Areopagitica

1.     Milton’s motive behind this address to parliament.

Answer:Introduction: Areopagitica is a prose work by John Milton, published in 1644, at the height of the English Civil War. The title comes from the Greek language, "Areopagus" being the place where the tribunal of the city of Athens used to meet.

     Areopagitica, an impassioned plea by John Milton (1644) for liberation of the press to a Parliament occupied with perceived offences by writers and printers, was written in response to the Licensing Ordinance of 1643 that no book should be printed unless previously approved by an authorized officer. Although aware that liberty was double-edged, Milton abhorred such control before rather than after publication, associating it with censorship in catholic countries and regarding it as discouragement to learning. He was ignored. The licensing system eventually lapsed in 1694, but moral and practical problems relating to censorship remain.

2.     Milton’s suggestion to Parliament to Reconsider Its Licensing Order.

Answer: Introduction +

Milton’s suggestion to Parliament of Reconsider its licensing order are as follows:

·         The hateful origin of licensing;

·         The effects of the reading of books;

·         The futility of the order which has recently  been passed.; and

·          The harmful effects of his order on learning and on truth.

3.  The Suppression of a Good Book Means the Destruction of the Fifth Element.

Answer: Areopagitica is a prose work by John Milton, published in 1644, at the height of the English Civil War. The title comes from the Greek language, "Areopagus" being the place where the tribunal of the city of Athens used to meet.

 Harmful books, says Milton, should certainly be suppressed because they can do a lot of harm. Suppressing or prohibiting a good book is as wicked as killing a human being. “A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond,” says Milton. The destruction of a good book is tantamount to the destruction of the fifth element which is more precious than the other four elements, namely fire, water, earth, and air. This fifth element consists of the “very breath of reason”. Killing a good book therefore means killing the ethereal fifth element.

     4.     Liberal attitude (Romans epic theory pleasure is highest good greek and romans.)

Answer: Introduction +

Milton then says that he is not asking for unlimited freedom in the publication of books but that he is certainly opposed to the licensing order which has been proclaimed in this context. In the ancient Greek city of Athens, there were only two kinds of books about which the magistrates were required to be vigilant: blasphemous books and libelous books.  

Epicurus who taught that pleasure was the highest good; and no action was taken against the philosopher Diogenes who preached cynicism. In Lacedaemon, the other leading city of ancient Greece, the government and the people were also fairly liberal in their attitude to books and to the authors of books The Roman authorities did not bother their heads about any other kind of books. It was because of this liberal attitude of the authorities that Lucretius was able to versify his epicurean philosophy without any action being taken against him. Only those books were prohibited or burnt which showed their authors to be heretics; and such action was taken only under the authority of the emperor himself when it had been proved, after a due investigation, that the books in question were really of this objectionable kind.

     5.     The beginning of Tyranny and Arbitrariness.

Answer: Introduction +

    It was now the Popes who began to decide what books should be burnt or prohibited; and they exercised this power in an arbitrary manner. But even they were not too drastic in their judgments, and they did not ban too many books till Pope Martin V issued a special order prohibiting not only the writing, but also the reading, of heretical books. In this way Pope Martin V tried to crush all opposition to the Christian Church and its doctrines.  This kind of thing continued until the Council of Trent and the Spanish Inquisition together built up a system of preparing and notifying lists of books which were thought to be objectionable, and which the faithful Christians were expected to avoid altogether. Such action by the Council of Trent and the Spanish Inquisition was certainly very tyrannical, and it hurt the feelings of many good authors very keenly. That is how the licensing of books began; and, of course, such licensing then became not only arbitrary but also over-strict. Authors had now to obtain what was called an Imprimatur (or a permit) for the printing and publishing of their books.

   6.   A free Discussion of All Kinds of Opinions.

Answer: Introduction +

Milton then expresses his view that all kinds of opinions including the wrong and false ones should be available to all human beings so that the truth can be arrived at through a discussion of them.  Good and evil in this world, says Milton, exist inseparably, and they grow together in the same inseparable mixture. Our knowledge of good is interwoven with our knowledge of evil. So close is the inter-mingling that it often becomes very difficult for us to separate one from the other. Only when we know the nature of evil that we can understand and appreciate the nature of virtue; and only then can we show our capacity to make the right choice between them. It is only by reading books of all kinds that we can judge what is right and what is wrong. We would not know which books are false and misleading unless we go through them; and we can go through them only if authors and publishers enjoy complete freedom in the writing and publishing of books, pamphlets, tracts etc

     7. Even Holy Contain Accounts of Impiety and Wickedness:

Answer:  Introduction +

It is said that an unrestricted reading of books can have harmful effects upon human -beings. For instance, it is said that if we read books indiscriminately, we would be infected by the evil which they contain, and that this evil would then spread to other people also. But if it be so, then all human learning must be removed, and all religious controversy must be forbidden because not only religious: discussions but religious books (including the Bible itself) contain detailed accounts and descriptions of impiety, wickedness, sensuality, disobedience to God, human grievances, human discontent with the divine governance of the world, and similar other forms of irreligious and unholy thoughts and deeds. The ancient philosopher Plato certainly proposed certain restrictive devices and methods to keep writers and authors under check. For instance, he suggested that poets should not be allowed to read out their poems to the people until the judges and the law- keepers had gone through them and approved of them. If the printing and publishing of books is to be controlled or regulated to improve civil life, then all kinds of recreations and pastimes such as singing and dancing must also be controlled or regulated because they too can mislead and corrupt human beings. Plato’s suggestion to impose restrictions on the publication of certain categories of books can never succeed because such a restriction would have to be supplemented with restrictions in many other spheres of life. With too many restrictions upon life and upon human activity, the world would become a ridiculous and boring place, and even then those restrictions will not fully serve the purpose for which they would be introduced.

