ABSTRACT
The premise of this Introduction is simple: our traditional understanding of innocence as a state of ignorance and bliss is inadequate. There is another, ancient tradition, one that has been largely lost to us – and to our modern sensibilities. This lost tradition stands at odds with our modern understanding of innocence as a fragile condition preserved by means of either ignorance or sexual virginity, and that, once lost, can never be regained. There has been a loss of complexity in our thinking about innocence that has imperiled our intellectual lives, rendering us dangerously ignorant of a rich and deep tradition of understanding innocence as an exemplary state, one that does not eschew, but rather embraces, what Augustine called scientia – knowledge.
