Why Study Ancient World Cultures :: Ancient World Culture

why Study Ancient World Cultures?Why workplace antiquated cultures? You mogul feel that the question is moot students do study and will study ancient cultures much(prenominal) study is an expected part of a usance of intellectual development. The response to the why of the initial question is a division of tradition, if not fact. A study of the ROMAN EMPIRE, a reading of classical philosophy and literature, a look at the PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT -- these are all pass judgment parts of a Western education, arent they?Probably so even today, in the plurality of approaches to the study of history and to the study of cultures, large number talk about(predicate) PLATO or DANTE or Krishna or Mohammed. But there is an important preparation How you approach ancient cultures (or any another(prenominal) culture, for that matter) and how you conceive of the people of such distant worlds are of paramount importance. At this point, you might ask yourself these twain additional questions Do w e study these cultures because, to some extent, all cultures share received characteristics? Does our own culture reflect aspects of these other cultures?The answer to the first of the devil questions has historically been found in a discussion of universality. Consider, for a moment, the eluding of Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita. You might well ask how the battle that Arjuna holds off trance frozen on his chariot relates, for example, to contemporary battles in World contend II. Convinced that his relatives will die in this life only to be reborn in another, Arjuna can reluctantly permit the carnage to begin. No such choice is left to Schindler (featured in Spielbergs film Schindlers List), on the other hand, whose intervention on behalf of Jews saved many people in this life. The peril in looking for universals thus consists in reformulating other, possibly alien, views to fit our own. We essential always guard against the assumption that other people think as we do -- or that they should. Arjuna speaks inside the context of one culture Schindler acts within the confines of another.The differences among cultures are of greatest interest here, and reading about ancient cultures is thus reading about other people whose lives were surely unlike from our own. The social organization of Socrates ATHENS -- where a gimpy-legged man could hobble well-nigh interrogating citizens at will -- differs profoundly from todays world beset with modern media whereby people rarely get to see or literally hear their critics.