Fears and Symbols : : An Introduction to the Study of Western Civilization / / Elemér Hankiss.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Central European University Press eBook-Package 2013-1998
• VerfasserIn: Hankiss, Elemér,
• Place / Publishing House: Budapest ;, New York : : Central European University Press, , [2022]; ©2001
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (333 p.)

This is a serious scholarly work that is, at the same time, somewhat unorthodox. On the one hand, it elaborates a systematic theory of civilization. It surveys the major theories of civilization and develops a new hypothesis, according to which existential fear has been a major factor in the generation of human culture. The author argues that in order to mitigate this fear and anxiety, human beings and communities have surrounded themselves not only with the walls of their houses and cities, with tools and weapons, laws and institutions, but also with protective spheres of symbols: myths and religions, values and belief systems, ideas and scientific theories, moral and practical rules of behavior, and a multitude of everyday rituals and trivialities. In a word, with the brilliant construct: civilization. It is, on the other hand, an unorthodox book in that it studies an unusually wide range of examples and shows that the struggle for safety and freedom, for a meaningful life and human dignity, is present not only in the great symbolic systems of humankind but also in the most trivial of everyday activities and aspects of human existence; in tragedies as well as jokes, in the sacred as well as the profane, in the symbolism of medieval cathedrals as well as in that of contemporary shopping malls, in the great drama of Sin and Salvation as well as in the trivial mythology of perfumes. Ultimately, our trivialities are not trivial at all.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Chapter One. Fear and the Social Sciences -- Chapter Two. The World of Symbols -- Chapter Three. An Alien World? -- Chapter Four. The Garden of Eden -- Chapter Five. The Image of the World -- Chapter Six. The Moral Universe -- Chapter Seven. The World of Guilt -- Chapter Eight. The Rational World -- Chapter Nine. The World of Beauty -- Chapter Ten. The World of Play -- Chapter Eleven. The World of Jokes -- Chapter Twelve. The World of Trivialities -- Chapter Thirteen. Symbols and Civilization -- Bibliography -- Index