Concept

Taboo

Overview

societal or cultural prohibition

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Taboo is discussed.

Thus something like the concept of reserve inheres in taboo; taboo expresses itself essentially in prohibitions and restrictions. Our combination of ‘holy dread’ would often express the meaning of taboo. The taboo restrictions are different from religious or moral prohibitions. They are not traced to a commandment of a god but really they themselves impose their own prohibitions; they are differentiated from moral…
Sigmund Freud, Totem and taboo
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Both these terms are taken from the languages of so-called natural peoples, 'totem' from an idiom of the North American Indians, and 'taboo' from the Polynesian languages. The word 'totem' is as yet relatively uncommon in literature, with the exception of books on ethnology and folk psychology; the word 'taboo,' on the other hand, is much in use. A thing is called taboo when it may not be touched, or when it must be…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
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The danger is contagious; if a Polynesian chief is taboo, the ordinary man fears even to touch his footprints. But the taboos are not all based on mere dread of the unseen.
John Dewey, Ethics
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Even the earliest phase of it, the totemic, brought in its train the prohibition against incestuous object-choice, perhaps the most maiming wound ever inflicted throughout the ages on the erotic life of man. Further limitations are laid on it by taboos, laws and customs, which touch men as well as women. Various types of culture differ in the lengths to which they carry this; and the material structure of the social…
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its discontents
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Q._ 85; but we must take leave to question Mommsen's explanation. The exemption is not an exemption, but a prohibition: it is identical with the taboo laid on the Flamen Dialis (_R. Q._ 109), and has the same object. Doubtless if a Roman ate food touched by a woman, "it would swell and inflame his mouth or throat," or have some disastrous effect.
Plutarch, Plutarch's Romane Questions
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Taboo

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Taboo

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