西方文化导论课后题答案7-11章

1. Please give an account of the setting of the Enlightenment.

The fact that the Enlightenment first occurred in France was ascribed to the deterioration in economic, political, social and cultural conditions in the 18th-century France. The French people strongly demanded that the declining situation be arrested and reforms be carried out. Under such circumstances, progressive intellectuals began to think more seriously about the solutions to the crises and tried to resort to intellectual and social means. This movement also asked for more political power to the people as the bourgeoisie joined in with its economic support and thus the cultural movement tinned with political colour as a bourgeois mark. On the other hand, the dissemination of scientific knowledge and the influences of British empiricism also immensely heightened intellectual and political awareness of the people in general. This prepared the political basis of the bourgeois revolution to follow.

2. Briefly introduce one or two representative figures of the Enlightenment and their central ideas. V oltaire and Montesquieu are two of the representative figures of the Enlightenment. Voltaire exposed the dark side of France such as the corruption and injustice of Christianity by launching his theory on human nature. Also, he argued for the freedom and equality of ordinary people. What’s more, he strongly condemned feudal autocracy and put forward the theory of the enlightened monarchy.

Montesquieu’s political theory developed the principle of dividing political power although the principle itself was not his invention. Montesquieu contributed significantly to the establishment of the modern Western state by exposing the nature of state and human beings in his great work Spirit of Law which has wide-ranging influence on the later generations of modern Western political thinking and practice.

For Montesquieu, it was climate that contributed most to the formation of a society and he believed it was shown in national character, political system, marriage codes, religion, and the use of slavery. His geographical and environmental theory is of some progressive significance, but it exaggerates the geographical factor in social development.

1. Say something about the origin and the major concerns of Romanticism. Give examples. Romanticism originated out of the craving for individual freedom by the young intellectuals who could not tolerate ideological and intellectual oppression derived from classicism and rationalism imposed by the ruling class and traditional culture, as was demonstrated in Germany where the Storm and Stress Movement occurred under Rousseau’s influence which attracted many followers including Goethe and Schiller.

To some extent it was a reaction against the Enlightenment and the 18th-century rationalism and materialism in general. It demanded more reasonable attention to human passion and individuality as a way to reach real human emancipation and freedom.

The major concerns of Romanticism comprised individualism, emotionalism, worship of nature, fascination with the alien aspects of foreign lands, enthusiasm for nationalism and often expressed an air of disillusionment.

2. What do you think of the similarities and dissimilarities between realism and naturalism?

The similarities of realism and naturalism lie in the fact that they both aim to describe real life and try to reveal the nature of social reality, especially the dark side of human society. But in the ways of representation, they differ in the following aspects: first, the naturalist writer does not focus on a typical environment or typical characters for representation of reality, and instead, they would attempt to depict real life as it is by sticking to the inherent factor which would usually lead to the