西方古典文化概论考试 关键点 (2).doc

Greek Architecture希腊建筑 It has been said that captive Greece conquered victorious Rome, and, as we have seen, the Romans adopted many ideas in painting and sculpture from the GreeksRoman temples were also strongly influenced by Greek prototypes. Greek columns were built in three styles: Doric, Ionic , Corinthian. Etruscans伊特拉斯坎人Etruscans, who actually dominated early Rome and provided its kings. It is not known how the Etruscans came to occupy the northern territory of Italy. They are not of Indo-European origin and they most likely came from the Near East if not the orient . I many respects, the culture of the Etruscans was very similar to that of Mycenae in Greece. Their cities ,twelve in number ,were autonomous like the city-states of Archaic Greece and were combined in a loose organization which historians have referred to as the Etruscans Confederacy .As a people, the Etruscans played hard and worked hard. they were not a contemplative people, but were always busy . they were practical and realistic , which became a typical roman trait.The Roman Political system罗马政治体系the and Roman system , like those of Athens and Sparta ,had three major political components, which tended to offset and balance each other. First were the executives, who were called consuls and had supreme civil and military authority. Second came the senate( meaning “council of elders”) an advisory body of elder statesmen and heads of clans. Third ,there were popular assemblies of citizens. Mainly three assemblies: the Assembly of Centuries, the Assembly of tribes, and the Assembly of Curiae.The Struggle of the ordersOne of the most important aspect of the early history of the roman republic was the “The Struggle of the orders”-a struggle(斗争) between the patricians(贵族们) and plebeians（贫民们）.The patricians were a small group of citizens representing less than 10 percent of Romes population.Greek sculpture in the 5th century B.C 希腊雕塑 Greek sculptors in the 5th century BC had learned to represent the human body naturally and easily , in action or at rest ,which departed widely from the rather rigid form of the earlier kouros. But the realism was touched with ideal qualities: the artists tried to present the image of men and women in their perfection. This idealized realism appears in a bronze statue of Zeus about to hurl a missile. The body is perfect, the left arm pointing toward the target and the right drawn fully back. Every muscleis tensed with power. The unknown sculptor of about 460BC has captured the precise moment of action.In sculpture , the Greeks also got their inspiration from the near east and Egypt. The first type of free-stand statue was called the “kouros”,a young man standing rigidly erect in the fashion of Egyptian statues. The female counterpart was called a “kore”. The kouros statues dominate the Archiaic period of Greek art.The Sophists In the middle of fifth century BC , the Greeks interest in the nature of the material in universe had become less. Philosophy turned toward the study of human beings and the dilemmas in their lives. This moral philosophy has inspired debate in all subsequent ages. The moral philosophy today still discusses the problem that Greek philosophers discovered: is there anything that we should do ,as our duty , even though it may bring no reward whatever or is there some trace of self-interest concealed in every apparently ”moral” act?The first Greeks to undertake this study were the Sophist(meaning in Greek “expect” or ”learned man” )Stoicism斯多葛学派Stoicism (Greek ) was a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early 3RD century BC. The Stoics considered destructive emotions to be the result of errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of moral and intellectual perfection, would not suffer such emotions. Stoics were concerned with the active relationship between cosmic determinism and human freedom, and the belief that it is virtuous to maintain a will (called prohairesis) that is in accord with nature. Because of this, the Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life, and they thought that the best indication of an individuals philosophy was not what a person said but how he behaved.论述题Ancient Greek dramaThe Athenian dramatists were the first artists in Western society to examine such basic questions as the rights of the individual , the demands of society upon the individual and the nature of good and evil. Conflict, the basic stuff of life ,is the constant element Athenian drama. And the greatest poems of the middle and late fifth century BC can be found in the tragedies of that period.Tragedy originated in Athens, at festivals honoring the god Dionysus. There was a choral song in the festival. It might be that shortly before 500 BC , a single actor began to sing or talk with the chorus , thus allowing the story to became more complex. In its developed form drama became a vehicle for interpreting human experience.