西方文化导论 复习版

1. What do you think of the influence Greek culture has exerted on Western Civilization as a whole? Give examples.
Greek culture is the cradle of Western civilization and has an enormous impact on Western culture. (The specific contributions are found in the areas of philosophy, politics, literature, art, science and architecture.)①Greek politics was one of the greatest influences on Western Civilization. The Greeks were the first to successfully create a government based on the consensus of the people and thus provided a foundation for Western democracy.②The second significant influence was that of philosophy. The Socratic idea about ethics and knowledge helped the Westerners care more for the effect of knowledge and value of morality, both of which give sound guidance to people to improve and change the world outside themselves, i.e. human society and the natural world.③Later generations of Westerners have benefited a lot from Greek culture, such as painting, sculpture, drama, (architecture, poetry and historical works). Classicism had Greek culture as one of the crucial sources, which helped Westerners so much that they ascribed the origin of the Renaissance to it. This changed the intellectual conditions of the later medieval period and opened the way to the modern era in the West.
2. What are the major features and achievements of the Renaissance? Give examples.
The Renaissance is characterized by seeking ideological emancipation, intellectual freedom and political awareness, based on cultural production and religious reformation. All these were undertaken or unfolded gradually but widely, extending its influences to every corner of Europe, with more and more people getting involved.
The achievements were seen principally in six areas, namely, painting, sculpture, poetry, fiction, drama and religious reformation. Instances can be found in these areas , such as the huge change of subjects and styles in painting. The medieval painting used to center on depicting Jesus Christ and other Christian subjects, not only effecting similar and limited subjects but also depicting typical facial expressions and manners. The great artists in the Renaissance started to focus on the images with individualistic temperament, highlighting humanity instead of divinity, thus breaking away from stereotyped medieval models.
3. Say something about the features and contributions of utilitarianism, utopian socialism and classical economics.
Utilitarianism is the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined by its contribution to overall utility, That is, its contribution to the calculation of pleasure and gain one can have as a result of that action. The calculation is not just material, but spiritual or moral. Utilitarianism provides the motivation and condition for an action of any kind, either individual or collective, and offers the principle for making laws to ensure justice and equality required of a society.
Utopian socialism refers to the beliefs held by early socialists, who created hypothetical visions of perfect egalitarian and communalist societies without practical consideration of actual conditions of the capitalist society they lived in and thus could not carry out their ideals due to the powerful hindrance. However some of the Utopian
ideals, such as those about women's equality and emancipation, were reasonable and consequently absorbed by Marxism.
Classical economist is widely regarded as the beginning of modern economic thoughts. It is the idea that a free market can regulate itself. Its founders include Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus and John Stuart Mill. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations in 1776 is considered to mark the beginning of classical economics.
4. Give a general survey of the intellectual and ideological developments in Europe by focusing on one or two theoretical schools in the following list: positivism, pragmatism, intuitionalism, psychoanalysis, existentialism, logical atomism, logical positivism and naturalist philosophy.
Existentialism is an important school of thought in the modern age. It is a term that has been used in the work of 19th and 20th century philosophers among whom are Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. Despite the doctrinal differences and disagreements among them, they all take the human subject and the condition of existence as a starting point for philosophical exploration.
Existential philosophy begins with a sense of confusion in the face of an absurd world. Many existentialists regard traditional philosophy, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experiences. Existentialism has exerted its influence upon Western literature in terms of providing the philosophical basis for the emergence of the “theatre of the absurd” in the field of play.
5. Try to recall how Chinese popular culture came into fashion in the last 2 or 3 decades with the introduction of western pop music and art.
Chinese popular culture came into fashion in the early 1980s along with China's opening up to the outside world. There emerged many popular singers among whom are Deng Lijun, Mao Amin, etc. Cui Jian deserves credit for his contribution to C hina’s rock music, being the first musician of the genre. Now Chinese popular music has entered a period of prosperous development in which old and new musicians compete for excellence and the audience is large in number. Popular music has become a profitable industry.
As for art, both in painting and sculpture, Chinese artists have been influenced by the Western postmodernist ideas, but they are still at the early stage of learning and imitation. More and more artists begin to voice their concerns for environment, globalization, morality and many other social problems brought about by the rapid economy development.
6. 人文研究的价值（无标准答案）
Since Renaissance, Humanistic Studies have gradually spread in Western countries, which helps people emancipate from the religious principles. Thus, people have a good chance to know themselves and the world better. Humanism lays the ideological basis for the modern science and leads talents to explore the nature and create more inventions. It’s a process of research from god to human, from culture to science that contributes to the firm belief that the value of human is the most important.
Andreas Vesalius: dissection of human bodies
Baruch Spinoza: pan-theological philosopher
Cleisthenes: carry out legislative reform
Copernicus: heliocentrism
Da Vinci: The Last Supper
Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe
Dante: The Divine Comedy
Draco: punish trivial crimes with the death sentence
Emile Zola: Rougon-Macquart
Expressionism: Eugene O’Neill
Francois Rabelais: Gargantua
Futurism: Marinetti
Gaius Julius Caesar: The Civil War
Galileo: invention of the pendulum clock
Geoffrey Chaucer: Canterbury Tales
Goncourt brothers: Germinie Lacerteux
Guy de Maupassant: The Necklace
Henry Fielding: Tom Jones
Imagism: Ezra Pound
Isaac Israeli: follower of Neo-platonism
Issac Singer: the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1978
Jack London: The Sea-Wolf
John Bunyan: Pilgrim’s Progress
John Milton: Paradise Lost
Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels
Livy: History of Rome
Michel Montaigne: Essais
Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote
Newton: establishment of the modern study of optics
Ovid: Appollo and Daphne
Paphael Sanzio: The School of Athens
Peisistratus: advocate peasants’ welfare and popular entertainments Pericles: supreme council check the behavior of leaders
Shmuel Agnon: the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1966 Sholem Aleyshem: the Mark Twain of Jews
Solon: abolish slave labor
Symbolism: Baudelaire
Terence: The Mother-in-Law
Theodore Dreiser: An American Tragedy
Virgil: The Aeneid
William Harvey: systemic circulation
William Shakespeare: A Mid-summer Night’s Dream
Asceticism: A theory or practice which advocates spiritual improvement by living a particularly hard life, as is seen in the experiences of some religious practice.
Jacob’s Ladder: A Biblical term suggesting a ladder to heaven which appeared in the Book of Genesis. When the Biblical patriarch Jacob fled from his brother Esau, he imagined the ladder to heaven.
Lost generation: A term first used by Gertrude Stein to describe the post-World War I generation of American writers, men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war. The term is commonly applied to Hart Crane, Ernst Hemingway, F.Scott Fitzgerald and others.
Mount Olympus is a high mountain in Greece, well-known for the “home of the gods”in Greek mythology. The deities who are said to dwell on this mountain are ruled by Zeus, including his wife, his brothers, his sisters and his children. Performance art: A term usually used to refer to a kind of advent-garde or conceptual art which grew out of the visual arts and began to be identified in the 1960s .Performance art is unconventional and often challenges the audience to think in new and unconventional ways.
Pulitzer: Joseph Pulitzer was a famous Hungarian-born American journalist and newspaper publisher. He ran newspapers in St. Louis and New York City, and established and endowed the Pulitzer Prizes.
The Apollonian style and the Dionysian style:The two terms by Nietzsche initiated in his The Birth of Tragedy, which refers separately to the cheerful and optimistic style and the gloomy and passionate style.。