Modern America and ancient Rome
Subtitle: an essay in historical comparison and analogy
By: Simon Kiessling de Courcy
Publisher: Algora Publishing
Published: 2016
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 167
ISBN-13: 9781628941531; 9781628941548
Subjects: Civilization; Comparative civilization; Relations; Social problems; International relations
Description: "Parallels between ancient Rome and modern America have been drawn before, but never like this. Professor Kiessling compares the ancient Greeks and the Romans, and he compares them to the modern Americans and Europeans. Subjects include levels of commitment to religion, responsiveness to post-heroic values, attitudes toward war and peace, moral permissiveness, demography, the susceptibility to universalistic ideas and supra-nationalism and the different levels of belief in the political capacity of the nation and its constitutional framework. Discussing challenges facing present-day America, the author looks at our mounting social inequality, increased political polarization, the transformation into an empire of consumption, the privatization of military force, the role of organized money in politics, and the rise of irrational, apocalyptic thought in public discourse - all of which are reminiscent of ancient Rome.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introductory reflections on the philosophy of history and Oswald Spengler's morphological theory of the high cultural formations; title: The four basic stages of ancient and occidental history; title: Hellenistic culture, philosophy and art : apoliticism, private aspiration and self-realization; title: The degradation of the polis; title: European mentalities of the post-imperialist age; title: Pan-Hellenism, pan-Europeanism and supra-nationalism; title: How the Greeks saw the Romans, and Europeans see the Americans; title: How the Romans saw the Greeks, and Americans see the Europeans; title: American puritanism and Roman religiousness; title: Radical ideology and utopian vision; title: Ancestral lands, mobility and depopulation; title: Reluctant hegemons; title: Present-day America and late Republican Rome.