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Know thyself : Western identity from classical Greece to the Renaissance / Ingrid Rossellini.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Rossellini, Ingrid, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Civilization, Western--History.
- Civilization, Western.
- History.
- Religion and civilization--History.
- Religion and civilization.
- Philosophy and civilization--History.
- Philosophy and civilization.
- Identity (Philosophical concept).
- Genre:
- Nonfiction.
- Physical Description:
- xxii, 469 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
- Edition:
- First edition.
- Place of Publication:
- New York : Doubleday, [2018]
- Summary:
- Introduces the origins of self-understanding in the cultures of Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, and explains how Western civilization frames the issues of self and society.
- Contents:
- Part one. Ancient Greece. 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
- Part two. Ancient Rome. 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
- Part three. The early Middle Ages. 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
- Part four. The later Middle Ages. Church authority versus state authority : a difficult 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
- Part five. Humanism and the Renaissance. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries : 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
- The Protestant Reformation and the sack of Rome
- The last judgment
- Conclusion.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 433-448) and index.
- ISBN:
- 9780385541886
- 0385541880
- OCLC:
- 995089075
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