The Modern Western Vision: Culture, Tradition, and Reason
摘要
The philosophical discourse of mind, reason, and culture traveled an eventful, drama-filled, and sentiment-engulfed journey from ancient Greek to modern Europe. Europe of the medieval period (from the fifth century to the fifteenth century) discovered God and developed the god-centered discourse of mind, reason and culture. Europe in the Renaissance period (from the fifteenth century to the sixteenth century) re-discovered humanity and developed the humanity-centered discourse of mind, reason, and culture. Europe in the early modern period (from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth century) rediscovered the world of external nature and developed the nature-oriented, individual mind-centered, and science-modeled discourse of mind, reason, and culture. Early modern Western philosophy is purported to orient individual minds to the rule of reason, knowledge, and truth and to be liberated from the prison of religion-centered cultural thinking. It is purported to cultivation the horizon of the infinite realm of truth and knowledge, amid not necessarily the platonic intelligible world separable from the sensible world.