Understanding Western Culture
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| Author | : Guobin Xu |
| Publisher | : Palgrave Macmillan |
| Total Pages | : 0 |
| Release | : 2018-12-16 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 9789811340796 |
Promoting cultural understanding in a globalized world, this collection provides a concise and unique introduction to Western culture, through the voices of Chinese scholars. Written by a team of experts in their fields, the book provides insights into Western history and culture, covering an interdisciplinary range of topics across literature, language, music, art and religion. It addresses such issues as tourism and etiquette, as well as the key differences of distinct cultures, providing readers with a succinct yet effective way to master a basic understanding of Western culture.
| Author | : Paul A. Cleveland |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 415 |
| Release | : 2003 |
| Genre | : Civilization, Western |
| ISBN | : 9780972740104 |
| Author | : John P. McKay |
| Publisher | : Bedford/St. Martin's |
| Total Pages | : 0 |
| Release | : 2014-10-03 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 9781457694905 |
Understanding Western Society, Second Edition, features a brief, question-drive narrative that models for students the inquiry-based methods used by historians and helps students understand what’s really important to know about Western civilization. The second edition introduces LaunchPad, an interface that combines carefully curated new content, assignments, and assessments integrated with an interactive e-book. With LaunchPad, students have the option of reading the book in print or online and you have the technology to make class preparation a breeze. LaunchPad includes all the primary sources from Sources of Western Society, as well as LearningCurve, an automatically graded adaptive learning tool that students love to use to cement their understanding of the text and instructors love to assign to prepare students for class. LaunchPad also has a wealth of activities and assessments that help students make progress towards learning outcomes: map and visual activities, auto-graded quizzing, guided reading exercises, and carefully developed Online Document Projects. LaunchPad is easy to use and can and can be integrated with your school’s course management system, giving you the tools for enhanced teaching and learning. What's in the LaunchPad
| Author | : Ulrich Steinvorth |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : 231 |
| Release | : 2009-06-22 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 052176274X |
In this book, Ulrich Steinvorth offers a fresh analysis and critique of rationality as a defining element in Western thinking. Steinvorth argues that Descartes' understanding of the self offers a more plausible and realistic alternative to the prevailing understanding of the self formed by the Lockean conception and utilitarianism. When freed from Cartesian dualism, such a conceptualization enables us to distinguish between self and subject. Moreover, it enables us to understand why individualism - one of the hallmarks of modernity in the West - became a universal ideal to be granted to every member of society; how acceptance of this notion could peak in the seventeenth century; and why it is now in decline, though not irreversibly so. Most importantly, the Cartesian concept of the self presents a way of saving modernity from the dangers that it now encounters.
| Author | : John Vervaeke |
| Publisher | : Open Book Publishers |
| Total Pages | : 96 |
| Release | : 2017-06-15 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 178374331X |
Why has the zombie become such a pervasive figure in twenty-first-century popular culture? John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro and Filip Miscevic seek to answer this question by arguing that particular aspects of the zombie, common to a variety of media forms, reflect a crisis in modern Western culture. The authors examine the essential features of the zombie, including mindlessness, ugliness and homelessness, and argue that these reflect the outlook of the contemporary West and its attendant zeitgeists of anxiety, alienation, disconnection and disenfranchisement. They trace the relationship between zombies and the theme of secular apocalypse, demonstrating that the zombie draws its power from being a perversion of the Christian mythos of death and resurrection. Symbolic of a lost Christian worldview, the zombie represents a world that can no longer explain itself, nor provide us with instructions for how to live within it. The concept of 'domicide' or the destruction of home is developed to describe the modern crisis of meaning that the zombie both represents and reflects. This is illustrated using case studies including the relocation of the Anishinaabe of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, and the upheaval of population displacement in the Hellenistic period. Finally, the authors invoke and reformulate symbols of the four horseman of the apocalypse as rhetorical analogues to frame those aspects of contemporary collapse that elucidate the horror of the zombie. Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis is required reading for anyone interested in the phenomenon of zombies in contemporary culture. It will also be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience including students and scholars of culture studies, semiotics, philosophy, religious studies, eschatology, anthropology, Jungian studies, and sociology.
| Author | : Samuel Gregg |
| Publisher | : Simon and Schuster |
| Total Pages | : 195 |
| Release | : 2019-06-25 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 1621579069 |
"Gregg's book is the closet thing I've encountered in a long time to a one-volume user's manual for operating Western Civilization." —The Stream "Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization offers a concise intellectual history of the West through the prism of the relationship between faith and reason." —Free Beacon The genius of Western civilization is its unique synthesis of reason and faith. But today that synthesis is under attack—from the East by radical Islam (faith without reason) and from within the West itself by aggressive secularism (reason without faith). The stakes are incalculably high. The naïve and increasingly common assumption that reason and faith are incompatible is simply at odds with the facts of history. The revelation in the Hebrew Scriptures of a reasonable Creator imbued Judaism and Christianity with a conviction that the world is intelligible, leading to the flowering of reason and the invention of science in the West. It was no accident that the Enlightenment took place in the culture formed by the Jewish and Christian faiths. We can all see that faith without reason is benighted at best, fanatical and violent at worst. But too many forget that reason, stripped of faith, is subject to its own pathologies. A supposedly autonomous reason easily sinks into fanaticism, stifling dissent as bigoted and irrational and devouring the humane civilization fostered by the integration of reason and faith. The blood-soaked history of the twentieth century attests to the totalitarian forces unleashed by corrupted reason. But Samuel Gregg does more than lament the intellectual and spiritual ruin caused by the divorce of reason and faith. He shows that each of these foundational principles corrects the other’s excesses and enhances our comprehension of the truth in a continuous renewal of civilization. By recovering this balance, we can avoid a suicidal winner-take-all conflict between reason and faith and a future that will respect neither.
