The Western Intellectual Tradition - Softcover

The Western Intellectual Tradition.

Original softcover. Zustand: Sehr gut. XVIII, 522 p. From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Overall very good and clean. - Introduction: This book is a study of the development of ideas from the Renaissance to the opening of the nineteenth century. It differs in several ways, in content and in presentation, from other books on the history of ideas. We ought to draw attention at the outset to three differences which are fundamental, and which amount to differences of principle. First, this is an intellectual history in the largest sense. It is not confined to ideas in some one fieldin politics, say, or in philosophy. We are interested in the whole spectrum of the mind, and an important feature of our book is its stress on the interplay of ideas from different fields. In particular, we give more attention than is usual to the ideas of science, to the movements of literary style, and to the innovations of the arts. Second, we believe that the history of ideas must be coupled with a concrete knowledge of the events that took place at the same time. The study of ideas is an evolutionary study, and the reader should feel behind it the context of events, the physical environment within which ideas have evolved. He should see the influence of events on ideas, and of ideas on events. Therefore, our book gives more attention than is usual to the history of the times which it covers. Particularly, it stresses the impact of technical and social inventions, which go hand in hand with new ideas, and in which the intellectual vigor of a community displays itself in practice. Third, we think that the right way to present an idea is in the speech of the men to whom it came as a revelation. Therefore, we have constantly shown ideas as held by peopleby single men or by groups of men. In general, each of our chapters focuses on the outlook of a man or of a group of men who epitomize a way of thinking: such men as Descartes and Bentham, groups of men such as the early humanists and the dissenting manufacturers in the Lunar Society. These men are not paraded as heroes or as dramatic figures in themselves. We see them and we show them as the living embodiment of the thought of an age, and the interest of their lives is that in them the conflicts of the age take on the sharp edge of struggles of conscience. These three principles, in our view, give reality to the history of ideas. Ideas are not dead thoughts, even when they are no longer contemporary; for they remain steps in the evolution of contemporary ideas. We have wanted to present the ideas of each age not as fossils but as evolving organisms, and not as butterflies in a box but as the vital processes of the human mind. This is a history of the life of ideas: active, mobile, and changing. We have therefore presented it and written it as integrated history. ISBN 9780061330018 Sprache: Englisch Gewicht in Gramm: 428. Artikel-Nr. 1183190

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