Klik op een omslag om naar Google Boeken te gaan.
|
Bezig met laden... Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World (origineel 2015; editie 2016)door Tim Whitmarsh (Auteur)
Informatie over het werkHemelbestormers door Tim Whitmarsh (2015)
   Geen Bezig met laden...
 Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek.  aitastaes | Oct 5, 2016 | 
In this fine polemic, Whitmarsh rightly argues that the greatest debt the modern world owes to ancient Hellas is the freedom to question received beliefs. In his view, the persecution of freethinkers, scientists, and other such dangerous people was rare in antiquity; most Hellenes easily tolerated scepticism about their own religion. What he calls ‘atheism’ but I prefer to call freethinking has, he shows, a longer and more illustrious history than most of us suppose, and was crucial to the rise of modern science and society. Religion, his argument suggests, is not innate, but a human construct that can and should be subject to rational scrutiny. His ambitious, provocative, and timely book deserves to make an impact like that of Stephen Greenblatt’s Swerve. Written for a general audience, it has enough of a historical armature that it should satisfy readers with no prior background. Seasoned classicists will find it radical and illuminating. However, like all good polemicists, Whitmarsh tells only half the story: he understates to what extent we owe to Athenian democracy the first violent reaction against freethinking. Culminating in Socrates’ execution, this reaction profoundly slowed the progress of science, invention, and human rights in the ancient and medieval worlds. Prijzen
"How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities"--
"How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities. Homer's epic poems of human striving, journeying, and passion were ancient Greece's only "sacred texts," but no ancient Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Priests were functionaries rather than sources of moral or cosmological wisdom. The absence of centralized religious authority made for an extraordinary variety of perspectives on sacred matters, from the devotional to theatheos, or "godless." Whitmarsh explores this kaleidoscopic range of ideas about the gods, focusing on the colorful individuals who challenged their existence. Among these were some of the greatest ancient poets and philosophers and writers, as well as the less well known: Diagoras of Melos, perhaps the first self-professed atheist; Democritus, the first materialist; Socrates, executed for rejecting the gods of the Athenian state; Epicurus and his followers, who thought gods could not intervene in human affairs; the brilliantly mischievous satirist Lucian of Samosata. Before the revolutions of late antiquity, which saw the scriptural religions of Christianity and Islam enforced by imperial might, there were few constraints on belief. Everything changed, however, in the millennium between the appearance of the Homeric poems and Christianity's establishment as Rome's state religion in the fourth century AD. As successive Greco-Roman empires grew in size and complexity, and power was increasingly concentrated in central capitals, states sought to impose collective religious adherence, first to cults devoted to individual rulers, and ultimately to monotheism. In this new world, there was no room for outright disbelief: the label "atheist" was used now to demonize anyone who merely disagreed with the orthodoxy--and so it would remain for centuries." -- Publisher's description Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
Actuele discussiesGeenPopulaire omslagen
 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)200.938Religions Religion Religion History, geographic treatment, biography Ancient worldLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (3.8)
Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1
Recensie(s)
Whitmarsh is docent Oudgrieks aan de universiteit van Oxford. In dit boek neemt hij de lezer mee naar het religieuze en filosofische landschap van de klassieke oudheid, dus van pakweg 2000 v.Chr. tot ongeveer 400 n.Chr. (toen het Romeinse rijk gekerstend werd). Centrale vraag is of er in de oudheid al atheïsten waren en hoe daarmee werd omgegaan. De auteur maakt duidelijk dat er in de oudheid inderdaad al filosofen waren die het bestaan van goden ontkenden, maar dat atheïsme geaccepteerd was of gedoogd werd vanwege een andere omgang met teksten etc. Pas toen religie meer geïnstitutionaliseerd werd en verweven raakte met politiek, werd atheïsme een gevaarlijker bezigheid omdat het als gevaar werd gezien voor de stabiliteit van de samenleving (denk aan de veroordeling van Socrates in 399 v.Chr.). Boeiend tot de laatste letter en interessant voor een breed publiek. Het boek laat niet alleen zien wat atheïsme in de oudheid inhield, maar ook dat er toen met religie heel anders werd omgegaan dan vandaag de dag. Met uitgebreid notenapparaat. Maar onverteerbaar bij zo'n complex boek is de afwezigheid van een index.