For Tuesday, October 9Lief Erikson Day Celebrations
In honor of Vikings, Norsemen, and their descendants in the United States and abroad, Roger Williams University celebrates Lief Erikson Day six out of seven years. Lief Erikson Day is celebrated on the Monday closest to October 12. Everyone is aware, of course, that Lief Erikson discovered America (which he named Vinland) almost half a millennium before that Italian fellow thought he discovered the Indies. Unfortunately, Vikings were notoriously absent minded, perhaps due to eating herring or drinking too much mead, and a short time after (as historians measure time) they lost Vinland again. Roger Williams celebrates these events by forgetting to hold Monday on Monday, and holding it on Tuesday, instead. Consequently, Tuesday Classes will not be held. Go to your Monday classes instead. Note: on those years when Monday happens to fall on October 12, we celebrate Columbus Day, so the Italian Americans and Spanish Americans won't feel too neglected.
ForFriday, October 12Renaissance and Reason
We have completed our survey of The Democratic Idea in the classical world of Greece and Rome. By now, you should have some idea of
1.The Grecian view of the advantage of Democracy over Tyranny (Euripides)
2.The "good life" as imagined by Athenians (Pericles)
3.The difference between direct and representative democracy in the classical world (Pericles and Aristotle)
4.Two systems for dividing the body politic: by political role, and by social position (Aristotle)
5.The idea of the value of "mixed" government, both theory and method (Polybius)
6.The distinction between law and justice and the primacy of justice (Cicero)
You should also have some ideas about the similarities between those ideas expressed then and similar ideas and expressions in our time.
We're now going to take a leap forward in time of well over 1,000 years. Our attention is also going to move from Greece and Rome northward into Italy and the rest of Europe and, in fairly short order, into the Western Hemisphere, as well.
Before we delve back into the documents we're going to need to do some background work first. Take a look first at the chapters 10 through 14, both titles and subtitles:
10:A New Spirit in the West: The Renaissance, ca. 1300-1640
11: Alone Before God: Religious Reformation and Warfare, 1500-1648
12: Faith, Fortune, and Famine: European Expansion, 1450 - 1700
13: The Struggle for Survival and Sovereignty: Europe's Social and Political Order, 1600-1715
14:A New World of Reason and Reform: The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, 1600 - 1800.
What I hope you notice is that the chronology of this section of the book isn't "clean". By this I mean that while all five chapters cover a period of 500 years, the focus in them isn't linear...one chapter per hundred years, for example. Rather, there is considerable overlap throughout. There are sound reasons for this. Europe is a big place and things don't happen in the same rate or at the same time from country to country within it. We're not going to read all of any of these chapters in any great detail. We are going to spend a whole period on Chapter 10, however, because it really sets the scene for ideas we're going to explore over the next several weeks.
Read, in The West in the World,
Chapter 10:Summary:
316-325 (to Politics of Individual Effort)
The Illustration on p. 326
332, commencing with Individualism as Self-Interest to the end of the chapter.
Pay special attention to every mention of the word "humanism" and any mention of reason.
Lief Erikson Day Celebrations
