/lit/ - Literature

>>4307376
people romanticize the past, and they were the greatest western civilizations people know about.

>>4307401

>people romanticize the past
>they were the greatest western civilizations

>>4307423
They were quite literally the most expansive. The culture is also very unique and we have retained large amounts of greek / roman art.

>>4307427

I know how great they were, I was just pointing out how dumb you'd have to be to claim that it's just people romanticizing it all whilst simultaneously saying that they were the greatest in the same sentence.

I just took it for granted. "durr, it looks nice"
I'm starting to see it as a longing for all that lost heritage. It seems so obvious to me now. All that progress, spreading philosophic intellectualism, (forced) political cohesion. There was such a potential developing there, and it all got marched off to church. People have been trying to ditch church in one way or another ever since.

>>4307431
That person said they were the greatest western civilizations *people know about*.

>>4307432
I recently came back to the Church.

Morning bump.

It might have been the ideal to imitate during the Renaissance and Enlightenment, but I don't think this is any longer the case. The only time classicism really comes up today is in superficial architecture for government buildings as a nod to the origin of Democracy.

A longing all post-christian men have for their more healthy pagan days, when myth and music ruled.

Winkelmann

>>4308765

Eh I would say Ancient Greece is still valued more highly than any other one place among most intellectuals.

>>4307376

The Greeks created the west as we know it.

>>4308778
That isn't an explanation.

>>4308793
That is too simple.

Wow, so many responses and not a single actual one.

OP, classicism in antiquity can be traced back to Plato, Aristotle, the idea of forms, etc. Early Greco-Roman philosophy has much to say on the essence of the plastic arts, etc. In the Renaissance period, artificial perspective was developed (via the camera obscura and other accompanying developments in optics and the natural/physical sciences), so that allowed for greater verisimilitude. More recently, speaking about the "myth of total cinema," André Bazin claimed that the foundation of the plastic arts (well, visual, but the original French says "des arts plastiques") can be traced to the Egyptian "mummy complex," or the belief that the spirit of man lives on in his replica, in his image. Plastic arts in Bazin's sense just means the arts of worked matter--intaglio.

As you can see, the literature on this is extensive and you would need to choose your period.

>>4308813
>That is too simple.

It's the truth. Alexander conquered the near east. And when Rome conquered his successor kingdoms they adopted Greek culture as their own. Roman literature begins with the Greeks. Roman thinking begins with the Greeks. Christ Himself is probably indirectly indebted to the traveling Stoic and Cynic greco-roman philosophers. And Christianity develops alongside Platonic metaphysics in antiquity.

Everything that belongs to western high culture begins with the Greeks.

>Why is the greco-roman world the ideal to imitate?

Because they were so far ahead of their time

>>4308827

hahaha I bet you actually thought that sounded smart too

>>4308833

>Everything that belongs to western high culture begins with the Greeks.

Yeah this is basically the reason why OP.

>>4308827

I bet you are awful at writing essays.

>>4308827

wow this is fucking gibberish that doesn't answer OP question

>>4307432
If you think all that early progress was somehow independent of "church," you're missing something.

>Rome controlled most of Europe
>Rome spread Christianity
>Rome is basically a poor mans Greece

>>4308845
>>4308860
>>4308867


Talk to the hand, bitches.

>>4308902

I hope you are part of the STEM masterace because you can't write

>>4308913
Nope. Humanities 4lyf, bb.

>>4308902
I feel better about my choice of school all the time.

>>4308902

You must be very good at pretending to be smart.

>>4308913
Also it's Yale, people don't come here to do STEM wankery (good thing too).

>>4308902

What do you think that proves? I could've basically already told you you're an academic dilettante because you responded to OP's answer with no clear attempt at helping him but only trying to show your own knowledge.

Just the fact you think you can somehow prove your writing is good through prestigious assocation, hah; you're a real fag and I repeat, I bet you can't write good essays worth shit.

>>4308925
We all do!

>>4308926
Ohyeah, I cream over my own smarts regularly. But so do the folks here since they gave me $30k x 5 years as my funding package. Mad world rite?

