Fears and Symbols
An Introduction to the Study of Western Civilization
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19902448 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Elemér Hankiss (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2001 |
| Publication date | 2001-12-31 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | BOOK |
| Venue | Fears and Symbols (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Central European University Press (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1515/9789633865170 |
| OpenAlex | W650240484 |
| ISBN | 9789633865170 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 9 |
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
Aesthetics · Civilization · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Existentialism · Mainstream · Mythology · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Western culture · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions
Silenced by fear
Life, the Universe, and Connectedness
Collective fear and social representations of Covid-19. The role of the original ‘reasons’ for the fear object ( Miedo colectivo y representaciones sociales de la Covid-19. El rol de las ‘razones’ originales para el objeto de miedo )
Modern institutions between trust and fear
Folkloric Analysis Of King Arthur and Robin Hood Within British Myth
The Symbolism of the Visual Image in the Philosophical Conceptions of E. Cassirer and C. Langer
Recombinant Revelations
On graves and graven images
Social representations of the coronavirus and causal perception of its origin
| Unique citing works | 9 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,53 |
| Citation span | 2009 - 2024 (16) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 9 |