Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher EducationYale University Press, 01.10.2008 - 286 Seiten Although the essential books of Western civilization are no longer central in our courses or in our thoughts, they retain their ability to energize us intellectually, says Jeffrey Hart in this powerful book. He now presents a guide to some of these literary works, tracing the main currents of Western culture for all who wish to understand the roots of their civilization and the basis for its achievements. Hart focuses on the productive tension between the classical and biblical strains in our civilization, between a life based on cognition and one based on faith and piety. He begins with the Iliad and Exodus, linking Achilles and Moses as Bronze Age heroic figures. Closely analysing texts and illuminating them in unexpected ways, he moves on to Socrates and Jesus, who internalized the heroic, continues with Paul and Augustine and their Christian synthesis, addresses Dante, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Moliere, and Voltaire, and concludes with the novel as represented by Crime and Punishment and The Great Gatsby. Hart maintains that the dialectical tensions suggested by this survey account for the restlessness and singular achievements of the West and that the essential books can provide the substance and energy currently missed by both students and educated readers. |
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... poets and philosophers had not received direct revelation from God, they did receive natural reason and were therefore pointed toward truth.''5 Though Clement and Origen won this important argument, they did not do so without fierce ...
... poets and philosophers had not received direct revelation from God, they did receive natural reason and were therefore pointed toward truth.''5 Though Clement and Origen won this important argument, they did not do so without fierce ...
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... poet. He meant to dislodge Homer as the educator of Greece and establish himself as the better teacher. The Homeric epics thus had enormous civilizational consequences, both in themselves and as refracted through the mind of Plato. They ...
... poet. He meant to dislodge Homer as the educator of Greece and establish himself as the better teacher. The Homeric epics thus had enormous civilizational consequences, both in themselves and as refracted through the mind of Plato. They ...
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... poet.'' Virgil combined elements of both in his Aeneid. Achilles and Odysseus figure in Dante's Divine Comedy, Odysseus brilliantly. As we see here, the greatest books tend to talk with one another in continuous dialogue. The Iliad and ...
... poet.'' Virgil combined elements of both in his Aeneid. Achilles and Odysseus figure in Dante's Divine Comedy, Odysseus brilliantly. As we see here, the greatest books tend to talk with one another in continuous dialogue. The Iliad and ...
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... poets. Aristotle drew the elements of areté together in a pedagogical synthesis in his portrait of the magnanimous man in the Ethics. He also composed a hymn to his friend Hermias, prince of Atarneus, who had died for his moral and ...
... poets. Aristotle drew the elements of areté together in a pedagogical synthesis in his portrait of the magnanimous man in the Ethics. He also composed a hymn to his friend Hermias, prince of Atarneus, who had died for his moral and ...
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... poets, nor were they wrong. Probably every educated person, even today, knows at least something, however sketchy, about Achilles, Odysseus, and Helen of Troy. Writing millennia after Homer, Milton refers to this view of immortality as ...
... poets, nor were they wrong. Probably every educated person, even today, knows at least something, however sketchy, about Achilles, Odysseus, and Helen of Troy. Writing millennia after Homer, Milton refers to this view of immortality as ...
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Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education Jeffrey Peter Hart Keine Leseprobe verfügbar - 2001 |
Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
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