VI. Renaissance Humanism

Between the end of the High Middle Ages (about 1350) and the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, the character of Western Civilization was profoundly altered. Earlier chapters have already told how most institutions and values characteristic of the High Middle Ages began to disintegrate. Meanwhile, other institutions and ideas, many of which we think of as modern, gradually came to the fore. The intensification of this process of transition from medieval to modern is called the Renaissance. [excerpt

Gadamer and Levinas on Concepts of Culture

In this work, I have compared the views of Hans Georg Gadamer and Emmanuel Levinas on various concepts of culture and understanding of the ‘man’ within the framework of Western civilization with the help of three of their essays. In two lectures of Gadamer—‘Culture and Peace’, delivered at Salzburg in 1980, and ‘Man and His Hand in Modern Civilization’, delivered in Munich in 1978—and several essays by Emmanuel Levinas such as ‘The Philosophical Determination of the Idea of Culture’ (1983). If both authors are critical of the rational based on the technique and calculation of the concept of culture inherited from the Enlightenment, and further, if this concept is embodied in the bourgeois and later in industrial societies, as retraced in the first chapter, the authors differently see the way out of the dehumanizing crisis of the modern era

John Calvin, Authority, and the Evangelical Conviction of the Evidentness of Truth

John Calvin stands apart as a singularly powerful figure in the history of Western Civilization. His thought undergirds the fundamental principles of liberal democracy that dominate the most advanced nations on earth in the modern age, and his theology continues to influence the doctrine and leadership of the Reformed church’s many inheritors. This paper emphasizes and identifies the importance of understanding of Calvin’s views on secular and ecclesiastical authority and evaluates them

Hannah Arendt's Ghosts:Reflections on the Disputable Path from Windhoek to Auschwitz

Historians on both sides of the Atlantic are currently engaged in a controversy about the allegedly genocidal nature of western colonialism and its connections with the mass violence unleashed by Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945. The debate touches upon some of the most “sensitive” issues of twentieth-century history: the violent “dark side” of modern western civilization, the impact of colonial massacres on the European societies that generated this violence and, perhaps most controversially, the origins and uniqueness of the Holocaust

Why the Gospel of John is Fundamental to Jesus Research (Chapter One of Jesus Research: The Gospel of John in Historical Inquiry)

The constellation of the Johannine riddles—theological, historical, literary—and their implications for understanding the Jesus of history as well as the Christ of faith, and thus the historical and religious basis of western civilization, comprises arguably the most difficult set of biblical critical issues and discussions in the modern era: full stop. Just as John’s theological tensions precipitated and contributed to the most intensive and extensive of theological discussions in the patristic era, so John’s literary and historical tensions have contributed to most intensive and extensive literary and historical biblical discussions in the modern era. Understandably, the issues are complex. The discussions are multidisciplinary; the implications are momentous. That is why this study is needed and why it is needed now

THE FORECAST OF FORMING THE GLOBAL SOCIUM INSTITUTIONS ON THE BASIS OF SIMULATION MODELING: THE MAIN PRINCIPLES

The modern humankind is known to have faced a number of insoluble civilization problems which can cause destructive global processes. In the context of growing conflict tendencies of the XXIst century it is getting evident that the existent institutions of the global socium – supranational organizations and the system of international exchange of resources – do not provide development of the global civilization without conflicts. Therefore the most urgent task of nowadays is to make a forecast as to forming such social institutions that can guarantee coexistence of local civilizations without conflicts as well as sustainable development of the global socium of the XXI st century.sustainable development, global institutions, global socium.

Musical Tradition in Megalithic Site of Indonesian Gunung Padang?

The paper reports a possibilities of musical traditions of ancient civilization who built the sites discovered in Gunung Padang, West Java, Indonesia. Particular group of the stones in the megalithic site happens to have relatively high frequency that might have correspondence with standard western musical scale. From the samples recorded at the site, we do the power spectral analysis to have the dominant frequency within the audio and mapped the result to MIDI numbers. We showed that the obtained four notes interestingly have particular places in modern musical scale

A Biblical View Of Library Administration

While individuals sometimes do worthwhile tasks working by themselves, most of the work of modern civilization is done by people working together in groups. Groups require administration. This essay examines some aspects of the role of administration and administrators in libraries from a biblical point of view

3. The Expansion of Europe

Concurrent with the political and diplomatic developments just described, and exercising a significant influence upon them, there occurred a vast overseas expansion of Western Civilization. Although the Crusades were the first phase of this expansion, not until the early modern period did European energies burst forth with sufficient vigor that their impact became worldwide. In the intervening centuries such things as the growth of commercial capitalism, the rise of the strong national state, and the intellectual upsurge associated with the Renaissance prepared Europeans for the mighty task of discovering, exploring, and colonizing areas in all parts of the globe. [excerpt