This small book, the last work of a world-renowned scholar, has established itself as a classic. It provides a superb overview of the vast historical process by which Christianity was Hellenized and Hellenic civilization became Christianized. Werner Jaeger shows that without the large postclassical expansion of Greek culture the rise of a Christian world religion would have been impossible. He explains why the Hellenization of Christianity was necessary in apostolic and postapostalic times; points out similarities between Greek philosophy and Christian belief; discuss such key figures as Clement, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa; and touches on the controversies that led to the ultimate complex synthesis of Greek and Christian thought.
Werner Wilhelm Jaeger Books
Werner Jaeger was a profound scholar of ancient culture and education, most notably in his monumental work "Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture." His research delved into both the earliest practices and later philosophical reflections on the cultural nature of education in Ancient Greece. Jaeger hoped to restore the values of Hellenic origins to a decadent early 20th-century Europe through this extensive consideration. His work spanned from Homer and the Presocratics through Plato to the Church Fathers, offering a comprehensive view across a millennium.
Paideia - 1: The Ideals of Greek Culture
The Mind of Athens (Archaic Greece)
- 544 pages
- 20 hours of reading
The project of Greek culture in its heroic period was the creation of the perfect state-a goal that seemed within reach in the Athens of the fifth century B.C. But with the fall of Athens that prospect evaporated, and the result, which Werner Jaeger describes in this second volume of his magisterial three-volume study of Hellenism, was the spiritualizing of Greek culture-'the search for the divine centre.' Jaeger traces the growth of this new power in human culture from its early beginnings in the teachings of Socrates, to its natural climax in Plato's Republic.
Each volume was conceived as an independent unit, [Vol 1-Archaic Greece, The Mind of Athens; Vol 2-In Search of the Divine Centre; Vol 3-The Conflict of Cultural Ideas in the Age of Plato], taken together they constitute a monumental integrated survey of the whole Greek cultural tradition in the early & classical periods. A profound & timeless study of the foundation of Western Civilization.
Teologia wczesnych filozofów greckich
- 298 pages
- 11 hours of reading