>>4308935
Nothing to prove, was precisely the point. In other words, on one hand I have 4chan's criticism, on the other I have my actual life. Guess which wins. :)

>>4308937
Anon, >>4308925 here. Georgia State.

>>4308941

The fact you need to feel validated in real life by posting what school you go to on 4chans says quite a bit ;)

>>4308937
this has nothing to do with OP's request

you could have shortened your answer to just a few lines of book recommendations

>>4308941

What? You make no sense. You're a real commoner, and a boxed and stifled one at that.

You can stay here if you want, but we will always know how much of a loser you are when you show up to act academic (meaning, dismissive of genuine ideas and absolutely nothing to share).

>>4308827

OP didn't ask what classicism is or where it came from.

He asked why the Greco-Roman world or concepts derived from said era are an ideal worth imitating.

You completely failed to answer his question. How you can write an entire paragraph of nonsense without actually doing so, I don't actually know.

All I know is that your reading comprehension must be very, very poor.

>>4308941

4chan wins because you're butthurt enough to post credentials in an attempt to prove your intelligence on an anonymous image board.

>>4308946
Orr someone's bored. It's Thanksgiving break. Even brainiacs need down time, y'know.

>>4308948
Not used to talking like that IRL. At best I can apologise for sounding like we habitually do on a daily basis, I guess?

>>4308951
D'aww, we like you too.

>>4308953
Hey, credentials are currency in this world.

>>4308958

This isn't your ask-me-anything. We really don't care, we're only here to make fun of you. And boy, what a lot there is to make fun of.

>>4308958
>At best I can apologise for sounding like we habitually do on a daily basis, I guess?
This sentence is terrible.

>Hey, credentials are currency in this world.
You need all the help you can get, anon.

>>4308958
>Hey, credentials are currency in this world.

Yeah, but this is 4chan. You seen incredibly insecure.

>>4308827

>Wow, so many responses and not a single actual one.

>goes on to make the one genuine fucking non-response ITT

ergh, disgusting, get out lmao

>turns out to be a student at Yale

oh damn lol this is too much

>>4308941
#rekt

they eat Tyson chicken whilst you eat organic

>>4308958

>>Hey, credentials are currency in this world.
>he's on an anonymous image board

>he studies at Yale
>you genuinely think he's required to put his heart and soul into 4chan posts
>he studies at Yale
>you don't

keep throwing jabs at my bro

>>4308958
ok, I have nothing against you anyway

>>4308967
>>4308971
>>4308972
>>4308974
>>4308984

Tsh. Mad as all hell. This was more fun than I anticipated. Keep going o:

>>4308988

and you genuinely think we're required to not insult bad posts when we see them?

this is a worthless discussion

>>4308958
>>he studies at Yale
>>you genuinely think he's required to put his heart and soul into 4chan posts
>>he studies at Yale
>>you don't

>>4308994
>ha ha jokes on you i was just trolling

>>4308994

>jokes on you guys I was only pretending to be retarded!

hyeah we all knew how this would end

>>4308958
This is getting really pathetic.

>tfw none of you could get into Yale

>>4309031

I don't care. Any idiot could pull a 4.0 in high school provided he had the discipline and correct support.

>>4307376
>Why is the greco-roman world the ideal to imitate?
Lyl, it really isn't.

>>4309044

>>4309031
>That feel when no one gives a shit where an art major goes to school, provided they can draw.
>That feel when the photograph is falling.
>That feel when I accidentally murder a premed who was into breathplay again.

What were we talking about again?

>>4307376
It isn't the ideal world to imitate. It's the world that Europe had access to in its formative years for a number of reasons that include proximity and their propensity for keeping records and erecting lasting monuments.

>>4309072
On the other hand, Europe clearly /is/ the ideal world to imitate, and since they imitated the Greeks, we imitate the Greeks.

OP here. Ignoring the trolling >>4309072 and >>4308857 seem to be the most satisfactory answers

And thinking about it only motivates me to be more eccletic. I'll need to visit wikipaintings more often from now on.

Thanks everybunny.

>>4308893
I am indeed under the impression that the presocratic west, the height of Athens and on through to emperor Constantine, was well clear independent of the Christian church.
How come you're not?

