Title: Socrates and Jesus : the argument that shaped western civilization /
Authors: Hattersley, Michael E.
Publisher: Algora Pub.,
Year: 2009
Subjects: Socrates.; Jesus Christ; Philosophy History; Philosophy and religion.
Abstract: Michael Hattersley argues that the uniquely dynamic and propulsive character of Western Civilization, for better and worse, has been generated by a creative argument between the Socratic Greek rationalist tradition and the Judeo-Christian tradition best personified by Jesus. Socrates and Jesus both promoted a disinterest in material things, attempted to define the moral life, and died martyrs. But this essay analyzes their opposing definitions of the ultimate or the divine, their radically conflicting views of love and reason, their understanding of civil society and the role of laws, their epistemology (how we know) and eschatology (the ultimate purpose of the universe), and their fundamental understanding of how humankind could progress.
Contents: Socrates and Jesus -- The historical Socrates -- The Socrates legend -- Philosophy -- Science -- The historical Jesus -- The Jesus legend -- The argument between Socrates and Jesus -- Eros -- Agape -- Eros and agape -- Socrates and Jesus fight for the Roman Empire -- The Augustinian synthesis -- Socrates and Jesus in the Middle Ages -- The high Middle Ages and the synthesis of Aquinas -- Dante -- Socrates, Jesus, and the Renaissance -- Cosimo de Medici (1389-1464) -- Lorenzo de Medici (1449-92) -- Savonarola (1452-98) -- Shakespeare (1564-1616) -- The resurgence of agape during the Protestant Reformation -- Martin Luther (1483-1546) -- Reformation and revolution -- Reason and nightmare : the Enlightenment -- Descartes (1596-1650) -- Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) -- Isaac Newton (1642-1727) -- David Hume (1711-1776) -- Voltaire (1696-1778) -- Rousseau -- Romanticism -- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) -- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) -- The twentieth century -- Charles Darwin (1809-1882) -- Karl Marx (1818-1883) -- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955) -- Conclusion -- Afterword -- All along the watchtower -- John Ashbery's last stand for erotic epistemology.