Classical Humanism and the Challenge of Modernity

Classical Humanism and the Challenge of Modernity
Author: Bas van Bommel
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2015-03-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110391406

In scholarship, classical (Renaissance) humanism is usually strictly distinguished from 'neo-humanism', which, especially in Germany, flourished at the beginning of the 19th century. While most classical humanists focused on the practical imitation of Latin stylistic models, 'neohumanism' is commonly believed to have been mainly inspired by typically modern values, such as authenticity and historicity. Bas van Bommel shows that whereas 'neohumanism' was mainly adhered to at the German universities, at the Gymnasien a much more traditional educational ideal prevailed, which is best described as 'classical humanism.' This ideal involved the prioritisation of the Romans above the Greeks, as well as the belief that imitation of Roman and Greek models brings about man's aesthetic and moral elevation. Van Bommel makes clear that 19th century classical humanism dynamically related to modern society. On the one hand, classical humanists explained the value of classical education in typically modern terms. On the other hand, competitors of the classical Gymnasium laid claim to values that were ultimately derived from classical humanism. 19th century classical humanism should therefore not be seen as a dried-out remnant of a dying past, but as the continuation of a living tradition.

Classical Humanism and the Challenge of Modernity

Classical Humanism and the Challenge of Modernity
Author: Bas van Bommel
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2015-03-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110365936

In scholarship, classical (Renaissance) humanism is usually strictly distinguished from 'neo-humanism', which, especially in Germany, flourished at the beginning of the 19th century. While most classical humanists focused on the practical imitation of Latin stylistic models, 'neohumanism' is commonly believed to have been mainly inspired by typically modern values, such as authenticity and historicity. Bas van Bommel shows that whereas 'neohumanism' was mainly adhered to at the German universities, at the Gymnasien a much more traditional educational ideal prevailed, which is best described as 'classical humanism.' This ideal involved the prioritisation of the Romans above the Greeks, as well as the belief that imitation of Roman and Greek models brings about man's aesthetic and moral elevation. Van Bommel makes clear that 19th century classical humanism dynamically related to modern society. On the one hand, classical humanists explained the value of classical education in typically modern terms. On the other hand, competitors of the classical Gymnasium laid claim to values that were ultimately derived from classical humanism. 19th century classical humanism should therefore not be seen as a dried-out remnant of a dying past, but as the continuation of a living tradition.

Empire of Eloquence

Empire of Eloquence
Author: Stuart M. McManus
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2021-04-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108830161

This exploration of the culture of public speaking in the Iberian world places the renaissance revival of letters within a global context.

Classical Art

Classical Art
Author: Caroline Vout
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2018-05-29
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1400890276

How did the statues of ancient Greece wind up dictating art history in the West? How did the material culture of the Greeks and Romans come to be seen as "classical" and as "art"? What does "classical art" mean across time and place? In this ambitious, richly illustrated book, art historian and classicist Caroline Vout provides an original history of how classical art has been continuously redefined over the millennia as it has found itself in new contexts and cultures. All of this raises the question of classical art's future. What we call classical art did not simply appear in ancient Rome, or in the Renaissance, or in the eighteenth-century Academy. Endlessly repackaged and revered or rebuked, Greek and Roman artifacts have gathered an amazing array of values, both positive and negative, in each new historical period, even as these objects themselves have reshaped their surroundings. Vout shows how this process began in antiquity, as Greeks of the Hellenistic period transformed the art of fifth-century Greece, and continued through the Roman empire, Constantinople, European court societies, the neoclassical English country house, and the nineteenth century, up to the modern museum. A unique exploration of how each period of Western culture has transformed Greek and Roman antiquities and in turn been transformed by them, this book revolutionizes our understanding of what classical art has meant and continues to mean.

Doing Humanities in Nineteenth-Century Germany

Doing Humanities in Nineteenth-Century Germany
Author: Efraim Podoksik
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2019-12-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004416846

Doing Humanities in Nineteenth-Century Germany, edited by Efraim Podoksik, is a collaborative project by leading scholars in German studies that examines the practices of theorising and researching in the humanities as pursued by German thinkers and scholars during the long nineteenth century, and the relevance of those practices for the humanities today. Each chapter focuses on a particular branch of the humanities, such as philosophy, history, classical philology, theology, or history of art. The volume both offers a broad overview of the history of German humanities and examines an array of particular cases that illustrate their inner dilemmas, ranging from Ranke’s engagement with the world of poetry to Max Weber’s appropriation of the notion of causality.