Many fine answers ITT already, none of which nullifying my perspective.

>>4308902
Yale boy, do you happen to be in directed studies?

>>4307376
Good question.

Back then, it seems as though the matters of the state were dealt with by intelligent and enthusiastic individuals (Pericles, Alexander and Augustus Ect). People who were legitimately great and who the people legitimately loved. Couple that with the fact the personal freedom (unless you were a slave lol suck shit) of individuals has never been higher than back in those days you get a very good society.

>>4307376
>Why is the greco-roman world the ideal to imitate?


Happy those remote times when a people said:
“I want to be the master of other people!”
—Nietzsche


http://cienciologia.wordpress.com/category/esparta-y-su-ley/

>tfw no yale 4 me

>>4310684
That may apply to politics but not art.

>>4310714
that blog and the source of the article seem a little... fash.

OP, it's simply because they are the intellectual and cultural fathers of western civilization.

Do you not look to imitate your biological father? Often we do.

>>4310848
>that blog and the source of the article seem a little... fash.

article is pretty legit greco/spartan/euro history. It's good

Boomp

>>4310858

notice when we rebelled from our culture we turned towards the east (the crazy bitch from down the road)

>>4313189
Implying the west doesn't have crazy bitches?

Our strong women are all to be found in the pre-Christian world. The mere hint of emancipated women drove your rebellious boys to find a more "traditional" girl in the east.

But this generalizing gets into a complicated mess.

In art the west kept going back to antiquity, new-classicism, romanticism, pre-Raphealites, even Art Nouveau, then came daDa, Bauhaus and Aret Deco, and blah.
I do see a nice connection between Art Nouveau and Surrealism...

>>4313620
there were so many strong Christian womyn pls. I mean look at mary for goodness sakes.

>>4313626
She's worshiped by the image crazed westerners certainly. but she was a rape victim. -Like so many of Zeus' rapes victims. I'm not making excuses for Greek myths misogyny but they did have a lot more in the way of strong women. Jesus has one other Mary and the church fathers edit her book out. and the "old testament" is just disgusting. Ruth? Eve? "Original sin!" Blame the first woman! Blame them all for this for all eternity! No. Just no.

>>4313649

Joan of Arc? All those female saints? I'm not saying it was equality, but it wasn't bad compared to antiquity. Mind that you're criticising the bible's rigor and then ancient parables (not exactly fem-lit). You'd be better to criticise ye olde society and feudalism.

>>4310848
But it is under that political climate that such glorious art was allowed to incubate.

The expansive trade routes of the Roman empire and Greek states allowed for more textiles, dyes, religious idols, musical instruments E.c.t. to appear in the hands of artistically inclined citizens. The already established philosophy of both cultures pushed all thorough breed citizens to realise their ego (self) through mastery of the bodily & spiritual arts. The freedom and patronage of their culture is the reason we have the Iliad and at the same time immaculate marble busts.

>>4313671
Are we attributing global trade to local politics now? Can we credit the high middle ages' politics for how good the weather was while we're at it?

In any case, global trade has relatively little to do with intelligent and enthusiastic individuals handling matters of state, or personal freedom, which is what anon was responding to. So you're hardly contradicting the intention of the post you're responding to.

But beyond that outside of Greece and Rome, art and (unfortunately often oral) literature was being produced. It just wasn't as influential as Greek and Roman work because it failed to be transcribed in a way future audiences had access to.

Actually, there were lost Greek and Roman traditions along the same lines. Later sculptors didn't paint their statuary or pick up on Greek encaustic traditions or play Greek and Roman music because those things weren't as well preserved.

>>4313706

economic stability and prosperity will directly influence personal freedom.

subsistence farmers don't sculpt or paint works of art.

>>4313667
Poor delusional Joan. Why was the dauphin so important again?
>Women saints
I know of them, but being raised in a protestant cult I am unfamiliar with them. Doesn't matter. The Christian age was an age of heightened sexism.

