توضیحات
Great Issues in Western Civilization, since 1500 from Renaissance Civilization Through the Cold War by Tierney, Brian, Kagan, Donald, Williams, L. Pearce presents a substantial revision of the original text, with several new chapters and many new readings from historical sources and from modern scholars. The Preface to the first edition of Great Issues in Western Civilization, since 1500 from Renaissance Civilization Through the Cold War defined three great themes that have characterized Western civilization throughout its history—”a tradition of rational scientific inquiry, the persistence of a tension between Judaeo-Christian ideals and social realities, and the emergence of constitutional forms of government.”
In this edition a new chapter on the Renaissance is included to introduce readers to the world of 1500. Then the following chapters introduce the themes of religion, absolutism versus constitutionalism, and scientific progress. The chapter on the Scientific Revolution has been broadened in scope to include a discussion of Enlightenment culture. A new chapter on Social Darwinism relates a nineteenth-century movement of scientific thought to the ideologies of racism and imperialism. The new readings on English liberalism present a nineteenth-century alternative to newly emerging forms of authoritarian government. The former chapter on the Fall of the Russian Monarchy has been reorganized with a new selection of readings to focus on communist ideology and tactics. We hope that, in this new form, Great Issues Since 1500 will continue to stimulate and interest many students of the Western heritage.
A major purpose of this work is to convince students in Western civilization courses that the essential task of a historian is not to collect dead facts but to confront live issues. The issues are alive because they arise out of the tensions that people have to face in every generation—tensions between freedom and authority, between reason and faith, between human free will and all the impersonal circumstances that help to shape our lives. In order to achieve any sophisticated understanding of such matters, students need to read the views of great modern historians as they are set out in their own words. Students need to develop a measure of critical historical insight by comparing these often conflicting views with the source material on which they are based.
They need above all to concern themselves with the great issues that have shaped the course of Western civilization and not with historical “problems” that are mere artificially contrived conundrums. This volume is divided into fifteen sections. Each of them presents both original source material and a variety of modern interpretations; and each deals with a truly great issue in Western history. We believe that there are three major themes whose development and interplay have shaped the distinctive characteristics that set Western civilization apart from the other great historic cultures. They are the growth of a tradition of rational scientific inquiry, the persistence of a tension between Judaeo-Christian religious ideals and social realities, the emergence of constitutional forms of government. These three themes are introduced in the first sections. The reader will find them recurring in new forms and changing contexts throughout the rest of the work. We hope that in studying them readers will come to a richer understanding of the heritage of Western civilization—and of the historian’s approach to it. Brian Tierney Donald Kagan L. Pearce Williams
نقد و بررسیها
هنوز بررسیای ثبت نشده است.