What good is the study of classical literature in the modern world?

Question

Can you give examples from famous Green and Roman literatures?

Answer 1

Greek: Plato ("Republic"), Socrates, Homer (Iliad and the Odyssey)

Roman: Virgil ("Aeneid"), Horace (Horace wrote many poems in the forms of Odes,Epistles and Satires on the lives ,and habits, of the Roman man so as to give a detealed account of the daily life of the Romans in the early empire.)

The emperor Marcus Aurelius (161 to 180 AD) is often considered by many to be the "philosopher emperor" because of his deep love of the study of Stoicism

Most of our modern western culture and thought, including democracy and political rule, can be attributed to the Greeks and the Romans. That's why it is important to know of them.

Answer 2

After the fall of Rome, and the donation by Constantine of the Roman Empire to the Catholic church, the in reality human beings left that would want to study or write, and were prepared, were the Catholic clergy. They managed all understanding, hence that they had large power. Catholic philosophers, at the same time with St. Augustine (fifth century), objected to classical idea at the same time with that proposed by Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, because the Catholics believed all understanding got here from God. They threw out reason behind faith. You did not choose reason once you had faith in accordance to them. The Catholic church ruled Europe for 1000 years. It wasn't till the 1200's even as Thomas Aquinas, the great Catholic truth seeker, delivered Aristotle back into the fold and mixed classical questioning/gaining understanding of with theology. This became referred to as the scholastic technique. As on your question about the arguments by the defenders of classical gaining understanding of...you've Thomas Aquinas, and specially John of Salisbury, Dante, and Marsilius of Padua (the only ideal 2 completely rejected church power) who began laying the floor artwork and eroding church power. Dante and Marsilius stated Constantine had no ideal to donate Rome to the church. They argued that monarchs (kings) held the flexibility and the pope became no longer some thing better than a bishop of his city, equivalent to the bishop of the different city in Europe. with any success this permits you in a roundabout way.

Answer 3

Modern versus classical?
What goes around comes around... again and again and ag....

meaning that we are in ALWAYS in danger of repeating past errors.

A more MODERN classical which I am reading is about Kennedys presidency.. IT reads the SAME as what todays president and our WHOLE world is going through.

Prior to that I was reading about Micheal Angelo and his era, which also quoted PLATO and original roman transcripts...

ALL the problems were the same. GREED , deciet, crooked popes, politicians.... adultry.

Answer 4

I got the idea of 'universality' when I read your query, in other words, from such literature we can learn a lot form human success & follies since human beings are never perfect and we need to learn from our mistakes to improve the community and contribute something worth our limited span of life.

Answer 5

To understand the modern world you need to understand the past. Start at the beginning and continue untill you reach the end.

Answer 6

What good is the study of anything? Why study at all? Let's all sit around watching tv and wasting time online while we wither away and die with hollow heads.

Answer 7

to study the transition , development & birth of style. it is beautiful too.