>>4313706
Well let's put it like this, before Alexander the Greeks had little trade with the east. Before Augustus the Romans had too much petty feuding; after him, the Romans had peace and newly conquered land in the west. Before Pericles Athens was a bit of a laughing stock and after him the Parthenon we build. I'm not denying that the Romans and Greeks didn't produce great art before, but during these golden ages the art flourished into the 'ideal' so to speak.

These things are not coincidences. Politics do play an integral part in art produced by the citizen. As do the trade routes which are protected by good government (think renaissance if you will).

>>4313734

I think the further back you go the more essentialised you'll find women to be. Embrace the future, sour sod.

>>4313740
>Embrace the future
Oh I do!

I just lament the lost future we could have had. Pointless after a while, I know. I do use these thoughts of mine for fictions (all still rattling around in my head, developing)

>>4313718
I'm saying that citing global trade as an example of how local statecraft secured that economic stability is pretty weak.

Also that when it comes to influencing the future, preservation matters just as much as production. Possibly more. It doesn't matter how much music Greece and Rome produced because we don't have any record of it now.

>>4313761
Well bloody hell man hindsight is a beautiful thing isn't it. When these empires fell they were more worried with Germans and Huns that were about to rape their cities and burn them to the ground then about thinking of ways to preserve their hit pop songs for the next 2000 years.

>>4313738
Better, but many things outside Greece and Rome's control could have ended or prevented that trade. In order for trade to happen, all parties have to have their shit together to some degree. And this is also discounting things like geography (the silk road happened where it did for reasons that transcend individual actors) and the myriad other factors at play.

Basically, incompetence could have ruined things but being more competent wouldn't make the silk road happen in a place with physical constraints stacked against it.

>>4313780
You're missing my point entirely. Things that don't get written down don't get preserved. Rome preserved Greece and Rome's literature therefore Greece and Rome's literature survived to influence future generations.

The fact that contemporary societies' stories died has little to do with their quality and everything to do with their (oral) medium. Non-Roman literature died for the same reason Roman music did.

>>4313817
Sure I'll agree with that.

Off topic - As much as hearing Roman music would be interesting, the language of ancient music was preserved! Look at Pythagoras's work on musical intervals. Only until Bach's well tempered interval bible had there been any progress in the art of music.

>>4309808
No problemo, enjoy your hellenization bro.

>>4313841
I forgot to add -

The Dorian mode for example.
We use it today in modern music all the time (tons of hit songs are purely in Dorian).
It's origin?
Ancient Greece.

>>4313858
>>4313841
I'll have to read up on that at some point. As a non-musician I have no idea where to start on music theory. Most of what I know about the history comes from an interest in folklore and other /lit/ old enough for an oral origin.

>>4307376
>Why is the greco-roman world the ideal to imitate?

Classicism has to be understood as a restoration period, roughly taking over after the end of the baroque era. Mostly it tried to restorate Europe to an ancient set of values in which all europeans agreed on: those values of classical Greece and Rome.

Classicism was a movement that tried to impose order in the middle of a very convulsed europe, not only artistically, but politically. In this context classicism was a reactionary tool for the powerful monarchs and their advisors to impose their set of values on the european population and on the intellectuals of the era.

Is not that the ideals of the greco-roman world are worth imitating. Is that it was the last subterfuge of a common european identity.

>Are there any book explaining this or any others promoting this idea in detail?

Of course there are, you silly boy.

>>4315085
18th century neoclaclassicism is different from the classicism that started on the renaissance.
I'm asking about the later, in art/aesthetics than in sociology/politics.

>>4309072
>>4309044
These, basically.

Understanding the Classical world is essential to understanding how the soul of western Man came to be - see the Birth of the Tragedy, for example - but there is no need to make idols of the Ancients. Their world was a savage and alien one. The history of Classicism in the West is a history of projection.

Dear OP, you are a d/ic/k, stop being pretentious as fuck (you're making us look bad!)

