2023年7月27日发(作者：)

1. What do you think of the influence Greek culture has exerted on Western

Civilization as a whole? Give examples.

Greek culture is the cradle of Western civilization and has an enormous impact

on Western culture. (The specific contributions are found in the areas of philosophy,

politics, literature, art, science and architecture.)①Greek politics was one of the

greatest influences on Western Civilization. The Greeks were the first to successfully

create a government based on the consensus of the people and thus provided a

foundation for Western democracy.②The second significant influence was that of

philosophy. The Socratic idea about ethics and knowledge helped the Westerners care

more for the effect of knowledge and value of morality, both of which give sound

guidance to people to improve and change the world outside themselves, i.e. human

society and the natural world.③Later generations of Westerners have benefited a lot

from Greek culture, such as painting, sculpture, drama, (architecture, poetry and

historical works). Classicism had Greek culture as one of the crucial sources, which

helped Westerners so much that they ascribed the origin of the Renaissance to it. This

changed the intellectual conditions of the later medieval period and opened the way to

the modern era in the West.

2. What are the major features and achievements of the Renaissance? Give

examples.

The Renaissance is characterized by seeking ideological emancipation,

intellectual freedom and political awareness, based on cultural production and

religious reformation. All these were undertaken or unfolded gradually but widely,

extending its influences to every corner of Europe, with more and more people getting

involved.

The achievements were seen principally in six areas, namely, painting, sculpture,

poetry, fiction, drama and religious reformation. Instances can be found in these areas ,

such as the huge change of subjects and styles in painting. The medieval painting used

to center on depicting Jesus Christ and other Christian subjects, not only effecting

similar and limited subjects but also depicting typical facial expressions and manners.

The great artists in the Renaissance started to focus on the images with individualistic

temperament, highlighting humanity instead of divinity, thus breaking away from

stereotyped medieval models.

3. Say something about the features and contributions of utilitarianism, utopian

socialism and classical economics.

Utilitarianism is the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined by its

contribution to overall utility, That is, its contribution to the calculation of pleasure

and gain one can have as a result of that action. The calculation is not just material,

but spiritual or moral. Utilitarianism provides the motivation and condition for an

action of any kind, either individual or collective, and offers the principle for making

laws to ensure justice and equality required of a society.

Utopian socialism refers to the beliefs held by early socialists, who created

hypothetical visions of perfect egalitarian and communalist societies without practical

consideration of actual conditions of the capitalist society they lived in and thus could

not carry out their ideals due to the powerful hindrance. However some of the Utopian ideals, such as those about women's equality and emancipation, were reasonable and

consequently absorbed by Marxism.

Classical economist is widely regarded as the beginning of modern economic

thoughts. It is the idea that a free market can regulate itself. Its founders include Adam

Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus and John Stuart Mill. Adam Smith’s The

Wealth of Nations in 1776 is considered to mark the beginning of classical economics.

4. Give a general survey of the intellectual and ideological developments in

Europe by focusing on one or two theoretical schools in the following list:

positivism, pragmatism, intuitionalism, psychoanalysis, existentialism, logical

atomism, logical positivism and naturalist philosophy.

Existentialism is an important school of thought in the modern age. It is a term

that has been used in the work of 19th and 20th century philosophers among whom are

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Despite the doctrinal differences and disagreements among them, they all take the

human subject and the condition of existence as a starting point for philosophical

exploration.

Existential philosophy begins with a sense of confusion in the face of an absurd

world. Many existentialists regard traditional philosophy, in both style and content, as

too abstract and remote from concrete human experiences. Existentialism has exerted

its influence upon Western literature in terms of providing the philosophical basis for

the emergence of the “theatre of the absurd” in the field of play.

5. Try to recall how Chinese popular culture came into fashion in the last 2 or 3

decades with the introduction of western pop music and art.

