num_pages: 144
description: In this illuminating book, Bernard Knox raises questions both fundamental &amp; timely: Should the ancient Greeks--"the oldest dead white European males"--&amp; all they stand for be kept alive in our collective memory? Is their legacy at all relevant to the way we live now? Multiculturalism &amp; its accompanying reevaluation of Western history &amp; culture have brought with them a heightened sense of the strangeness, the otherness, of the Greeks. Modern scholarship has relentlessly exposed the blind adoration of earlier generations &amp; concentrated, in his words, on "the dark underside of what the Victorians hailed as the Greek Miracle." So much of what the Greeks were &amp; did seems, today, positively alien at best. (The title essay explores sacrifice ritual, the Greek sense of self, slavery &amp; the inferior position of women) Yet for all their flaws, the ancient Greeks literally invented philosophy, the theater, the concept of a national literature, competitive athletics, political theory, rhetoric, oratory, biology, zoology, atomic theory etc. Thru the Sophists they invented the very idea of the humanities, a group of studies that came into being "as an education for democracy, a training in free citizenship." We cannot simply discard what the recent critical examination of the ancient Greeks has unearthed. But we cannot at the same time forget--&amp; Knox brings his immense learning &amp; crystalline prose to bear in helping all of us remember--their originality, their central importance &amp; all we've learned &amp; continue to learn from them.
language: English
title: The Oldest Dead White European Males & Other Reflections on the Classics
titlecomplete: The Oldest Dead White European Males & Other Reflections on the Classics
genres: Books About Books, Philosophy, Greece, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Essays, Classics, 20th Century, History, Literary Criticism
ratings_count: 140
publisher: W.W. Norton & Company (London/NY)