Obscenity
September 30, 2004
A tip from “Academe Today” (9/30), The Chronicle of Higher Education’s daily email digest, about the current issue of The New Atlantis:“In separate essays, a legal scholar [Jeffrey Rosen] and a[n Eastern Orthodox] theologian [David B. Hart] comment on the U.S. Supreme Court’s struggles with the constitutionality of legislation aimed at regulating pornography on the Internet.”
“In light of the Supreme Court’s end-of-term decision on legislation aiming to regulate Internet pornography,” Rosen and Hart were asked to respond to these questions: “Can society set ethical, legal, or cultural limits on pornography in the age of the Internet? And is this a reasonable or misguided aspiration?”
Rosen thinks there is no basis for a legal definition of obscenity, while Hart says this view “serve[s] to remind us that between the biblical and the liberal-democratic traditions there must always be some element of tension.” “We are devoted to–indeed in a sense, we worship–the will, and we are hardly the first people willing to offer up our children to our god.”
See Rosen’s “The End of Obscenity” and Hart’s “The Pornography Culture” online at www.thenewatlantis.com.
This is Obscenity in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Kudos for Calvinists, Particularists | Next: On Not Voting | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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