重庆大学西方文化入门考试大题复习汇总.doc

重庆大学西方文化入门复习汇总 December, 20101. What were the main features of ancient Greek state society? You may take the state of Athens and the state of Sparta as an example. (Handouts 1-2)1) The distinguishing features of ancient Greek society were the division between free and slave, the differing roles of men and women, the relative lack of status distinctions based on birth, and the importance of religion. Also, During the Archaic Age the Greeks developed the most widespread and influential of their new political forms, the city-state, or polis.2) The Athenian were very different from the ancient Spartans. Sparta, for instance, was a place of great determination. The Spartans believed in a strong army. All Spartan boys were trained to be soldiers. When the Persians invaded Greece, the other city-states looked especially to Sparta and its army to keep them safe. The city-state of Athens was the birthplace of many significant ideas. Ancient Athenians were a thoughtful people who enjoyed the systematic study of subjects such as science, philosophy, and history, to name a few. Athenians placed a heavy emphasis on the arts, architecture, and literature. The Athenians built thousands of temples and statues that embodied their understanding of beauty. Today the term classical is used to describe their enduring style of art and architecture. Athenians also enjoyed a democratic form of government in which some of the people shared power.2. What kind of society was Rome as a Republic? How did Roman republic become a world power?1) The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC. Early in the republic, all power was concentrated into the hands of the patricians, aristocratic, wealthy land holders. Plebians were anyone who was not a patrician (the equestrian class would come later), and many were just as wealthy as the patricians. These aristocratic plebians came to fight what has been called the War of the Orders with the aristocrats in charge over the next 200 years. During this time period, during the early 5th century, a tribune of Plebians was elected to protect their classs rights, and reserved the power to veo movement by the artocratic Senate. By 367 BC, the first plebian had been elected consul, and in 450 BC, the twelve tabls were published, providing the first written, fair laws in the Roman world. Despite all of these things, power still depended on wealth in Ancient Rome, and even a Plebian would have to have access to financial resources to be elected to the magistracy. 2) Handout 4 P.1 Over a time of four hundred years.1. What are the main elements of humanism of Renaissance? Give examples of writers, artists, or scientists of the period to support your points. (see textbook) 1) Handout10 P.5 Humanism was the scholarly study of.2) The Florentine Leonardo Bruni. Humanist scholars from this period include the Dutch theologian Erasmus, the English author Thomas More, the French writer Francois Rabelais, the Italian poet Francesco Petrarch, and the Italian scholar Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.2. Of the four great figures in the Age of Enlightenment in France, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot, which one do you like best? Why? (Handout 12)Montesquieu.Montesquieu, was a French social commentator and political thinker who lived during the Enlightenment. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, which is taken for granted in modern discussions of government and implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He was largely responsible for the popularization of the terms feudalism and Byzantine Empire. Montesquieu believed that where government was more liberal and where people thought independently, society would be less devoted to religious ritual and more devoted to morality. Montesquieu was somewhat ahead of his time in advocating major reform of slavery in The Spirit of the Laws. As part of his advocacy he presented a satirical hypothetical list of arguments for slavery, which has been open to contextomy. However, like many of his generation, Montesquieu also held a number of views that might today be judged controversial. He firmly accepted the role of a hereditary aristocracy and the value of primogeniture, and while he endorsed the idea that a woman could head a state, he held that she could not be effective as the head of a family. Regardless of the weakness above, Montesquieu was indeed a great scholar over the world.3. How do you like the ideas expressed in the essay Of Civil Government by John Locke? (see Handout 10) This section represents the end of the first portion of the Second Treatise of Government. By this point, Locke has defined the state of nature, outlined the formation and goals of a just civil society (the word ends in the title of Chapter 9 should be read as goals), and the principles behind that society. To review, briefly: in the state of nature, people are completely free and independent. Everyone is subject to natural law, however, and may execute that law when someone threatens his or her natural rights. People amass property in the state of nature, first by adding their labor to the land and the products of the land, then by bartering, and eventually developing money and acquiring the ability to gather large amounts of property together. At this point, natural law is no longer an adequate protection for the property and liberty of individuals, so people enter into civil society to protect themselves. By entering into society, people relinquish their freedom under natural law, and their right to execute law. Instead, in this society, they establish a judicial power to arbitrate disputes between members of the society, a set of laws that all the members of the society must obey, and an executive power to maintain and enforce the law. This commonwealth is valid and just so long as these three common powers serve to the best advantage of all of those who have relinquished their rights to join it. We should remember that Lockes ideas were in fact progressive for his time. His assumptions about natural rights, and freedom from arbitrary and unjust government helped shape the creation of the United States Constitution, which rested on Lockean principles of equality and a government working to the best advantage of the people (although, while not mentioned, Lockes ideas about the advantages of the ruling class were built into that model as well). 