The Adventure of the Human Intellect E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Ancient World: Comparative Histories
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 658

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The Adventure of the Human Intellect presents the latest scholarship on the beginnings of intellectual history on a broad scope, encompassing ten eminent ancient or early civilizations from both the Old and New Worlds.

• Borrows themes from The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (1946), updating an old topic with a new approach and up-to-date theoretical underpinning, evidence, and scholarship
• Provides a broad scope of studies, including discussion of highly developed ancient or early civilizations in China, India, West Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Americas
• Examines the world view of ten ancient or early societies, reconstructed from their own texts, concerning the place of human beings in society and state, in nature and cosmos, in space and time, in life and death, and in relation to those in power and the world of the divine
• Considers a diversity of sources representing a wide array of particular responses to differing environments, circumstances, and intellectual challenges
• Reflects a more inclusive and nuanced historiographical attitude with respect to non-elites, gender, and local variations
• Brings together leading specialists in the field, and is edited by an internationally renowned scholar

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Notes on Contributors

Series Editor’s Preface

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 A Critique of the Cognitive-historical Thesis of

The Intellectual Adventure

References

2

The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man

I Introduction

II Genesis

III Orientation: the book as a whole

IV Assessment

Abbreviations

References

3 The World of Ancient Egyptian Thought

Cosmology and cosmogony

Gods and god

The individual in Egyptian thought

Order and chaos

Conclusion

Abbreviations

References

Further reading

4 On Speculative Thought in Ancient Mesopotamia

Mesopotamian metaphysics

Mesopotamian physics

Mesopotamian politics and ethics

Authority and problem-solving

Authority and innovation

Modes of speculative thought

The individual

Conclusion

References

Further reading

5 Self, Substance, and Social Metaphysics

Israel in Judah’s hall of mirrors

The intelligentsia’s toolkits

Social metaphysics

A once and future adventure

References

6 Ancient Greece

Prologue

Archaic Greece: man the competitor

Classical Athens: man the “political being”

Abbreviations

References

7 The Thought-World of Ancient Rome

References

Further reading

8 Self, Cosmos, and Agency in Early China

Introduction

The Chinese written record

Metaphysics

State and society

Ethics and self-cultivation

Transforming

qi

Fate and free will

Autonomy and the mantic traditions

Appendix 1: Timeline

Appendix 2: Major excavated texts (in order of date)

References

9 Vedic India

X.129 Creation (trans. J.P. Brereton)

X.90 The Man (trans. J.P. Brereton)

References

Further reading

10 “Chronosophy” in Classic Maya Thought

Abbreviation

References

11 The Word, Sacrifice, and Divination

Introduction

The word, sacrifice, and creation of man

Aztec kingship: sacrifice and identity

The calendar, divination, destiny, and free will

Conclusion

References

12 Night Thoughts and Spiritual Adventures

I

II

III

IV

V

References

Further reading

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

Chapter 02

Figure 2.1 Tympanum over the main entrance to the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago.

Chapter 11

Figure 11.1 Cipactonal and Oxomoco, the father and mother of humanity

Figure 11.2 Quetzalcoatl, “Plumed Serpent,” credited with the creation of man.

Figure 11.3 Cinteotl-Itztlacoliuhqui, the maize god, with a mask and a paper ornament that covered his eyes.

Figure 11.4 Yohualli Ehecatl, “Night Wind,” a double of Tezcatlipoca.

Figure 11.5 Prisoner dressed as Mimixcoa, “Cloud Serpent,” prototypes of a sacrificed warrior to feed Sun and Earth.

Figure 11.6 Quecholli

veintena

dedicated to Mixcoatl, god of hunting and ancestors: the Aztec king and hunters wearing the insignia of the god honored.

Figure 11.7 During their migration, the Aztecs sacrificing the Mimixcoa, hunting and war deities, prototypes of sacrificial victims.

Figure 11.8 The king’s nose perforating ceremony, carried out on a sacrificial stone.

Figure 11.9 Toxcatl

veintena

dedicated to Tezcatlipoca: a young captive representing Tezcatlipoca, dressed by the king himself.

Figure 11.10 Using the divinatory calendar to determine the destiny of a newborn and to name it according to the day of his or her birth.

