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The Greek Genius and Its Meaning to Us
Excerpt from The Greek Genius and Its Meaning to Us
The Greek Genius is an unsatisfactory title for a book which says nothing about Greek politics or Greek sculpture; but the Genius of Greek Literature was too narrow for my purpose, and Some Aspects of the Greek Genius which I should have preferred, was already appropriated so that the present name has been adopted, and the exact scope of the book indicated in the introductory chapter (see esp. Pp. 13, I4). That chapter also explains who, for my purposes, the Greeks have been taken to be; it is intended to safeguard the book against certain obvious criticisms, and may well be omitted by general readers who are not concerned with these points. As I am writing for a general audience, I have either quoted in English or else translated my quotations. For Thucydides and Plato I have generally made use of Jowett. Gaps in the quotations are not indicated unless they affect the general sense of the passage. For a book of this kind an index is of little value, and I have therefore substituted a full table of contents.
The Greek Genius is an unsatisfactory title for a book which says nothing about Greek politics or Greek sculpture; but the Genius of Greek Literature was too narrow for my purpose, and Some Aspects of the Greek Genius which I should have preferred, was already appropriated so that the present name has been adopted, and the exact scope of the book indicated in the introductory chapter (see esp. Pp. 13, I4). That chapter also explains who, for my purposes, the Greeks have been taken to be; it is intended to safeguard the book against certain obvious criticisms, and may well be omitted by general readers who are not concerned with these points. As I am writing for a general audience, I have either quoted in English or else translated my quotations. For Thucydides and Plato I have generally made use of Jowett. Gaps in the quotations are not indicated unless they affect the general sense of the passage. For a book of this kind an index is of little value, and I have therefore substituted a full table of contents.
- GenresHistory
259 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1912
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 15, 2024
1.5 stars [Anthropology]
(W: 2.18, U: 1.25, T: 1.05)
Exact rating: 1.49
Written in 1912, this stab at explaining the spirit of ancient Greece by a classics professor began well, but then
Livingstone's epistemology was weakening by Chapter 2, and then his applications to modern philosophy were generic and gaseous. By the end he was painting overbroad brush strokes onto a canvas with little delineation, flubbing comparisons to religion and ethics, and finally defending as benign the politicized chaos of George Bernard Shaw.
Will o' wisps and Humanists might derive some enjoyment from it.
(W: 2.18, U: 1.25, T: 1.05)
Exact rating: 1.49
Written in 1912, this stab at explaining the spirit of ancient Greece by a classics professor began well, but then
fell far down, down /
into grey Tartarus
Livingstone's epistemology was weakening by Chapter 2, and then his applications to modern philosophy were generic and gaseous. By the end he was painting overbroad brush strokes onto a canvas with little delineation, flubbing comparisons to religion and ethics, and finally defending as benign the politicized chaos of George Bernard Shaw.
Will o' wisps and Humanists might derive some enjoyment from it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review