Awards
- Winner of Winner of the 2021 Book Prize of the Slovak Academy of Science, category 'Outstanding Monograph'.
Overview
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.
Full Product Details
Author: Jon Stewart (Research Fellow in the Institute of Philosophy, Research Fellow in the Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.90cm
, Height: 2.70cm
, Length: 23.20cm
Weight: 0.652kg
ISBN: 9780198854357
ISBN 10: 0198854358
Pages: 414
Publication Date: 24 March 2020
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
The book contains great richness, and it instilled in me the desire to read or reread all of the works he discussed. In that sense, it fulfills its pedagogical aim. But if one were to teach this book, one would both have to teach with it and to teach against it. That might, however, be a most interesting enterprise. * Carol A. Newsom, Reviews in Biblical Literature *
Author Information
Jon Stewart is Research Fellow in the Institute of Philosophy at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. He is the founder and general editor of the series Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, Texts from Golden Age Denmark, and Danish Golden Age Studies, as well as the co-editor of the Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook and Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series. He is the author of Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions of the World: The Logic of the Gods (OUP, 2018), Søren Kierkegaard: Subjectivity, Irony, and the Crisis of Modernity (OUP, 2015), and Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered (CUP, 2003).
