Roots Of Western Culture

Victor Hanson shows that the "Greek revolution" was not the rise of a free and democratic urban culture, but rather the historic innovation of the independent family farm."--BOOK JACKET.

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

Cover title: The Search for the individual.

This is Dooyeweerd's most accessible work. It provides an understanding of Greek, medieval, and Modern Humanistic life-orientations in their historical development and inter-penetration - throughout confronted with the implications of an integral biblical understanding of the human condition, human society and the place and calling of scholarly reflection. It shows a healthy sense of solidarity and criticism with these various traditions. From a purely historical point of view, Dooyeweerd for example writes, Humanism has done more for the recognition of public freedom for religious convictions than did seventeenth-century Calvinism. Particularly instructive in this work is Dooyeweerd's unveiling of the origin of the modern ideology of community at the beginning of the previous century and its subsequent effects in National-Socialism.

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.

After challenging the multicultural effort to “provincialize” the history of Western civilization, this book argues that the roots of the West’s exceptional creativity should be traced back to the uniquely aristocratic warlike culture of Indo-European speakers.

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