Figure 11.11 The ancestors of humankind Oxomoco and Cipactonal, divining with knotted cords and with maize kernels.

Figure 11.12 Tezcatlipoca, “The Lord of the Smoking Mirror,” the god of destiny, called Titlacahuan, “We, Their Men”.

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

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The Ancient World: Comparative Histories

Series Editor: Kurt A. Raaflaub

War and Peace in the Ancient WorldEdited by Kurt A. Raaflaub

Household and Family Religion in AntiquityEdited by John Bodel and Saul Olyan

Epic and HistoryEdited by David Konstan and Kurt A. Raaflaub

Geography and Ethnography: Perceptions of the World in Pre-Modern SocietiesEdited by Kurt A. Raaflaub and Richard J. A. Talbert

The Roman Empire in Context: Historical and Comparative PerspectivesEdited by Johann P. Arnason and Kurt A. Raaflaub

Highways, Byways, and Road Systems in the Pre-Modern WorldEdited by Susan E. Alcock, John Bodel, and Richard J. A. Talbert

The Gift in AntiquityEdited by Michael L. Satlow

The Greek Polis and the Invention of DemocracyEdited by Johann P. Arnason, Kurt A. Raaflaub, and Peter Wagner

Thinking, Recording, and Writing History in the Ancient WorldEdited by Kurt A. Raaflaub

Peace in the Ancient World: Concepts and TheoriesEdited by Kurt A. Raaflaub

The Adventure of the Human Intellect: Self, Society, and the Divine in Ancient World CulturesEdited by Kurt A. Raaflaub

The Adventure of the Human Intellect

Self, Society, and the Divine in Ancient World Cultures

Edited by

Kurt A. Raaflaub

This edition first published 2016© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Raaflaub, Kurt A., editor of compilation.Title: The adventure of the human intellect : self, society, and the divine in ancient world cultures / edited by Kurt A. Raaflaub.Description: Chichester, UK ; Malden, MA : John Wiley & Sons, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2015048916 | ISBN 9781119162551 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119162612 (epub) | ISBN 9781119162599 (Adobe PDF)Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, Ancient. | Intellect–History. | Intellectual life–History. | Self–History. | Thought and thinking–History.Classification: LCC B108 .A38 2016 | DDC 180–dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015048916

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Shutterstock/astroskepticShutterstock/airphoto.grShutterstock/photoshooter2015

Notes on Contributors

James P. Allen is the Charles Edwin Wilbour Professor of Egyptology at Brown University and past president of the International Association of Egyptologists. He is the author of numerous books and articles on ancient Egyptian language, literature, history, and religion, including Genesis in Egypt: the Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation Accounts (1988); The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (2005, 2nd ed. 2015); and The Debate between a Man and His Soul, a Masterpiece of Ancient Egyptian Literature (2011).

Ryan Byrne has taught at the Johns Hopkins University, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Rhodes College, where he directed the archaeological institute. A former archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, Byrne co-directed the excavations at Tel Dan in Israel and Ames Plantation in Tennessee. He is the co-editor of Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus: The James Ossuary and the Quest for Religious Relics (Chapel Hill 2009) and the author of the forthcoming Statecraft in Early Israel: An Archaeology of the Political Sciences.

Benjamin R. Foster is Laffan Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature at Yale University and Curator of the Babylonian Collection in the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale. His research interests focus on Mesopotamian, especially Akkadian, literature and the social and economic history of Mesopotamia. His publications include Before the Muses (3rd ed. 2005), an anthology of translated and annotated Akkadian poetry and prose, two books on Sumer in the Sargonic period, and Iraq Beyond the Headlines: History, Archaeology, and War (2005) and Civilizations of Ancient Iraq (2009, both co-authored).

Stephen Houston teaches at Brown University, where he serves as Dupee Family Professor of Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology. A MacArthur Fellow, Houston specializes in Classic Maya civilization and comparative studies of royal courts and kingship. His book publications include Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya (co-ed., 2001); The Decipherment of Ancient Maya Writing (co-ed., 2001); The First Writing Script Invention as History and Process (ed., 2004); The Classic Maya (co-auth., 2009); and The Fiery Pool: Maritime Worlds of the Ancient Maya (co-auth., 2010).

