Word: westernness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Davis, information about schools like Harvard came not from parents with extensive foresight but from the high-school academic track of math leagues and competitions. His father graduated from Western Michigan University; his mother did not attend college...
...perhaps there is something more fundamental to be had from a "great books" curriculum. Perhaps by instituting it, Harvard would be bequeathing American society a humane citizenry. Whether or not it is politically correct to say so, the Western Canon has the potential to infuse the character with a special timbre. It beautifies the mind and exposes the student who plumbs it to a world of majestic and ennobling thoughts and emotions. It is a world that I am only just becoming acquainted with, but I am happily addicted...
...suggest that such illumination is not to be had from examples in different world literatures, nor is it to absolve us of our responsibility as world citizens to study other cultures. But I believe it safe to say that, for Americans of today, the self-conscious, self-critical Western Canon provides a level of intellectual fulfillment that is not to be surpassed, and should not be neglected. Should one leave here without knowing his Shakespeare, his Bible, his Dickens, his Melville, his Emerson, his Twain, his Chaucer, his Dante? Given these criteria for exit, I certainly couldn't leave here...
...went off the cliff and pinwheeled onto the rocks below, a world economic crash that seemed a retribution for too much heedlessness and gin. By the time the '30s, W.H. Auden's "low, dishonest decade," gave out, the Nazis were spreading out all over Western civilization. And so on. The '40s--the first half of them given over to world war, the second half hardening into cold war and nuclear anxiety--did not make anyone want to linger...
...viewpoints epitomized by the Jesus Seminar and the conservative Evangelicals are limited by the framework of the Western scientific paradigm. Both are impoverished by their thoroughly literal interpretations of the Bible. Most religious traditions rely on metaphors to enlighten and bring us closer to the source of life, which is generally regarded as unknowable and incomprehensible. Religion and humanity would be better served if academics and religious leaders could provide us with more compelling interpretations of the underlying meaning of Bible stories. LINDA KEYS Madrid...