4. How much do you know about the Industrial Revolution in Britain? What are the significances of the Revolution? (Handout 17) The Industrial Revolution, one of the most vital periods of change in Great Britain, occurred because of the stable economic, social, and political stance of the country, as well as brought lasting effects in Britain in each of these areas. With its fast growing monopoly on ocean trade, its renewed interest in scientific discovery, and its system of national banks holding tight to its financial security, Britain was, at the time of the Industrial Revolution, ripe for change. It was the great historical epoch we call the Industrial Revolution which would forever change city life, social class structure, the power of the British nation amongst others of the world, the production of machinery, and the strength of the economy of Britain. Because of the Industrial Revolution, never again would the British have to suffer the results of no changes regarding the inequalities of the working world, nor doubt the strength of their country, yet come to view the word technology in a completely new way. it can be concluded that, because of Britains national economic, political, and social state, the country was ready to surmount on its shoulders the immense change of the Industrial Revolution. Due to this era in Great Britain, new inventions and innovations contributed to a more modern outlook on life, self-improvement in the workplace, and proved the benefits of a futuristic way of thinking. The Industrial Revolution caused the people of Britain to turn away from the past, and instead to look toward improvements in their way of life which would last through upcoming years. In this respect, the Industrial Revolution was, indeed, revolutionary.5. How much did the ideas of utopian socialist ideas of Saint-Simon, Owen and Fourier contribute to the socialist ideas of Marx and Engles? (handout 18) Utopian socialists never actually used this name to describe themselves; the term Utopian socialism was introduced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto in 1848, although Marx shortly before the publication of this pamphlet already attacked the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in Das Elend der Philosophie (originally written in French, 1847) and used by later socialist thinkers to describe early socialist or quasi-socialist intellectuals who created hypothetical visions of egalitarian, communalist, meritocratic or other notions of perfect societies without actually concerning themselves with the manner in which these societies could be created or sustained.Although the utopian socialists did not share many common political, social, or economic perspectives, Marx and Engels argued that certain intellectual characteristics of the Utopian socialists unified the disparate thinkers. In The Communist Manifesto,5 Marx and Engels wrote, The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favored. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see it in the best possible plan of the best possible state of society? Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary, action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and endeavor, by small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel.6. How much did the ideas of classical economists of England like Smith, Malthus Ricardo contribute to the ideas of the political economy of Marx and Engles? (Handout 18) Marx critiqued Smith and Ricardo for not realizing that their economic concepts reflected specifically capitalist institutions, not innate natural properties of human society, and could not be applied unchanged to all societies. He proposed a systematic correlation between labour-values and money prices. He claimed that the source of profits under capitalism is value added by workers not paid out in wages. This mechanism operated through the distinction between labour power, which workers freely exchanged for their wages, and labour, over which asset-holding capitalists thereby gained control. This practical and theoretical distinction was Marxs primary insight, and allowed him to develop the concept of surplus value, which distinguished his works from that of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Workers create enough value during a short period of the working day to pay their wages for that day (necessary labour); however, they continue to work for several more hours and continue to create value (surplus labour). This value is not returned to them but appropriated by the capitalists. Thus, it is not the capitalist ruling class that creates wealth, but the workers, the capitalists then appropriating this wealth to themselves. (Some of Marxs insights were seen in a rudimentary form by the Ricardian socialist school 1 2.) He developed this theory of exploitation in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, a