Know Thyself
Western Identity from Classical Greece to the Renaissance
New York : Doubleday, [2018]
Format: Book
Edition: First edition.
Description: xxii, 469 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
"Know thyself"--this fundamental imperative appeared for the first time in ancient Greece, specifically in Delphi, the temple of the god Apollo, who represented the enlightened power of reason. For the Greeks, self-knowledge and identity were the basics of their civilization and their sources were to be found in where one was born and into which social group. These determined who you were and what your duties were. In this book the independent scholar Ingrid Rossellini surveys the major ideas that, from Greek and Roman antiquity through the Christian medieval era up to the dawn of modernity in the Renaissance, have guided the Western project of self-knowledge. Addressing the curious lay reader with an interdisciplinary approach that includes numerous references to the visual arts, Know Thyself will reintroduce readers to the most profound and enduring ways our civilization has framed the issues of self and society, in the process helping us rediscover the very building blocks of our personality.
Contents:
The Birth of the polis -- Sparta and Athens -- Reason, the irrational and the danger of hubris -- Hesiod and the cosmic origin of the world -- The heroic ideal -- Greek art : reason versus passion -- From mythology to philosophy -- Pythagoras : the divine reason and the immortal soul -- The myth of the rational west versus the irrational east -- Splendor and contradiction of the classical age -- The achievements of theatre, rhetoric and philosophy -- From Plato to Aristotle : the empowering wisdom of philosophy -- The Hellenistic era -- The Roman Republic : history and myth -- Augustus and the empire : the theatre of politics and power -- Augustus's successors -- The decline of the empire and the rise of Christianity -- Augustine's tale of two cities -- The triumph of Christianity and the demise of the rational mind -- The symbolic discourse of art -- The new vocabulary of faith and spirituality -- Latin West versus Greek East -- The monastic experience -- From the iconoclastic revolt to the splendor of Byzantine art -- Charlemagne and feudalism -- Church authority versus state authority : the balance of power -- Cities and universities : the dawn of a new cultural era -- A new art for a new sensibility -- The crusades -- Wealth and power versus poverty and humility : the two faces of Christianity -- The rehabilitation of man within the ordered universe of God -- The gradual secularization of culture -- Dante's summa : The Divine Comedy -- The fourteenth and fifteenth century : the historical context -- The Italian city-states -- Petrarch's literary humanism -- Political humanism -- Florence : the city of splendor -- Lorenzo the Magnificent and his court -- The gathering clouds of disenchantment and cynicism -- The Roman Renaissance : glory and ambiguity -- Plan of Sforzinda -- The Protestant Reformation and the sack of Rome -- The last judgment.
Subjects:
Civilization, Western -- History.
Religion and civilization -- History.
Philosophy and civilization -- History.
Identity (Philosophical concept)
Civilization, Western -- History.
Religion and civilization -- History.
Philosophy and civilization -- History.
Identity (Philosophical concept)
ISBN:
0385541880
Availability | |||
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Call Number | Location | Shelf Location | Status |
HISTORY Ros | Northeast Indoors | Nonfiction | Out (Due: 6/6/2024) |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 433-448) and index.