The Odyssey Of The Western Spirit

The Odyssey is a general theory as to how mankind moved from the scarcity of primitive life to the present world of technological abundance.It offers a specific view of psychological life that recurs in the institutional structures of religion, capitalism, and romanticism. A similar theme emerges in the various configurations of the Western world starting with Odysseus on his way home to today’s world of global outreach, a story like no other.

The Odyssey presents the lifetime work of the author to consider the entire sweep of the development of the Western Spirit from its beginning in primitive life to globalization.

First published in 1980, Beyond Geography continues to influence and impress its readers. This new edition, prepared for the Columbus quincentennial, includes a new introduction by T. H. Watkins and a new preface by the author. As the public debates Columbus's legacy, it is important for us to learn of the spiritual background of European domination of the Americas, for the Europeans who conquered the Americas substituted history for myth as a way of understanding life.

Is he just a troublemaker with an attitude? Or will this spunky youth grow up to do something great? The populace of Athens holds varied opinions about Alcibiades, a handsome boy who exhibits a devious and audacious personality. Based on historical record, author Jack Meyer reconstructs the life of Alcibiades, a man who uniquely impacted classical Athens during the Peloponnesian War. An orphan, Alcibiades grew up in the household of Pericles, was Socrates' favorite student, and was immensely handsome and rich. This narrative tells the story of the stunning career of this brilliant tactical military commander, persuasive orator, and consummate traitor who switched sides three times during the war. The city's own favorite son, this product of the Golden Age, was a man as morally corrupt as he was convincingly eloquent. The reconstruction of Alcibiades' story breeds both fiction and farce, and this story of the Greek experience serves as an analogue for a critique of today's American foreign policy.

The Emergence of Subjectivity in the Ancient and Medieval World: An Interpretation of Western Civilization represents a combination of different genres: cultural history, philosophical anthropology, and textbook. It follows a handful of different but interrelated themes through more than a dozen texts that were written over a period of several millennia and, by means of an analysis of these texts, presents a theory of the development of Western civilization from antiquity to the Middle Ages. The main line of argument traces the various self-conceptions of different cultures as they developed historically, reflecting different views of what it is to be human. The thesis of the volume is that through examination of these changes we can discern the gradual emergence of what we today call inwardness, subjectivity, and individual freedom. As human civilization took its first tenuous steps, it had a very limited conception of the individual. Instead, the dominant principle was that of the wider group: the family, clan, or people. Only in the course of history did the idea of what we now know as individuality begin to emerge, and it took millennia for this idea to be fully recognized and developed. The conception of human beings as having a sphere of inwardness and subjectivity subsequently had a sweeping impact on all aspects of culture, including philosophy, religion, law, and art: indeed, this notion largely constitutes what is today referred to as modernity. It is easy to lose sight of the fact that this modern conception of human subjectivity was not simply something given, but rather the result of a long process of historical and cultural development.