READING LIST.
DICTIONARY.
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The GREEKS
| Athens has long been viewed as the cradle of western civilization. Although other great cities and empires had exited before Athens, it was the Greek civilization that was the first to give the west a truly advanced and complex intellectual heritage. Literature saw its first great expression in the epic poems of Homer and the plays of the Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes. Written history was practically created by Herodotus and further refined by Thucydides. The works of both Plato and Aristotle mark the beginning of grand philosophical thinking in the west, and science saw its first step forward in the medical works of Hippocrates and the mathematical works of Euclid, Archimedes and Apollonius. |
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The ROMANS
| Rome was the capital of the largest empire to have ever existed in Europe. Beginning as little more than a small village during the 7th century B.C., by the time of Christ and the Caesars, Rome had grown to the size and power that our popular culture remembers it to have been. Inspite of this, the culture of Rome was little more than a copy of the culture Athens had created centuries earlier. Except in the areas of civil engineering and jurisprudence, the Romans were imitators of Greek culture rather than originators. The poets Virgil and Ovid continued the tradition of epic poetry began by Homer. History also continued in the works of Livy, Plutarch and Tacitus, mathematics in the works of Nicomachus and medicine in the works of Galen. The astronomer Ptolemy, using all the previous astronomical works at his disposal, codified the theory of an earth centered universe. There were no Roman philosophers to challenge the status of either Plato or Aristotle. Concerned more with how to live a good life, the Roman philosophers wrote primarily ethical works that were bases on Greek models. Cicero was largely influenced by Aristotle, Lucretius was an epicurean, Epictetus and Aurelius were stoics, and Plotinus forged a mystical interpretation of Plato. All of these works, however, were important additions to The Western Canon. By extending the Greek tradition, the Romans provided Europe with a highly developed culture. With the invasion of the barbarian tribes during the 5th century, this classical culture came to an end in the west. |
The Middle Ages
| The Middle Ages lasted in the west for almost one thousand years, from the fall of Rome to the Italian Renaissance. Located temporally in between the Classical and Modern Eras, the Middle Ages were very different from either. The primary reason for this difference lies in the fact that during this period Europe lived under a Theocracy, a form of government in which God rules, or more accurately in which those who interpret God's will rule. The body that did interpret God's will during the Middle Ages was the Roman Catholic Church. Although secular forms of power did exist, such as Kings, Lords, Vassals, Knights, etc., they were all recognized as being subservient to and much less important that the Church, which was headed by the Pope in Rome. In effect, the Roman emperor had been replaced by a theocratic emperor. Under this system of government the culture of the west had changed drastically. People were no longer concerned with their life here on earth. What was important was the life after death, and whether that life would be in heaven or the fiery pits of hell. Philosophically this meant that people thought themselves unable to discover the truth by their own efforts. Divine revelation was necessary for man to know the true nature of reality. This way of thinking led to the decline and virtual extinction of the human centered arts and sciences of the classical era. Theology was the queen of the sciences. The Bible, was the primary text of this period. The two greatest and most influential theologians of the Middle Ages were Augustine and Aquinas, the first influenced by Plato, the latter by Aristotle. Near the end ,during the high middle ages, there appeared two great literary works, The Divine Comedy, written in Italian by Dante, and The Canterbury Tales, written in middle English by Chaucer. They both were the literary pinnacle of literature in the Middle Ages, and if read closely seem to contain an almost unconscious awareness that the age of theocracy was almost at its end. |
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The Renaissance
| The Renaissance period corresponds to the 16th century. Beginning sometime during the later half of the 15th century, the Renaissance can be seen as either the birth of the modern era or the cumulation of the medieval period. Either way the Renaissance was a period of important changes. Modern perspective painting began with the works of such masters as Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Columbus discovered the new world while Gutenberg invented the printing press. Martin Luther broke away from the Catholic church and founded the Protestant religion. Copernicus developed the heliocentric theory of the solar system, thereby challenging the authority of Ptolemy and the Christian church with one stroke. Gilbert provided the first insights into the mysterious magnetic force and Vesalius employed dissection to study human anatomy. Bacon became the first great philosopher of science, and Machiavelli established modern political theory. Last, but definitely not least, are the Renaissance men of letters: Erasmus, More, Rabelais, Montaigne, Cervantes, Spenser and especially Shakespeare. |
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The Baroque
| The Baroque Period corresponds to the 17th century. If the Renaissance was the birth of the Modern era, than the Baroque period was its consolidation. The 17th century saw the creation of the modern nation state in England, France and Spain. It was also a witness to political upheaval and barbarous political/religious violence. In spite of this the 17th century marks the undisputable birth of the modern mind. The scientific revolution is embodied in the works of Galileo, Kepler, Harvey, Descartes, Fermat, Pascal, Boyle, Huygens and especially Newton. Modern philosophy, as distinct from theology, began with the works of Hobbes, Descartes, Pascal, Spinoza, Locke and Leibniz. The notable literary figures of the period include the English authors Donne, Milton and Bunyan; and the great French playwrites Corneille, Moliere and Racine. |
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The Classical
| The Classical period corresponds to the 18th century. Commonly known as the Enlightenment, the 1700's was a period of political calm compared to the 1600's. Most of the wars which were a product of the Reformation had ended, and many of the European countries enjoyed a period of domestic tranquillity. This changed dramatically during the last quarter of the century, which saw both the American and French Revolutions. |
| Intellectually the period was marked by the triumph of humanism over theology. The Middle Ages were definitely over and most of the thinkers of the period saw mankind as being the center of the universe. The philosophers of the period include Vico, Berkeley, Hume and Kant. Great literature continued in the works of Defoe, Swift, Pope, Voltaire, Fielding, Johnson, Sterne, Goldsmith, Boswell, Goethe and Blake. Gibbon composed his grand history of the Roman Empire and Lavoisier did for Chemistry what Newton had done for Physics. The mathematical breakthroughs of Descartes and Newton where further developed by Euler, Lagrange and Laplace. The most distinguishing intellectual output of the Classical Era, however, belongs to the area of political and economic theory; in the works of Montesquieu, Rousseau, Smith, Burke, Bentham and the Federalist Papers. This should not be a surprise for an era that also produced two of history's most important political revolutions. |
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