| Edition |
First edition. |
| Description |
xxii, 469 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
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 -- 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 -- 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 -- Church authority versus state authority : the 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 -- The fourteenth and fifteenth century : 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 -- Plan of Sforzinda -- The Protestant Reformation and the sack of Rome -- The last judgment. |
| Subject |
Civilization, Western -- History.
|
|
Religion and civilization -- History.
|
|
Philosophy and civilization -- History.
|
|
Identity (Philosophical concept)
|
| Genre/Form |
Nonfiction.
|
| ISBN |
0385541880 |
|
9780385541886 |
|