Stephanie W. Jamison is Distinguished Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures and of Indo-European Studies at UCLA. In her research, she has concentrated on Indo-Iranian, especially (Vedic) Sanskrit and Middle Indo-Aryan languages and textual materials, on literature and poetics, religion and law, mythology and ritual, and gender studies in these languages, and comparative mythology and poetics. Her books include The Ravenous Hyenas and the Wounded Sun: Myth and Ritual in Ancient India (1991); Sacrificed Wife / Sacrificer’s Wife: Women, Ritual, and Hospitality in ancient India (1996); The Rig Veda between Two Worlds (2004); and, in collaboration with Joel P. Brereton, The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India (2014: a new English translation of the entire Rigveda).

Robert A. Kaster, Professor of Classics and Kennedy Foundation Professor of Latin Language and Literature at Princeton University, has written mainly in the areas of Roman rhetoric, the history of ancient education, Roman ethics, and textual criticism. His books include Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (1988); Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome (2005); a critical edition of Macrobius's Saturnalia (2012); and The Appian Way: Ghost Road, Queen of Roads (2012).

David Konstan is Professor of Classical Studies at New York University and Professor Emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at Brown University. Among his recent publications are The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature (2006); “A Life Worthy of the Gods”: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus (2008); Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea (2010); and Beauty: The Fortunes of an Ancient Greek Idea (2014). His many edited volumes include Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks (2014).

Peter Machinist is Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages at Harvard University, serving both in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and in the Harvard Divinity School. His work lies in the intellectual and cultural history of the ancient Near East, focusing on the ideology of imperialism and other forms of group identification, ancient historiography, mythology, prophecy, Assyrian history, and the history of modern biblical and other Near Eastern scholarship. Among his publications are Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal (co-ed., 1998); “Kingship and Divinity in Imperial Assyria” (2006); “How Gods Die, Biblically and Otherwise. A Problem of Cosmic Restructuring” (2011); and “Cities and Ideology: The Case of Assur in the Neo-Assyrian Period” (2016).

Peter Nabokov is Professor of Culture and Performance in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA. An anthropologist and writer, he has conducted ethnographic and ethnohistorical resarch with Native American communities throughout North America and has become interested in the vernacular architecture of South India as well. His books include Native American Architecture (1989); A Forest of Time: American Indian Ways of History (2002); Restoring a Presence: American Indians and Yellowstone National Park (2004); Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places (2006); and How the World Moves: The Odyssey of an American Indian Family (2015).

Guilhem Olivier is a professor and researcher at the Institute of Historical Research at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). His book Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God: Tezcatlipoca, ‘Lord of the Smoking Mirror' was published in 2003. He has edited or co-edited six anthologies – including Símbolos de poder en Mesoamérica (2008) and Deviner pour agir. Regards comparatifs sur des pratiques divinatoires anciennes et contemporaines (2012). His book, Cacería, sacrificio y poder en Mesoamérica. Tras las huellas de Mixcoatl, ‘Serpiente de Nube,’ was published in 2015.

Kurt A. Raaflaub is David Herlihy University Professor and Professor Emeritus of Classics and History at Brown University. His main fields of interest are the social, political, and intellectual history of archaic and classical Greece and of the Roman republic, the history of ancient warfare, and the comparative history of the ancient world. His books include The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece (2004); Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (co-auth., 2007); War and Peace in the Ancient World (ed., 2007); and Thinking, Recording, and Writing History in the Ancient World (ed., 2014). He is currently working on a book on Early Greek Political Thought in Its Mediterranean Context, and editing the Landmark Caesar.

Lisa Raphals (瑞麗) is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Riverside, and Visiting Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore. She is the author of Knowing Words: Wisdom and Cunning in the Classical Traditions of China and Greece (1992); What Country (1993, a book of poems and translations); Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China (1998); and Divination and Prediction in Early China and Ancient Greece (2013).

Francesca Rochberg is Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor of Near Eastern Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and a member of the Office for the History of Science and Technology as well as the Graduate Group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Aspects of Babylonian Celestial Divination: The Lunar Eclipse Tablets of Enuma Anu Enlil (1988); Babylonian Horoscopes (1998); The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (2004); and In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and Its Legacy (2010). Before Nature: Cuneiform Knowledge and the History of Science is in press.

