Understanding Pornographic Fiction, 1st ed. 2015
Sex, Violence, and Self-Deception

This work defends two main theses. First, modern Western pornographic fiction functions as a self-deceptive vehicle for sexual or blood-lustful arousal; and second, that its emergence owes as much to Puritan Protestantism and its inner- or this-worldly asceticism as does the emergence of modern rationalized capitalism.

Charles O. Nussbaum received his PhD in Philosophy in 1988 from Emory University, USA. He has taught at Northwestern University, Northern Michigan University, and is currently Professor of Philosophy at UT Arlington. His publications include The Musical Representation and papers on the philosophy of mind, aesthetics, and Kant.

Argues that modern Western sexual pornographic narrative fiction emerged as a distinct genre in eighteenth-century England, descending from literary obscenity Hypothesizes a causal-historical relationship between Max Weber’s Protestant ethic and this genre of fiction Adopts a genealogical approach to the problem of accounting for the emergence of pornographic fiction in the modern West