What is the most important literary work of Western Civilization?
Note: if you say the Bible, you're wrong. Because obviously the most important literary work of Western Civilization has to be made by said civilization, not by some desert people hundreds of years before said civilization even started.
Joshua White
do you really think that western civilization started hundreds of years after the bible was written
Thomas Myers
Most of us wouldn't be part of that civilization if it weren't for Christianity.
Adrian Flores
you can always make a continuous line of civilization, there are rarely straight edges to draw, where you can say one civ started _here_. but this is quite irrelevant, since the Bible was written outside of said civilization, the time dimension aside.
Daniel Watson
You said of and not from within.
It is undeniably the bible or KJV for English parts of Western Civilization. Western Civilization is heavily built upon the oral traditions of semitic goat herders
Jaxon Johnson
In Roman territories
Connor Hill
In Greek tongue
Caleb Lewis
You're right, it's clearly meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Austin Stewart
Also that is a dumb argument. Think about it if an alien book were found that gave us numerous scientific advances such as the cure for cancer, space faring ability it would be the most important work for mankind.
Why would its importance wane because it is alien to our planet?
Owen Scott
Exhausitive list of books that actually mattered >Republic >Nicomachean Ethics >Bible >Quran >Principia Mathematica >On the Origin of Species >The Communist Manifesto thats it. Every other book ever written is superfluous and ultimately meaningless
Asher Ortiz
It's clearly the bible, your argument for why it couldn't be doesn't strike me as sound
Aiden Ortiz
>no Euclid
It was the second book printed after the bible.
Michael Evans
Such book would not be the "literary work of Western Civilization"
Jackson Peterson
Never said that, can you not read? It would be the most important book in all of human civilization regardless of its origin.
Isaiah Nelson
Euclid just compiled a bunch of scrolls that got to him, the ideas from Elements were known for literally thousands of years prior.
Brody Morris
My diary desu
Kevin Garcia
>>Bible
Asher Jackson
>Never said that Read OP's post again, baka
Jayden Peterson
Read counter argument. I only demonstrated alien origin isn't a factor in most influential/important. Which is what OP was arguing, So again can you not read?
Nathaniel Harris
The New Testament was written in Greek in the Roman Empire...
Luke Fisher
And according to Spengler, it was historical pseudomorphism, the alternating effect of magical civilization (the goat-herder civilization: early - jews; blooming - christians, chaldeans, zoroastrians; late - islam) on the new-born Western (faustian) civilization.
Joshua Miller
Yes.
David Bell
Ancient Greece and Rome was another civilization too, not Western.
Wyatt Thomas
Yes but it was Christianity itself that served as the foundation of Western Civilization from it
Juan Brown
Exhaustive list of every book that ever mattered > That's it. Every other book ever written is superfluous and ultimately meaningless
Owen Scott
You forgot Harry Potter
Jayden Flores
What if it wasn't? Desert people's nations were formed through common belief, the Umma, the community of believers of the same faith. Western nations were formed by noble dynasties with outstanding ambition and will. New languages and states were born just because one dynasty emerged and managed to create a legacy. Look at Portugal, Austria or Netherlands, they would have no reason to exist if not for the dynasties that forged them by ruling them or making them rebel against them. The Catalan nation doesn't exist because of a marriage. All of these nations exist or don't exist because of some groups of people, defined by bonds of blood, pursuiting power and an outstanding fate.
Jayden Collins
western civ started in 1776
Xavier Foster
So the most important literary work to you has to be made by you?
Kevin King
The Illiad
Gabriel Miller
What if it wasn't? Desert people's nations were formed through common belief, the Umma, the community of believers of the same faith. Western nations were formed by noble dynasties with outstanding ambition and will. New languages and states were born just because one dynasty emerged and managed to create a legacy. Look at Portugal, Austria or Netherlands, they would have no reason to exist if not for the dynasties that forged them by ruling them or making them rebel against them. The Catalan nation doesn't exist because of a marriage. All of these nations exist or don't exist because at some point in history, a group of people emerged, defined by bonds of blood, pursuiting power and an outstanding fate.
Easton Peterson
Wrong for the same reasons as the Bible. Feudalism was part of western civilization.
Aaron Rivera
You're speaking of Individual nations not Western Civilization. If we are to speak at what draws the line between what links these "Dynastic" countries you speak of and equally dynastic nations like Morocco and Turkey it was the Church
Ryder Allen
This is bait.
Kayden Morgan
start with the greeks
Tyler Walker
No, that would be Greece and Rome hundreds of years prior to Christ's ministry.
