Die Entdeckung des Geistes: Studien zur Entstehung des europaischen Denkens bei den Griechen

By Bruno Snell

Book Overview

"An illuminating and convincing account of the enormous change in the whole conception of morals and human personality which took place during the centuries covered by Homer, the early lyric poets, the dramatists, and Socrates." -- The Times (London) Literary Supplement.
European thinking began with the Greeks. Science, literature, ethics, philosophy -- all had their roots in the extraordinary civilization that graced the shores of the Mediterranean a few millennia ago. The rise of thinking among the Greeks was nothing less than a revolution; they did not simply map out new areas for thought and discussion, they literally created the idea of man as an intellectual being -- an unprecedented concept that decisively influenced the subsequent evolution of European thought.
In this immensely erudite book, German classicist Bruno Snell traces the establishment of a rational view of the nature of man as evidenced in the literature of the Greeks -- in the creations of epic and lyric poetry, and in the drama. Here are the crucial stages in the intellectual evolution of the Greek world: the Homeric world view, the rise of the individual in the early Greek lyric, myth and reality in Greek tragedy, Greek ethics, the origin of scientific thought, and Arcadia.
Drawing extensively on the works of Homer, Pindar, Archilochus, Aristophanes, Sappho, Heraclitus, the Greek tragedians, Parmenides, Callimachus, and a host of other writers and thinkers, Snell shows how the Homeric myths provided a blueprint for the intellectual structure the Greeks erected; how the notion of universality in Greek tragedy broadened into philosophical generalization; how the gradual unfolding of the concepts of intellect and soul provided the foundation for philosophy, science, ethics, and finally, religion.
Unquestionably one of the monuments of the Geistegeschichte (History of Ideas) tradition, The Discovery of the Mind throws fresh light on many long-standing problems and has had a wide influence on scholars of the Greek intellectual tradition. Closely reasoned, replete with illuminating insight, the book epitomizes the best in German classical scholarship -- a brilliant exploration of the archetypes of Western thought; a penetrating explanation of how we came to think the way we do.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486242641
• ISBN13: 9780486242644
• Release Date: November 2011
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Dated but good general reading on the influence of Greek thought

To paraphrase an observation Whitehead made over and over, something wonderful happened between the 8th and 5th century BCE in Greece. Why the circumstances came together in such a way as to produce what we glibly know as "classical Greece" no one may adequately explain, but Snell's book makes the quest for understanding pleasant reading and interesting (if dated, in places) intellectual fare. This side of modernity, it is easy to pan this book (written in the war years early in the 20th century) as antiquated modern humanism, and indeed it does tend to go on and on about the "individual" (often in isolation from the community) and the genius of the Greek mind, perhaps ignoring that there were other cultures before and after 5th century Greece. But precisely these throwbacks are the book's greatest strengths, when the context of its writng is taken into consideration. In pre- and wartime-Germany, an unfortunate interpretation of Hegel's dialectical phenomenology allowed an entire intellectual culture a collective amnesia about the worth and power of the individual, in favor of the State as fulfillment of the "outworking of Spirit." For Hegel, this State was Prussia; post-Weimar Germany, however, interpreted it differently. But Snell does not use his book as an anachronistic justification for German superiority as heir to the best of classical Europe, as so many authors of his time certainly did. Rather, he points out that the "discovery" of the individual mind, acting in concert with others and pointed towards "the good" as benevolently seen by Socrates, was the greatest achievement of classical Greece bequeathed not only to Europe but to all the world. That Snell could bring out this aspect of Greek thought, and emphasize it, speaks well of him and the book. The small volume is great reading for "cultural literacy," since to breathe in the West (now, almost everywhere, culturally) is to breathe air exhaled by Greek writers long ago. There are serious problems with this, no doubt. But coming to terms with Western canon means coming to terms with Greek literature and philosophy. This book helps one do just that.

A brilliant but quaint series of essays on Greek literature.

The postmodern reader will judge whether this collection of essays, originally published between 1929 and 1947 in German Classics journals, adequately addresses the horrors of the time during which it was written. The conclusion of one of the later essays: '...there is one respect in which we too must abide by the principle of humanitas...That is the esteem in which we must hold the dignity of man: a modicum of humanitas for which no particular talent is needed. The eternal absolutes which rule over us, especially justice and truth, unhappily often make us forget that the absolute which accedes to our understanding is not entirely absolute after all...[W]hen it is agreed that certain institutions have come to represent the absolute, the catastrophe becomes inevitable. Then is the time to remind oneself that each and every human being has his own share of dignity and of freedom...'