>ctrl+f
>no Spengler

He too, without wishing or desiring it, has made his views dependent upon his wishes. In fact all our finest niinds without exception have bowed down reverently before the picture of the Classical, abdicating in this one instance alone their function of unrestricted criticism. The freedom and power of Classical research are always hindered, and its data obscured, by a certain almost religious awe. In all history there is no analogous case of one Culture making a passionate cult of the memory of another. Our devotion is evidenced yet again in the fact that since the Renaissance, a thousand years of history have been undervalued so that an ideal ' ' Middle ' ' Age may serve as a link between ourselves and antiquity. We Westerners have sacrificed on the Classical altar the purity and independence of our art, for wrc have not dared to create without a side-glance at the "sublime exemplar." We have projected our own deepest spiritual needs and feelings on to the Classical picture. Some day a gifted psychologist will deal with this most fateful illusion and tell us the story of the "Classical" that we have so consistently reverenced since the days of Gothic. Few theses would be more helpful for the understanding of the Western soul from Otto III, the first victim of the South, to Nietzsche, the last.

Goethe on his Italian tour speaks with enthusiasm of the buildings of Palladio, whose frigid and academic work we to-day regard very sceptically: but when he goes on to Pompeii he does not conceal his dissatisfaction in experiencing "a strange, half-unpleasant impression," and what he has to say on the temples of Pa^stum and Segesta — masterpieces of Hellenic art — is embarrassed and trivial. Palpably, when Classical antiquity in its full force met him face to face, he did not recognize it. It is the same with all others. Much that was Classical they chose not to see, and so they saved their inward image of the Classical — which was in reality the background of a life-ideal that they themselves had created and nourished with their heart's blood, a vessel filled with their own world-feeling, a phantom, an idol. The audacious descriptions of Aristophanes, Juvenal or Petronius of life in the Classical cities — the southern dirt and riff-raflf, errors and brutalities, pleasure-boys and Phrynes, phallus worship and imperial orgies — excite the enthusiasm of the student and the dilettante, who find the same realities in the world-cities of to-day too lamentable and repulsive to face. "In the cities life is bad; there are too many of the lustful." — also sprach Zarathustra. They commend the state-sense of the Romans, but despise the man of to-day who permits himself any contact with

>>4315589
public affairs. There is a type of scholar whose clarity of vision comes under some irresistible spell when it turns from a frock-coat to a toga, from a British football-ground to a Byzantine circus, from a transcontinental railway to a Roman road in the Alps, from a thirty-knot destroyer to a trireme, from Prussian bayonets to Roman spears — nowadays, even, from a modern engineer's Suez Canal to that of a Pharaoh. He would admit a steam-engine as a symbol of human passion and an expression of intellectual force if it were Hero of Alexandria who invented it, not otherwise. To such it seems blasphemous to talk of Roman central-heating or book-keeping in preference to the worship of the Great Mother of the Gods.

But the other school sees nothing but these things. It thinks it exhausts the essence of this Culture, alien as it is to ours, by treating the Greeks as simply equivalent, and it obtains its conclusions by means of simple factual substiturtions, ignoring altogether the Classical soul. That there is not the slightest inward correlation between the things meant by "Republic," "freedom," "property" and the like then and there and the things meant by such words here and now, it has no notion whatever. It makes fun of the historians of the age of Goethe, who honestly expressed their own political ideals in classical history forms and revealed their own personal enthusiasms in vindications or condemnations of lay-figures named Lycurgus, Brutus, Cato, Cicero, Augustus — but it cannot itself write a chapter without reflecting the party opinion of its morning paper.

It is, however, much the same whether the past is treated in the spirit of Don Quixote or in that of Sancho Panza. Neither way leads to the end. In sum, each school permits itself to bring into high relief that part of the Classical which best expresses its own views — Nietzsche the pre-Socratic Athens, the economists the Hellenistic period, the politicians Republican Rome, poets the Imperial Age.

>>4309044

Really? Do you know what year this is?

>>4315589
>In all history there is no analogous case of one Culture making a passionate cult of the memory of another.
history itself is the process of making a passionate cult of the memory of another; it isn't a surprise that histories began as veneration rather than sober scholarship
I don't know if anyone could provide a civilized culture that doesn't venerate its antiquity over its present, other than maybe Communists or something (which itself wants to go back to pre-capitalist days more than it looks toward moving beyond them, I think).

>>4313626
>womyn
>Removing the "man" from "woman" is the equivalent of removing the humanity of a person.