Henry Garcia
Western civilization consists of individual nations. The Ottomans were self-appointed succesors of the Caliphs, the leaders of Islam. In Islam there was no difference between the State and the Church. So if you say it was the Church that linked Western countries together, there is some logic in that from a certain aspect, I give you that, but that doesn't adress the fact how fundamentally different was the role of the Church in the East vs West.
So if the paralel you draw with the Church as the link would be true, there would be no difference between the East and the West because the Church, albeit a different one, links both of them, however there is clearly great difference between them, so your paralel doesn't seem to be true in the deeper sense, only at a superficial, surface level at most.
Samuel Perry
Nah Greek and Roman civilization is in the genetics of Western Civilization but so too were they the fathers of Islam and the Ottoman Empire. Don't overlook the commonality between the Roman mission towards single all emcompassing civilization and Muhammad's Caliphate.
I agree but you see I would call this seperation of Church and State (Law) something deeply intrinsic to Christianity itself. Feudalism needed Christianity to function essentially
Gavin Cook
>New Testament >Late Islam
Asher Evans
Newton's Principia, not Russell's, right?
Sebastian Ross
Yes, exactly, the West was all about separation while in the East that question wasn't even raised. And we are talking about the same Christianity because Cristianity existed in the East too.n that sense Eastern Christianity and Byzantinian state model has more in common with Islam than with the West. So I'm saying there must have been something special about the West, and it wasn't Christianity for sure.
Jason Watson
>Greek and Roman civilization is in the genetics of Western Civilization Spengler would strongly disagree.
Andrew Foster
The Orthodox Church was not Christianity proper as they denied the transcendental division of the Trinity, in that sense they remained Jewish Pagans with the aesthetics of Christianity.
James Rogers
If we're talking about a list of the most influential books, then >analects >the Vedas >dhammapada These books are a pretty big deal too.
Jack Taylor
>Non-Western lit
Samuel Ross
Yeah and probably Orthodox and Jews would tell the same about Catholics. Not really adressing my point.
>On the Origin of Species >The Communist Manifesto >Poetics > Kritik der reinen Vernunft >Republic
Grayson Adams
Faust I & II
Charles Cook
>the communist manifesto
Leviathan by Hobbes is better and more important
Jack Fisher
>No catholic catechisms in this thread ??
Connor Lopez
...
Caleb Gray
That is the entire point. The Orthodox Church believed in dogma as they prioritized the Father same as the Jews and Greco-Roman Pagans. Perhaps it is the Celtic-Germanic origins of Western Europe in which pantheons had no clear structure or hierarchy that led to the developement of Catholicism which rather than prioritizing the father sees Man as God as authentically embodying God as much as the Father, the Law giver.
It allowed a faith in which individual human reason was given the same dignity and potential of understanding as God and hence were able to construct a Civilization that allowed this his spiritual right to determine his own rightful way as opposed to the Communal dogmatism of Eastern faiths in which the Father as represented by the one State must bestow rule on all.
Jeremiah Rodriguez
>The Communist Manifesto >western civilization
kek
Mason Gutierrez
why is this comical?
Lincoln Russell
only 3rd world monkey republics were actually dumb enough to accept it.
Noah Wilson
I don't understand. Accept it? This thread is about important works of the West.
That work spawned from a tradition of Western thought, in the West and continues to be influential in the West as people engage with it in various ways. It's not about value judgements of said works, who 'accepted' them, or practised them you fucking mong.
Nathan Bell
ITT: pseuds name dropping books they skimmed through once and trying to reduce the entirety of western intellectual tradition to a few books.
Xavier Scott
The Bible
Connor Collins
>Classical antiquity isn't a part of Western Civilization.
Julian Bailey
>Note: if you say the Bible, you're wrong. Because obviously the most important literary work of Western Civilization has to be made by said civilization, not by some desert people hundreds of years before said civilization even started.
the bible. i'm right.
Aiden Reyes
Divine Comedy, obviously.
Sebastian Phillips
>book that nobody ever reads doubt.jpg
Chase Perry
it isn't though
Lincoln Gomez
Thats some nasty bait you got there pal.
Joseph Cooper
Winner. The bible might not be the most important work made by western civilization, but it's impact on it can't be denied. OP is an idiot.
Kayden Hernandez
>Communal dogmatism of Eastern faiths in which the Father as represented by the one State must bestow rule on all gonna go ahead and ignore the Tolkien language here to say this: if this is how you understand Eastern Christianity, you've never even come close to studying it with any academic integrity.