dialectical investigation into the forms value relations take.7. How did Christianity rise and become a religion for European peoples? Early period to AD 380. Christianity became established in nearly all parts of the Roman Empire and in the Middle East during the first two centuries. As it continued to grow and expand, it became the object of persecution by the Roman authorities. The severest persecutions came during the reigns of the emperors Domitian (AD 96), Marcus Aurelius (161-180), Decius (249-251), and Valerian (253-260). Worst of all was the attempt by the Emperor Diocletian (284-305) to extinguish Christianity altogether. But in 313 Constantine the Great issued an edict of toleration for all religions. In 380, Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.Middle Ages. Although the church was empire-wide, two cities came to be more influential than others in guiding its affairs: Rome and Constantinople (now Istanbul). Many theological disputes arose in the centuries after Constantine, and these were usually settled by councils. The Roman church, headed by its bishop, the pope, gradually diverged in both belief and practice from the church at Constantinople, headed by its patriarch. The Roman church became dominant in Western Europe, while the church at Constantinople dominated the East. In 1054 the two churches broke off relations with each other. Modern period. Early in the 16th century a split occurred in the Roman church. Since that time the church in the West has been divided primarily between the Roman Catholic and Protestant segments. The term Protestantism has come to refer to nearly any denomination that is not affiliated with either the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox branches. Among the older Protestant denominations are the Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian, Reformed, Methodist, and Baptist. 8. What are the main features of medieval society in Western Europe? we have looked at medieval society from a traditional viewpoint, as a society made up of three orders: those who pray, those who fight, and those who work. Looking at any of the orders in detail shows that the simple category doesnt capture or even indicate the real complexity of medieval society. For the purposes of our survey course, thats okay. If, however, you want to look more deeply, you need to be aware of other ways of understanding this society.The economic perspective is one of these other ways. This perspective ranges from traditional Marxist interpretations that look carefully at who controlled the means of production (not the same as looking at those who were rich), to more modern analyses that considered a wide range of factors all playing into economic power.Sociology and anthropology have had their influence on historical thinking, especially in examinations of persecuted or marginalized social groups. They also have given us ways of analyzing medieval society in terms of sociological categories such as families, solidarities, and other types of communities. Speaking very broadly, these approaches make their main contributions in understanding subsets of society, or that identify hitherto neglected subsets; they havent done as much in terms of understanding medieval society as a whole.One thing Id like you to take away from this introductory essay is that medieval society was complex. It wasnt organized into tiers or a ladder. There was no pyramid. These ways of representing medieval society arent just misleading, theyre plain wrong. The other thing to understand is that medieval is a term that covers a thousand years. Almost anything one says about society during that period is going to be right in one place and time, and wrong in another.SECTION III 1. Excerpt from Virgils Aeneid (Handout 5)Comment:1) The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poems twelve books tell the story of Aeneass wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poems second half tells of the Trojans ultimately victorious war upon the Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed. The Aeneid is a cornerstone of the Western canon, and early (at least by the 2nd century AD) became one of the essential elements of a Latin education, usually required to be memorized.2) This excerpt is the very beginning of the poem Aeneid; it is part of the symposium of the whole poem. “Of war is my tale, of the man who, exiled by fate,/Was the first that from Trojan beaches to Italy came;? These first two lines of the poem tell about the beginning and the origin of the hero Aeneas, whose homeland was Troy from which he fled as an exile of war. These two lines set the mood and tone of the beginning of the poem. Later in the poem, though not in this excerpt, we know that Dido, Queen of Carthage, was infatuated with Aeneas and did not want to him to leave. Between love and duty, Aeneas chose to leave and sailed to Latium, for he sensed that he himself was commissioned to rebuild his country in a new land. 3) The language of the epic had its own characteristics, though not brightly and lively as that of Homers, its seriousness, it subtle and mild melancholy, the metaphors, etc. all make the epic a very beautiful one. The poem also had its definite contribution to the versification of Latin poems. 2. Psalm 137, an excerpt from the Old Testament (Handout 7)Comment:1) Psalm137 is one of the best known of the Biblical psalms. Psalm 137 creates the theme of lament The end of Psalm 137 is particularly troublesome with its violent images. It reminds us that unless grief and anger are expressed constructively through song, poetry, or other creative outlets, th