The adventure of the human intellect : self, society, and the divine in ancient world cultures / edited by Kurt A. Raaflaub.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Raaflaub, Kurt A., editor.

Series:

Ancient world--comparative histories

The ancient world: comparative histories

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Philosophy, Ancient.

Intellect--History.

Intellect.

Intellectual life--History.

Intellectual life.

History.

Self--History.

Self.

Thought and thinking--History.

Thought and thinking.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xii, 266 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Chichester, West Sussex, UK ; Malden, MA, USA : John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2016.

Summary:

In 1946, a series of lectures by scholars affiliated with the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute were assembled into a volume titled The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man. The lectures explored themes of intellectual history and the development of abstract reasoning among the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Hebrews. In The Adventure of the Human Intellect, fourteen scholars, led by editor Kurt A. Raaflaub, engage with the themes of that nearly seventy-year-old volume to bring its ideas into the twenty-first century. This work offers a new approach to an old debate about the beginnings of intellectual history and rational thinking, bringing to bear modern theoretical approaches, up-to-date evidence, and the results of recent scholarship. The work is broader in scope than the 1946 original, including discussion of civilizations from both the Old and New Worlds. It examines the worldviews of ten ancient or early societies, reconstructed from their own texts, concerning the place of human beings in society and state, in nature and cosmos, in space and time, in life and death, and in relation to those in power and the world of the divine, and illuminates a wide array of responses to particular environments, circumstances, and challenges. The Adventure of the Human Intellect focuses on ancient responses to widely differing conditions, as they manifest in social practices and cultural products, and in which relationships between religion, science, cosmology, and politics are permeable. Comprehensive, nuanced, and contemporary, this volume brings together leading specialists in the field to explore the very beginnings of intellectual history from a twenty-first century perspective. Book jacket.

Contents:

A critique of the cognitive-historical thesis of the intellectual adventure / Francesca Rochberg

The intellectual adventure of ancient man : revisiting a classic / Peter Machinist

The world of ancient Egyptian thought / James P. Allen

On speculative thought in ancient Mesopotamia / Benjamin R. Foster

Self, substance, and social metaphysics : the intellectual adventures of Israel and Judah / Ryan Byrne

Ancient Greece : man the measure of all things / Kurt A. Raaflaub

The thought-world of ancient Rome: a delicate balancing act / Robert A. Kaster and David Konstan

Self, cosmos, and agency in early China / Lisa Raphals

Vedic India : thinking and doing / Stephanie W. Jamison

'Chronosophy' in classic Maya thought / Stephen Houston

The word, sacrifice, and divination : Aztec man in the realm of the gods / Guilhem Olivier

Night thoughts and spiritual adventures : native North America / Peter Nabokov.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781119162551

1119162556

OCLC:

933273732