The Origins of Greek Thought - Softcover

Vernant, Jean-Pierre

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801492939 ISBN 13: 9780801492938

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 1984

Synopsis

Jean-Pierre Vernant's concise, brilliant essay on the origins of Greek thought relates the cultural achievement of the ancient Greeks to their physical and social environment and shows that what they believed in was inseparable from the way they lived. The emergence of rational thought, Vernant claims, is closely linked to the advent of the open-air politics that characterized life in the Greek polis.

Vernant points out that when the focus of Mycenaean society gave way to the agora, the change had profound social and cultural implications. "Social experience could become the object of pragmatic thought for the Greeks," he writes, "because in the city-state it lent itself to public debate. The decline of myth dates from the day the first sages brought human order under discussion and sought to define it.... Thus evolved a strictly political thought, separate from religion, with its own vocabulary, concepts, principles, and theoretical aims."

About this title

From the Back Cover:

This Book is about the origins of Greek thought relates the cultural achievement of the ancient Greeks to their physical and social environment and shows that what they believed was inseparable from the way they lived.

About the Author:

The late Jean-Pierre Vernant was Professor of Comparative Study of Religions at the College de France in Paris.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 0801492939
• ISBN 13: 9780801492938
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144