Chinese popular culture came into fashion in the early 1980s along with China's

opening up to the outside world. There emerged many popular singers among whom

are Deng Lijun, Mao Amin, etc. Cui Jian deserves credit for his contribution to

China’s rock music, being the first musician of the genre. Now Chinese popular music

has entered a period of prosperous development in which old and new musicians

compete for excellence and the audience is large in number. Popular music has

become a profitable industry.

As for art, both in painting and sculpture, Chinese artists have been influenced

by the Western postmodernist ideas, but they are still at the early stage of learning and

imitation. More and more artists begin to voice their concerns for environment,

globalization, morality and many other social problems brought about by the rapid

economy development.

6. 人文研究的价值（无标准答案）

Since Renaissance, Humanistic Studies have gradually spread in Western

countries, which helps people emancipate from the religious principles. Thus, people

have a good chance to know themselves and the world better. Humanism lays the

ideological basis for the modern science and leads talents to explore the nature and

create more inventions. It’s a process of research from god to human, from culture to

science that contributes to the firm belief that the value of human is the most

important.

Andreas Vesalius: dissection of human bodies

Baruch Spinoza: pan-theological philosopher

Cleisthenes: carry out legislative reform

Copernicus: heliocentrism

Da Vinci: The Last Supper

Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe

Dante: The Divine Comedy

Draco: punish trivial crimes with the death sentence

Emile Zola: Rougon-Macquart

Expressionism: Eugene O’Neill

Francois Rabelais: Gargantua

Futurism: Marinetti

Gaius Julius Caesar: The Civil War

Galileo: invention of the pendulum clock

Geoffrey Chaucer: Canterbury Tales

Goncourt brothers: Germinie Lacerteux

Guy de Maupassant: The Necklace

Henry Fielding: Tom Jones

Imagism: Ezra Pound

Isaac Israeli: follower of Neo-platonism

Issac Singer: the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1978

Jack London: The Sea-Wolf

John Bunyan: Pilgrim’s Progress

John Milton: Paradise Lost

Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels

Livy: History of Rome

Michel Montaigne: Essais

Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote

Newton: establishment of the modern study of optics

Ovid: Appollo and Daphne

Paphael Sanzio: The School of Athens

Peisistratus: advocate peasants’ welfare and popular entertainments

Pericles: supreme council check the behavior of leaders

Shmuel Agnon: the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1966

Sholem Aleyshem: the Mark Twain of Jews

Solon: abolish slave labor

Symbolism: Baudelaire

Terence: The Mother-in-Law

Theodore Dreiser: An American Tragedy

Virgil: The Aeneid

William Harvey: systemic circulation

William Shakespeare: A Mid-summer Night’s Dream

Asceticism: A theory or practice which advocates spiritual improvement by

living a particularly hard life, as is seen in the experiences of some religious practice.

Jacob’s Ladder: A Biblical term suggesting a ladder to heaven which appeared

in the Book of Genesis. When the Biblical patriarch Jacob fled from his brother Esau,

he imagined the ladder to heaven.

Lost generation: A term first used by Gertrude Stein to describe the post-World

War I generation of American writers, men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal

and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war. The term is commonly

applied to Hart Crane, Ernst Hemingway, Fitzgerald and others.

Mount Olympus is a high mountain in Greece, well-known for the “home of the

gods” in Greek mythology. The deities who are said to dwell on this mountain are

ruled by Zeus, including his wife, his brothers, his sisters and his children.

Performance art: A term usually used to refer to a kind of advent-garde or

conceptual art which grew out of the visual arts and began to be identified in the

1960s .Performance art is unconventional and often challenges the audience to think

in new and unconventional ways.

Pulitzer: Joseph Pulitzer was a famous Hungarian-born American journalist and

newspaper publisher. He ran newspapers in St. Louis and New York City, and

established and endowed the Pulitzer Prizes.

The Apollonian style and the Dionysian style: The two terms by Nietzsche

initiated in his The Birth of Tragedy, which refers separately to the cheerful and

optimistic style and the gloomy and passionate style.