Concept
Book burning
Overview
Book burning is the deliberate destruction by fire of books or other written materials, usually carried out in a public context. The burning of books represents an element of censorship and usually proceeds from a cultural, religious, or political opposition to the materials in question. Book burning can be an act of contempt for the book's contents or author, intended to draw wider public attention to this opposition, or conceal the information contained in the text from being made public, such as diaries or ledgers. Burning and other methods of destruction are together known as biblioclasm or libricide.
In some cases, the destroyed works are irreplaceable and their burning constitutes a severe loss to cultural heritage. Examples include the burning of books and burying of scholars under China's Qin dynasty (213–210 BCE), the destruction of the House of Wisdom during the Mongol siege of Baghdad (1258), the destruction of Aztec codices by Itzcoatl (1430s), the burning of Maya codices on the order of bishop Diego de Landa (1562), and the burning of Jaffna Public Library in Sri Lanka (1981).
In other cases, such as the Nazi book burnings, copies of the destroyed books survive, but the instance of book burning becomes emblematic of a harsh and oppressive regime which is seeking to censor or silence some aspect of prevailing culture.
In modern times, other forms of media, such as phonograph records, video tapes, and CDs have also been burned, shredded, or crushed. Art destruction is related to book burning, both because it might have similar cultural, religious, or political connotations, and because in various historical cases, books and artworks were destroyed at the same time.
When the burning is widespread and systematic, destruction of books and media can become a significant component of cultural genocide.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
1. Heretics, all who favor them, and all who read their books. 2. Pirates, especially such as dare to cruise on the seas belonging to the sovereign pontiff. 3. Those who impose fresh tolls on their lands. 10.
Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 02
States what Book burning is; the author is tied to Book burning in the knowledge graph.
1º. How ought I to proceed with the object of showing that the Jews, whom we burn by the hundred, were for four thousand years God’s chosen people? 2º. How could God, whom one cannot without blasphemy regard as unjust, forsake the whole earth for the little Jewish tribe, and then abandon this little group for another, which, during two hundred years, was even smaller and more despised? 3º. Why did he perform a…
Voltaire, Toleration and other essays
States what Book burning is; the author is tied to Book burning in the knowledge graph.
The burning of the holocaust, and of every “memorial,” is called “a sweet savour unto the Lord”; and so it undoubtedly is, since it serves to remove idolatrous doctrines from our hearts, as we have shown. But the burning of these sin-offerings is a symbol that the sin [for which the offering it brought] is utterly removed and destroyed, like the body that is being burnt; of the sinful seed no trace shall remain, as…
Moses Maimonides, The guide for the perplexed
States what Book burning is.
Philosophers who discussed Book burning
Related ideas
- Heinrich Heine
- Franz Kafka
- Letters on the English
- Emily Dickinson
- Hagiography
- Karl Marx
- Censorship
- South Africa
- Kingdom of Judah
- Random House
- Shiji
- Muhammad
- Liberalism
- The Guardian
- Miguel de Cervantes
- Muslims
- Pierre Louis Maupertuis
- Manichaeism
- Martin Gardner
- Heresy
- Mordecai Kaplan
- Marcel Proust
- Nazi Germany
- New Testament
Place in the tradition
Part of Democritus.