Download PDF by Michael E. Hattersley: Socrates and Jesus: The Dialogue that Shaped Western

By Michael E. Hattersley

ISBN-10: 0875867294

ISBN-13: 9780875867298

This e-book argues that the uniquely dynamic and propulsive personality of Western Civilization, for larger and worse, has been generated via an artistic argument among the Socratic Greek rationalist culture and the Judeo–Christian culture top personified by means of Jesus.
Socrates and Jesus either promoted a disinterest in fabric issues, tried to outline the ethical lifestyles, and died martyrs. yet this essay analyzes their opposing definitions of the last word or the divine, their substantially conflicting perspectives of affection and cause, their knowing of civil society and the function of legislation, their epistemology (how we all know) and eschatology (the final goal of the universe), and their primary realizing of ways humankind might progress.
About the Author
Michael Hattersley bought his doctorate in 1976 from Yale college and has taught literature and communications at numerous associations together with the Harvard company School.
He has formerly released a quantity of poetry, Cape Cod mild, a regular textbook, administration conversation, and ratings of articles on literature, communique, and western cultural history.
About the Book
Socrates and Jesus offers an outline of Western cultural improvement from the traditional Greeks to the present time. It opens with chapters at the ancient Socrates and Jesus, then discusses how their legends built and went into pageant for keep an eye on of the traditional global. It examines next Western historical past — the center a while, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Romantic period, and the fashionable interval — and unearths that the contrasting visions of Socrates and Jesus approximately the right way to pursue ethical and clinical fact alternately clashed and compromised with one another, the obvious triumph of 1 continuously resulting in the resurgence of the opposite. It identifies this dynamic because the engine of western heritage, distinguishing it by way of power, inquisitiveness, individuality, and a propensity in the direction of mass democracy, from both nice yet extra static and hierarchical civilizations.
Thus the e-book bargains a complete yet concise concept of Western historical past, grounded in scholarly exam of the West's maximum intellects yet written in a full of life narrative variety obtainable to a wide diversity of informed readers.
Many books were written evaluating Socrates and Jesus, yet nearly all of those have both under pressure their similarities (Paul Gouch's Reflections on Jesus and Socrates), used them in carrier of theological arguments (Nygren's Agape and Eros) or either. This publication uniquely sticks to the historic facts, emphasizes Socrates' and Jesus' artistic clash, and continues that their discussion used to be the dynamic that drove the ancient improvement of Western civilization.
Bestseller lists are typically ruled via thrillers and mysteries whereas different genres are squeezed out, yet biographies and historic surveys additionally make a powerful displaying. Jared Diamond's and Camille Paglia's, arguments among atheism and religion carry an exam of our earlier to undergo on our current and destiny. Like these, this e-book, as a result of its balanced process, should still entice the trained basic reader in addition to academics who assign supplementary collage texts.