三大悲剧作家Aeschylus埃斯库罗斯(524-456BC) the first of the great Athenian dramatists was Aeschylus. He was also the first to express the agony that human beings are constantly put in a dilemma , out of which there is no escape but death . In his trilogy of plays , The Oresteia , he deals with this theme.Sophocles 索福克勒斯(496-406BC)The characters in Aeschylus are dramatic types rather than sharply characterized individuals. Sophocles carried the evolution of drama.His Oedipus the King is the most famous tragedy and perhaps the most nearly perfect specimen that survives.In this tragedy , what Sophocles wants to show is that well-meaning men are struggling against their own fates unwisely and vainly: the individual is incapable of affecting the universal laws of human existence.Euripides欧里庇得斯(480406BC)The last of the three great Greek tragic poets, Euripides, also explored the theme of personal conflict within the polis and the depths of the individual with Euripides drama entered a new, more personal phase-the gods were far less important than human beings. Euripides viewed the human soul as a place where opposing forces struggle , where strong passions such as hatred and jealousy conflict with reason. The essence of Euripides tragedy is the flawed charactermen and women who bring disaster on themselves and their loved ones because their passions overwhelm their reason. His most familiar play is Medea.Aristophanes 喜剧作家(448-385BC)The only comedies that can be found now are written by Aristophanes-The Knight.Greek thought 希腊思想Socrates苏格拉底From the ranks of the Sophists came Socrates(c.469-399 B.C.), perhaps the most noble and wisest Athenian to have ever lived. He transformed philosophy into an inquiry about the moral responsibility of people. Socrates was concerned with the lose of ethical values during the Peloponnesian War. His mission was to persuade young men of Athens to examine their lives in the pursuit of moral truth. His method was to question his pupils even many who were not his pupils by refuting, correcting , and guiding them. His method is known as the Socratic dialogue ; it takes the form of question answer,question-answer, and question-answer. It is a dialectical style as well. Socrates would argue both sides of a question in order to arrive at a conclusion. Then that conclusion was argued against another assumption and so on. Perhaps it is not that difficult to understand why Socrates was considered a gadfly. Plato柏拉图Platos greatest and most enduring work was lengthy dialogue, The Republic. It discusses a number of questions including the nature of justice, statesmanship , ethics and the nature of politics. It is through this work Plato made his greatest impact on the future of philosophy with his theory of knowledge. He believed there exist two worlds. One is the world that we feel through our senses sights, touch, taste, sound and smell. But because our sense impressions often fail us and deceive us and the world is always changing , so this world is not “real.” There is a higher world which is independent of this world., the ideal world. The physical world is only the imitations of the ideal world .Plato believed that we must go beyond the evidence of our sense to find ultimate reality( the ideal world). To illustrate our lack of true perception ,Plato uses a famous metaphor in his Republic . imagine men sitting in a cave , facing a wall , with a fire at their backs. As others carry objects through the cave , in front of the fire, the men see only vague shadows of the objects and therefore cannot make out the reality. Aristotle亚里士多德His investigations , in which he was assisted by his pupils in Athens ,extended to all fields of learning known to the ancients: logic , metaphysics , astronomy , biology, physics ,politics, aesthetics , music, drama ,and poetry among them. His contributions to each of these subjects were not to be surpassed for many centuries ;not until the fourteenth century did anyone seriously question Aristotles theory of motion. For this Politics he studied the governments of over 150 contemporary states, comparing the merits of each. In the work he distinguishes three different types of constitution :monarchy , aristocracy, and moderate democracy.希腊思想总结 唯心主义唯物主义So it can be seen that whereas Plato suggested that man was born with knowledge, Aristotle argued the knowledge comes from experience .And it can also be seen that in the space of just a few decades, mankind witnessed the essence of those two philosophical traditions which have occupied the western intellectual traditions for the past 2500 years. Rationalism: knowledge comes before experience, and empiricism: knowledge comes after experience.Roman Architecture罗马建筑 Road: the most enduring monument to Roman civilization is the impressive network of roads joint everywhere from Britain to Africa. Aqueducts: converged toward the cities , stopping down and carryin