Why Western History Matters

A critical analysis of Donald Kagan's "Why Western history is important" is an essay from Donald Kagan's National Academy Association on Wall Street on December 28, 1994. Please reprint the log. In all the articles of Kagan, he explained the basic necessity of the Western history of the university course. He does this by examining the old culture and explaining why they are typical of our future development as the past and society.

A Western perspective on history is that human beings have increasingly strong understanding and proficiency in the material environment characterized by human progress on material progress. Evidence of human history seems to support our feeling that abstract, intellectual and spiritual elements are materially and materially superior. This inevitably leads to a hierarchical order informing us of understanding and judgment on human activities and experiences. This is not appropriate. For example, poetry is considered abstract to be more prosodic than chess, chess is higher than wrestling, or legal practices are more than gathering garbage. In academia, more abstract topics such as mathematics, philosophy, literature are worth more than concrete and practical topics such as engineering. This sort also occurs in the physical field of artifacts where all are not equal.

Perhaps there is no doubt that the history of Western intellectual tradition and Western philosophy must begin with the study of ancient Greek thought. From Thales and material philosophers to Aristotle's empiricism, the Greeks communicated the spirit of reasonable exploration to the West. That is our own intellectual property. We may never think of Plato and Aristotle in everyday life, but the foundation of all subsequent investigations is the quest for knowledge. In fact, many people said WH Ardden "Greek civilization did not exist, and we never fully understand this, that is, we never become completely human" .