Know Thyself: Western Identity from Classical Greece to the RenaissanceA Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2018 A lively and timely introduction to the roots of self-understanding--who we are and how we should act--in the cultures of ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, and Middle Ages and the Renaissance "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
Reason the Irrational and the Danger of Hubris | |
The Heroic Ideal | |
Reason Versus Passion | |
From Mythology to Philosophy | |
The Myth of the Rational West Versus the Irrational East | |
Splendor and Contradiction of the Classical | |
The Monastic Experience | |
From the Iconoclastic Revolt to the Splendor of Byzantine | |
Charlemagne and Feudalism | |
A Difficult Balance of Power | |
A New Art for a New Sensibility | |
The Crusades | |
The Two Faces | |
The Rehabilitation of Man Within the Ordered Universe of | |
The Achievements of Theater Rhetoric and Philosophy | |
The Empowering Wisdom of Philosophy | |
The Hellenistic | |
History and Myth | |
The Theater of Politics and Power | |
Augustuss Successors | |
The Decline of the Empire and the Rise of Christianity | |
Augustines Tale of Two Cities | |
The Triumph of Christianity and the Demise of the Rational Mind | |
The Symbolic Discourse of | |
The New Vocabulary of Faith and Spirituality | |
Latin West Versus Greek East | |
The Gradual Secularization of Culture | |
The Divine Comedy | |
HUMANISM AND THE RENAISSANCE | |
Petrarchs Literary Humanism | |
Political Humanism | |
The City of Splendor | |
Lorenzo the Magnificent and His Court | |
The Gathering Clouds of Disenchantment and Cynicism | |
Glory and Ambiguity | |
The Protestant Reformation and the Sack of Rome | |
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Know Thyself: Western Identity from Classical Greece to the Renaissance Ingrid Rossellini No preview available - 2018 |
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