Histories of Conservation and Art History in Modern Europe

Histories of Conservation and Art History in Modern Europe
Author: Sven Dupré
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2022-03-14
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000553345

This book traces the development of scientific conservation and technical art history. It takes as its starting point the final years of the nineteenth century, which saw the establishment of the first museum laboratory in Berlin, and ground-breaking international conferences on art history and conservation held in pre-World War I Germany. It follows the history of conservation and art history until the 1940s when, from the ruins of World War II, new institutions such as the Istituto Centrale del Restauro emerged, which would shape the post-war art and conservation world. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, conservation history, historiography, and history of science and humanities.

The Search for Truth

The Search for Truth
Author: Maxwell Bennett
Publisher: Sydney University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2022-05-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1742105211

Universities have searched for truth over nearly a millennium. Maxwell Bennett recounts the history of this search during three of its most momentous periods in the 13th, 18th and 20th centuries, which helped fashion the idea of a university. He concludes with a cautionary assessment of whether universities, given their present level of material support, can reliably continue to protect and advance society.

Civilization and the Culture of Science

Civilization and the Culture of Science
Author: Stephen Gaukroger
Publisher: Science and the Shaping of Mod
Total Pages: 534
Release: 2020
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198849079

How did science come to have such a central place in Western culture? How did our ways of thinking, and our moral, political, and social values, come to be modelled around scientific values? Stephen Gaukroger traces the story of how these values developed, and how they influenced society and culture from the 19th to the mid-20th century.

Cicero in Basel

Cicero in Basel
Author: Cédric Scheidegger Laemmle
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2024-11-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 3111454649

The fifteen contributions to the multilingual volume together chart Cicero's presence in the cultural history of Basel - from the city's foundation to the heyday of humanist print culture, to the cultural politics of the modern day. Written by scholars working from different academic traditions and organised in four sections, they trace a broad range of engagements with Cicero in Basel across time, thus offering the rudiments of a localised form of reception history: "Ciceronian Foundations" focuses on Cicero's role in the city's (and her university's) foundation myths; "Editions and Commentaries" centres on the Ciceronian editions and commentaries in the heyday of humanist printing culture; "Discussions and Engagements" situates his reception in the intellectual currents that define humanist Basel - from stylistic and literary debates to the controversies of the theologians; lastly, "Scholarship and Education" explores the entanglements of academic and civic life that come to define Cicero's place in Basel from the 17th century. For all their diversity, the contributions are united in their aim to contribute both to the study of Ciceronian reception and to the cultural history and development of Basel in its European context.

Languages, Scripts, and Chinese Texts in East Asia

Languages, Scripts, and Chinese Texts in East Asia
Author: Peter Francis Kornicki
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2018
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 0198797826

Chinese Writing and the Rise of the Vernacular in East Asia is a wide-ranging study of vernacularization in East Asia--not only China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, but also societies that no longer exist, such as the Tangut and Khitan empires. Peter Kornicki takes the reader from the early centuries of the common era, when the Chinese script was the only form of writing and Chinese Buddhist, Confucian, and medical texts spread throughout East Asia, through the centuries when vernacular scripts evolved, right up to the end of the nineteenth century when nationalism created new roles for vernacular languages and vernacular scripts. Through an examination of oral approaches to Chinese texts, it shows how highly-valued Chinese texts came to be read through the prism of the vernaculars and ultimately to be translated. This long process has some parallels with vernacularization in Europe, but a crucial difference is that literary Chinese was, unlike Latin, not a spoken language. As a consequence, people who spoke different East Asian vernaculars had no means of communicating in speech, but they could communicate silently by means of written conversation in literary Chinese; a further consequence is that within each society Chinese texts assumed vernacular garb: in classes and lectures, Chinese texts were read and declaimed in the vernaculars. What happened in the nineteenth century and why are there still so many different scripts in East Asia? How and why were Chinese texts dethroned, and what replaced them? These are some of the questions addressed in Chinese Writing and the Rise of the Vernacular in East Asia.