Series Editor’s Preface

The Ancient World: Comparative Histories

The purpose of this series is to pursue important social, political, religious, economic, and intellectual issues through a wide range of ancient or early societies, while occasionally covering an even broader diachronic scope. By engaging in comparative studies of the ancient world on a truly global scale, this series hopes not only to throw light on common patterns and marked differences, but also to illustrate the remarkable variety of responses humankind developed to meet common challenges. Focusing as it does on periods that are far removed from our own time, and in which modern identities are less immediately engaged, the series contributes to enhancing our understanding and appreciation of differences among cultures of various traditions and backgrounds. Not least, it thus illuminates the continuing relevance of the study of the ancient world in helping us to cope with problems of our own multicultural world.

The present volume picks up a topic tackled 70 years ago in a visionary project by members of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute: the world view of three important Near Eastern civilizations (Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Israel). Under the title The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man, the contributors used the extant texts produced by highly developed, sophisticated, and literate societies to reconstruct their views on the place of human beings in society and state, in nature and cosmos, in space and time, in life and death, and in relation to those in power and the world of the divine. This book proved highly popular and successful. Although it is still in print, it is badly outdated. The present volume reassesses the book’s accomplishments and shortcomings, establishes a theoretical foundation for such a project in the twenty-first century, and offers insights into what a new version, up-to-date not only in theoretical underpinning and approach, evidence and scholarship, but also in scope, might include. Much broader in its coverage, it encompasses not only the “original three” but many other eminent civilizations around the globe and illustrates the variety of ways by which these ancient or early societies embarked on their unprecedented intellectual “adventures” of discovering and defining their place in the world and dealing with the challenges posed by this world.

Earlier volumes in the series are listed at the very beginning of this volume. After Slavery and Social Death (eds John Bodel and Walter Scheidel) is in preparation.

Preface and Acknowledgments

Several years ago, Francesca Rochberg and I discovered that we both had independently thought of preparing a modern version of a classic but outdated book, The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (see this volume’s Introduction). We decided to collaborate on this project and to initiate it by inviting potential contributors to a workshop at Brown University. This workshop, at which early versions of most chapters were presented and discussed, took place in March 2008, under the aegis of the Program in Ancient Studies (now Program in Early Cultures). Chessie participated with her typical critical intelligence, broad knowledge, and enthusiasm in the preparation and realization of this workshop and in the early phases of the editorial process; the volume’s title, only minimally modified, is her suggestion as well. I regret deeply that personal circumstances forced her to withdraw as a co-editor and am grateful that she was still willing to share the introduction and contribute a crucial theoretical chapter. The preparation of this volume has taken far too long, and I wish to express my sincere thanks to all contributors (not least those who joined the project after the workshop: Benjamin Foster and David Konstan) not only for their valuable chapters but also for their patience and cooperation. I am also deeply grateful to Haze Humbert at Wiley for her enthusiastic endorsement of this volume, and to her staff for their help in producing it.

The 2008 workshop was sponsored and funded, apart from the Program in Ancient Studies, by Faith and Frederick Sandstrom, the C.V. Starr Foundation Lecture Fund of Brown University, the Department of Classics, the Department of Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies, the Program in Judaic Studies, and the Royce Family Fund for Teaching Excellence. I express my sincere thanks for all this support and especially thank all those without whose assistance this project could not have been realized, most of all the Program’s Administrator, Maria Sokolova.

Kurt A. Raaflaub

Providence, August 2014

Introduction

Francesca Rochberg and Kurt A. Raaflaub

In 1946, Henri Frankfort, John A. Wilson, Thorkild Jacobsen, and William A. Irwin, eminent scholars at Chicago University’s renowned Oriental Institute, published lectures they had given in the university’s Division of the Humanities, under the title The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East. The book contains a substantial introduction and conclusion by Frankfort and his wife, H.A. (Groenewegen-) Frankfort, and chapters on Egypt (Wilson), Mesopotamia (Jacobsen), and the Hebrews (Irwin). Penguin published a shorter version (omitting the chapter on the Hebrews) in 1949. The full volume came out in paperback in 1977, was a staple in Western Civilization and other introductory courses taken by generations of college students, and is still in print.