I would hate to see us become a nation of pornography readers for the same reason I deplore the widespread consumption of bad literature of any kind (I mean literature that is bad on certain literary grounds). People who enjoy trite and obvious novels written by formula—potboilers, "good guy-bad guy" Westerns, sentimental tear-jerkers, gothic romances—tend to lack discrimination and independent judgment in real life. They will be as easily manipulated by advertisers and politicians as they are by hack writers, for their responses to stock stimuli in art and life are unthinking knee-jerks. They are as likely to be incapable of discriminating nuances of feeling in their dealings with others as the pornography-addict is incapable of meeting the challenge of a genuine love affair. Requiring courses in good literature in our schools receives its primary justification from the power of literature to enlarge our insight, through vicarious identifications with plausible characters, into "the varieties of human ideals, outlooks, . . . and experiences." Stereotyped pseudo-literature has the very opposite effect. So if the bad effects on feeling and judgment of a habitual preference for pornography are the grounds for prohibiting it, then they equally justify the criminal prohibition of all cynically hack-written pseudo-literature. Proper education in the feelings should be compulsory, but for children only. For adults it is never too late for education, but much too late for compulsion.
(Joel Feinberg, "Legal Moralism and Freefloating Evils," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61 [January-April 1980]: 122-55, at 145 [italics and ellipsis in original; endnote omitted])
Note from KBJ: Feinberg is claiming that the following three propositions are incompatible:
1. Pornography and pseudo-literature stand or fall together.
2. Pseudo-literature may not be prohibited.
3. Pornography may be prohibited.
Feinberg rejects 3. Does anyone reject 1 or 2?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 