Four Cultures of the WestHarvard University Press, 2004 M10 15 - 261 pages The workings of Western intelligence in our day--whether in politics or the arts, in the humanities or the church--are as troubling as they are mysterious, leading to the questions: Where are we going? What in the world were we thinking? By exploring the history of four "cultures" so deeply embedded in Western history that we rarely see their instrumental role in politics, religion, education, and the arts, this timely book provides a broad framework for addressing these questions in a fresh way. |
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... mean four large , self - validating configurations of sym- bols , values , temperaments , patterns of thinking , feeling , and be- having , and patterns of discourse . I mean especially configurations of patterns of discourse and thus ...
... means to be a prophet simply by turning out to be a historical figure of mythic proportions in modern Western imagination . Ev- erybody has heard of him . He made courage in fighting for sys- temic change perhaps the most distinctively ...
... mean by the prophetic culture , the culture of Jerusalem . For convenience I will call it culture one . The other three cultures belong to Athens . What about Athens ? I take it not so much as a metaphor for some generic " human culture ...
... means that , even more obviously than with the sacraments , the mass is a performance . It is " a sacred action " in which the props and techniques the performers use con- vey much of the meaning . I am referring to such things as the ...
... means they misconstrue it . Liturgy thus provides an excellent example of how any given culture must distort the others into its own image and likeness , into its own value system , in order to make sense of it . A more secular example ...