic philosopher, being in Alexandria at the time of its capture, and in high favour with 'Amr begged that he would give him the royal library. 'Amr told him that it was not in his power to grant such a request, but promised to write to the caliph for his consent. Omar, on hearing the request of his general, is said to have replied that if these books contained the same doctrine as the Koran, they could be of no use, since the Koran contained all necessary truths; but if they contained anything contrary to that book, they ought to be destroyed; and therefore, whatever their contents were, he ordered them to be burnt. Pursuant to this order, they were distributed among the public baths, of which there was a large number of the city, where, for six months, they served to supply the fires.
(quoted in Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edn., 1910-11, i-ii. 570;
also in Jonathan Wolff's An Introduction to Political Philosophy,
Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 119-20)
文章、写真などのもっとも面白い部分を黒塗りすること。
出版の自由の項も参照せよ。
17/Apr/2001