8. The Good that Books can do to human society;

Answer: Introduction+

Books should be freely available, and printers and publishers should therefore have full freedom to print and publish them so that people may read them freely and decide for themselves which books are good and which are bad. Whether a book teaches virtue or not, and whether a book contains some truth or not, can be decided only if people themselves have the freedom to go through them and if they are not banned at the very source. If a book is capable of doing even a little good to the people, then it is a book worthy of esteem because even a little service to society is preferable to the forcible prevention of evil. The licensers would find their work most disagreeable, tough, and boring, and therefore no men possessing any real ability or worth would come forward to accept this task for the sake of the meagre payments which they would receive.

9. THE LICENSING ORDER, UNKIND TO TRUTH LIKE A STEP-MOTHER

Answer: Introduction+

Milton then points out some other implications of the licensing order. He says that this licensing order is a move towards a complete censorship of books, and therefore a move towards the cancellation of one of the basic privileges of the people. This licensing order, he says, will lead to a form of tyranny under which the authors would feel most miserable. This licensing order may also prove to be a nursing mother to religious sects; and it would certainly prove to be a step-mother to truth. Truth is like a fountain, the water of which has to be kept flowing and is not allowed to stagnate.

11. MEN AS PUPPETS

Introduction + Some people practice their religion by proxy. Rely upon priests to perform the duty of prayer and worship on their behalf, treating the priests as their agents, and keeping them pleased in every way, while spending their own time in -the enjoyment of the pleasures of life and in adding to their wealth. This licensing order would become an instrument for the conversion of human beings into non-thinking puppets. The priests themselves would also suffer a heavy loss by the introduction of this licensing order.

12.  NOT COMMODITIES BUT REPOSITORIES OF TRUTH        

Books are the repositories of truth and learning which are not commodities to be treated like commercial goods to subject books containing knowledge and learning to the scrutiny of licenses is to treat them as commodities to be approved and sold. It is a disgraceful punishment to an author to debar him from writing any books after one or more of his works have been adjudged by the licensers to be harmful to the readers and therefore prevented from appearing in print.

• When did licensing order first existe?

Answer: The Ordinance for the Regulating of Printing also known as the Licensing Order of 1643 instituted pre-publication censorship upon Parliamentary England. Between 1640 and 1660, at least 300 news publications were produced.. The Licensing Order of 1643 First page of John Milton's 1644 edition of Areopagitica, in it he argued forcefully against the Licensing Order of 1643.

• Writing about pope martin v

Answer: Pope Martin V issued a special order prohibiting not only the writing, but also the reading, of heretical books. In this way Pope Martin V tried to crush all opposition to the Christian Church and its doctrines. And he adopted this stern attitude because by this time men like Wyclifand Huss had begun to attack the Christian doctrines openly and in strong terms.

• What is milton opinion?

Answer: In his famous prose work titled Areopagitica, John Milton compares reading to eating. At one point, for example, he writes as follows:

books are as meats and viands are; some of good, some of evil substance; and yet God, in that unapocryphal vision, said without exception, RISE, PETER, KILL AND EAT, leaving the choice to each man's discretion. Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ little or nothing from unwholesome; and best books to a naughty mind are not unappliable to occasions of evil. Bad meats will scarce breed good nourishment in the healthiest concoction; but herein the difference is of bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate.

In other words, books resemble food because some books are full of virtue and therefore have beneficial effects on those who read them, in the same way that some foods are healthy and therefore promote the health of those who consume them.  Likewise, some books are lacking in virtue and thus promote vice in those who read them, just as some foods are unhealthy and therefore damage the health of those who eat them

·         What are John Milton's assumptions in his prose appeal to Parliament, Areopagitica?

Answer: Areopagitica is written as an appeal to the English Parliament asking they rescind a new law to bring the burgeoning printing and publishing enterprises under government control. It was called the Licensing Order of June 16th, 1643. Milton assumes that liberty in a democracy--built as it is on the models of Greece and Rome--is most fully honored and present when citizens have full power of expression without intervention of government control.

• Francis Bacon Prose Style:

Answer: Francis Bacon is generally recognized as the first great writer of English philosophy although he had no great respect for the English language. Bacon’s style is most remarkable for its terseness. Bacon displays a great talent for condensation. Every sentence in his essays is pregnant with meaning and is capable of being expanded into several sentences. Many of his sentences appear to be proverbial sayings or apophthegms by virtue of their gems of thoughts expressed in a pithy manner. He can say that most in the fewest words. His essays combine wisdom in thought with extreme brevity. The short, pithy sayings in his essays have become popular mottoes and household expressions.

An aphoristic style means a compact, condensed and epigrammatic style of writing. There are a number of aphoristic sentences in this essay. Some of these may be quoted here:

“A mixture of a lie doeth ever add pleasure.”

Here Bacon wants to convey the idea that the statement of a truth becomes more attractive when a lie is mixed with it. Thus, whenever we want to defend a lie, we could quote this sentence from Bacon.

“Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in Providence and turn upon the poles of truth.”

Here Bacon conveys a valuable moral by the use of the minimum possible number of words.