10/10

>>4315617
>Thinking this way
>21st century
O please dino-boy

>>4315617
obviously there's a very long history of defining humanity thru men that "womyn" addresses; why do you think "humanists" are all white-male fedoras

>>4315616
>history itself is the process of making a passionate cult of the memory of another
>I don't know if anyone could provide a civilized culture

Whoa, whoa, since when does "history" confined to "civilized culture"?

If you want to talk about one, do that. Just don't mince your words.

>>4315538
Almost the same can be said, although the renaissance was strongly determined by the rise of the new commercial powers in southern Europe (Venice and Genoa) and by the migration of byzantine priests and intellectuals to the more stable western city-states in Europe.
Aesthetically the renaissance was characterized for its admiration of the old classical canons (greek and latin) in every sphere of the artistic and non-artistic life; whether in rhetoric, mathematics, literature, music, sculpture, etc. All were influenced by the classical canons. That meant: Sober use of color and emphasis on the the geometrical figures on a composition, when it came down to painting; being able to recite Aeschylus and Virgilio in rhetoric; etc. As you can see, pretty regulated and normed.
I know that a lot can be said about renaissance aesthetics, i am just trying to compress the essentials so it can be understood quickly.
In sociology/politics the (italian) renaissance was characterized for the formation of a new bourgeois class that was beginning to mount its own net of influences outside of the regular circles of nobility, to some extent debasing the power of kings and nobles and decentralizing the decision-making process. It can be argued that because of this popular pressure, reigns, duchies and counties often went to war among each other over influence, power and -specially- commercial routes. Politically, this era was very stable all over Europe and it saw the rise and fall of many little feudal monarchies, republics and city-states.

Don't even try to put this in an exam test though, unless you actually can name a few concrete examples of what i mentioned.

>>4316282
errata:
>Politically, this era was very stable all over Europe
unstable***

>>4316282
That dosn't answers my question.
Forget about that.

>>4316351
I took a lot of effort in writing all that text wall :(

>>4315617
>>4315624

It's not about sexism, it's about using the words correctly.

>B-but my word independence

Well, I also want the word "cop" to be the literal equivalent of "pig", but words don't mean whatever we want just because we want it.

Also

>implying there is a correct way of thinking in the 21st century

>>4316382
>It's about using the words correctly.
>implying there is a correct way of thinking in the 21st century
>It's about using the words correctly.
>implying there is a correct way of thinking in the 21st century

>Insisting on thinking this way
>2013

>>4316414

>Thinking is the same thing as writing

One thing is writing properly and one is having incorrect ideals. Of course, you could write any way you want, it doesn't mean people are going to understand what you say.

>>4316429

jesus look at this guy

>>4316434

"That expression is offensive and I order you to replace one of the letters with a "y" to symbolize literary independence from any type of religion or cult."


>>4316414
That's how you sound when you use "womyn" and expect to be taken seriously.

>>4316446
>That's how you sound when you use "womyn" and expect to be taken seriously.
More assumptions.

>>4307432
No, not really. You obviously don't know a lick of history. Golden Age Athens ended during the 4th century BC, and the Golden Age of Latin literature was dead by the start of the first century AD. Christianity gave the world a breath of new life and new ideas after centuries of stagnation and orientilization in the West.

>>4316458
>doesn't address my argument

I thought the guy that posted it was trolling, you were the one that went all like "nhhh- it's the 21 century and you're still thinking like that".

>>4316446

I am the one who first used 'womyn' when speaking to Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

It really didn't matter what spelling it had as it was an informal context and the meaning was conveyed successfully regardless of the spelling. We moved past it. You're making a fool of yourself.

>>4316473
>We moved past it.
>>Thinking this way
>>21st century
>O please dino-boy
>obviously there's a very long history of defining humanity thru men that "womyn" addresses; why do you think "humanists" are all white-male fedoras

>>4316481

>Greentext and Ad-homs general

>>4316488

If my posts are that stupid, why do you keep replying?

>>4316503
I've got nothing else to do with my life.

Pity me.

This thread is similar to asking,
"Why do the Chinese idealize Confucian and Buddhist teaching?"