| Author | : Rodney Stark |
| Publisher | : Simon and Schuster |
| Total Pages | : 380 |
| Release | : 2023-07-11 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1684516226 |
Finally the Truth about the Rise of the West Modernity developed only in the West—in Europe and North America. Nowhere else did science and democracy arise; nowhere else was slavery outlawed. Only Westerners invented chimneys, musical scores, telescopes, eyeglasses, pianos, electric lights, aspirin, and soap. The question is, Why? Unfortunately, that question has become so politically incorrect that most scholars avoid it. But acclaimed author Rodney Stark provides the answers in this sweeping new look at Western civilization. How the West Won demonstrates the primacy of uniquely Western ideas—among them the belief in free will, the commitment to the pursuit of knowledge, the notion that the universe functions according to rational rules that can be discovered, and the emphasis on human freedom and secure property rights. Taking readers on a thrilling journey from ancient Greece to the present, Stark challenges much of the received wisdom about Western history. Stark also debunks absurd fabrications that have flourished in the past few decades: that the Greeks stole their culture from Africa; that the West’s “discoveries” were copied from the Chinese and Muslims; that Europe became rich by plundering the non-Western world. At the same time, he reveals the woeful inadequacy of recent attempts to attribute the rise of the West to purely material causes—favorable climates, abundant natural resources, guns and steel. How the West Won displays Rodney Stark’s gifts for lively narrative history and making the latest scholarship accessible to all readers. This bold, insightful book will force you to rethink your understanding of the West and the birth of modernity—and to recognize that Western civilization really has set itself apart from other cultures.
| Author | : Margaret L. King |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 0 |
| Release | : 1999-10 |
| Genre | : Civilization, Western |
| ISBN | : 9780139786518 |
This book explains why western civilization is worth knowing about by presenting a consistently topical approach stressing social and cultural themes over the political narrative, incorporating significant discussion of peoples and civilizations outside the boundaries of the West. It focuses on social/economic history" including gender roles, family and children, elite groups, urban/rural contrasts, cities and associations, commerce and manufacture and technological innovation. Written by a single author, it offers rich visual images, textual excerpts, timelines, charts and maps, all closely related to the narrative. Stone, Bronze and Word, Armies and Empires, The Greek Polis, The School of Hellas, Our Sea, Pax Romana. Pagans, Jews and Christians, After Antiquity, Workers, Warriors and Kings, The Spiritual Sword, In the Name of Profit, City Life, Rebirth in Italy, Of One Church, Many, Absolute Power, Europe Reaches Out, The Age of Reason, Court, Town and Country, Inalienable Rights, Revolt and Reorganization in Europe, Machines in the Garden, Lives of the Other Half, The Western Imperium, Storm, Stress and Doubt, The Mighty Are Fallen, The Triumph of Uncertainty, The Failures of Totalitarianism. The End of Imperialism and Western Civilization today. Historians or anyone interested in a social, topical approach to Western Civilization with a global perspective.
| Author | : Joseph Ratzinger |
| Publisher | : Ignatius Press |
| Total Pages | : 178 |
| Release | : 2019-08-05 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 1642290874 |
Well known for his important scholarly contributions to dogmatic theology and biblical commentary, Joseph Ratzinger has also written penetrating observations of our times. This book includes some of his keen insights about the social and political challenges confronting modern Western societies. Writing most of these chapters just before his election as pope, Ratzinger sought to remind Europeans, who at the time were crafting a new constitution, that the civilizational project we call “the West” is a cultural achievement with a history. Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome were the three foundation stones upon which Western civilization was built, he wrote. Their invaluable contributions form the basis for the Western understanding of human dignity and human rights, which spread from Europe to the United States and beyond. This book also includes, as an epilogue, a new essay by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI on clerical sex abuse, which traces the moral disorder that preys upon the young to the collapse of faith both inside and outside the Church. “The witness of Christian lives nobly lived is the beginning of reconversion (or, in many cases, conversion) of the West—and that return to the truths taught by the God of the Bible is essential if the great Western civilizational project is not to crumble because of its current, postmodern incoherence. Joseph Ratzinger understood that danger long before many others. It would be well to attend to his prescription.” —George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center, from the Foreword
| Author | : Patricia Ranft |
| Publisher | : Lexington Books |
| Total Pages | : 269 |
| Release | : 2012-12-08 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 0739174339 |
In recent years numerous scholars in disciplines not traditionally associated with theology have promoted an interesting thesis. They maintain that one particular Christian doctrine, the Incarnation, had an inordinate influence on the shape of Western culture. The doctrine, they say, was so radical that it mandated an epistemological break with pagan society’s perception of the universe and forced Christians to form a new culture. As medieval society worked out the consequences of the doctrine, it gave birth to those attitudes, institutions, and actions that define modern Western culture. The claims are well argued, but it is a historically untested thesis. How the Doctrine of Incarnation Shaped Western Culture is a response to the situation. It investigates whether the presence of the doctrine had the definitive effect on Western culture that so many scholars claim it did. It searches early Christian and medieval sources for evidence and concludes that the doctrine had a dominant effect on the developing culture. No other idea was as omnipresent or pervasive in Western society during its formative stage as the Incarnation doctrine. The doctrine was influential in the establishment of every major facet of Western culture. Its paradox, irrationality, and juxtaposition of opposites created a tension that cried out for resolution, and society responded accordingly. The ideas within the doctrine acted as catalysts for cultural change. As a result, the West developed its most characteristic traits and forged a path that was uniquely its own.
