A Problem in Modern Ethics: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

A Problem in Modern Ethics, credited to John Addington Symonds, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of A Problem in Modern Ethics, by John Addington Symonds. Read by Martin Geeson. “Society lies under the spell of ancient terrorism and coagulated errors. Science is either wilfully hypocritical or radically misinformed.” John Addington Symonds struck many an heroic note in this courageous (albeit anonymously circulated) essay. He is a worthy Virgil guiding the reader through the Inferno of suffering which emerging medico-legal definitions of the sexually deviant were prepared to inflict on his century and on the one which followed. Symonds pleads for sane human values in a world of Urnings, Dionings, Urano-Dionings and Uraniasters - in short, the whole paraphernalia of Victorian taxonomies and undigested Darwinism which, superimposed on the “terrorism” of religion, labelled and to some extent created the specimen “homosexual.” A discussion of the “manly love” poems of Walt Whitman leads the author to speculate on a better future for the criminalised mutual passions of men; yet he is obliged to defer the dream, for “the world cannot be invited to entertain it.” (Introduction by Martin Geeson)

Recording facts

• Recording title: A Problem in Modern Ethics
• Author credits: John Addington Symonds
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 22
• Listed recording duration: 4:50:50

Catalogue topics

• audio book
• Essay
• Science
• Psychology
• Politics
• homosexuality
• sexology
• Urning

Track guide

1. 00 - Title Page, Table of Contents, Introduction — 10:37
2. 01 - I Christian Opinion — 7:53
3. 02 - II Vulgar Errors — 12:15
4. 03 - III Literature: Descriptive — 8:16
5. 04 - Literature: Medico-Forensic — 16:13
6. 05 - V.i - Literature: Medicine. Moreau — 13:20
7. 06 - V.ii - Literature: Medicine. Moreau, cont. — 10:11
8. 07 - V.iii - Literature: Medicine. Tarnowsky — 10:32
9. 08 - V.iv - Literature: Medicine. Krafft-Ebing — 19:26
10. 09 - V.v - Literature: Medicine. Krafft-Ebing, cont. — 15:52
11. 10 - V.vi - Literature: Medicine. Lombroso — 15:48
12. 11 - V.vii - Literature: Medicine. Note to the Foregoing Section — 16:14
13. 12 - VI - Literature: Historical, Anthropological — 17:57
14. 13 - VII.i - Literature: Polemical. Ulrichs — 19:19
15. 14 - VII.ii - Literature: Polemical. Ulrichs, cont. — 12:47
16. 15 - VII.iii - Literature: Polemical. Ulrichs, cont. — 10:35
17. 16 - VII.iv - Literature: Polemical. Ulrichs, concluded. — 16:00
18. 17 - VII, v - Literature: Polemical — 13:07
19. 18 - VIII.i - Literature: Idealistic. Walt Whitman — 11:14
20. 19 - VIII, ii - Literature: Idealistic. Walt Whitman, concluded. — 13:24
21. 20 - IX - Epilogue — 10:26
22. 21 - X - Suggestions on the Subject of Sexual Inversion in Relation to Law and Education — 9:32

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.