Today, the professor shares some books for us.
1. Seven Deadly Sins
Introduction:
The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, is a Western grouping and classification of vices.This grouping emerged in the fourth century AD and was used for
Christian ethical education and for confession. According to the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, a mortal
or deadly sin is believed to destroy the life of grace and charity
within a person. Though the sins have fluctuated over time, the
currently recognized list includes pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. There is a parallel tradition of seven virtues.
The tradition of seven deadly sins as we know it today originated with the desert fathers, specifically Evagrius Ponticus. Evagrius identified seven or eight evil thoughts or spirits that one needed to overcome.Evagrius' pupil John Cassian brought that tradition to Europe with his book The Institutes.
The idea of seven fundamental vices or sins was fundamental to Catholic
confessional practices as evidence in penitential manuals as well as
sermons like "The Parson's Tale" from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. This connection is also clear in how Dante's Purgatory
is arranged by the seven deadly sins. The concept of seven deadly sins
was used throughout the medieval Christian world to teach young people
how to avoid evil and embrace the good as is evident in treatises,
paintings, sculpture decorations on churches... Works like Peter Brueghel the Elder's prints of the Seven Deadly Sins as well as Edmund Spencer's The Faerie Queene show the continuity of this tradition into the modern era. A commonly used mnemonic acronym to remember the seven deadly sins is "SALIGIA," based on the first letters in Latin of the seven deadly sins: superbia, avaritia, luxuria, invidia, gula, ira, acedia.
(1) Lust
Lust, or lechery , is an
intense and uncontrolled desire. It is usually thought of as
uncontrolled sexual wants. However, the word was originally a general
term for desire. Therefore, lust could include the uncontrolled desire
for money, food, fame, or power.
In Dante's Purgatorio, the penitent walks within flames to purge himself of lustful thoughts and feelings. In Dante's Inferno,
unforgiven souls of the sin of lust are blown about in restless
hurricane-like winds symbolic of their own lack of self-control to their
lustful passions in earthly life.
(2) Gluttony
Gluttony is the overindulgence and overconsumption of anything to the point of waste. The word derives from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow.
In Christianity, it is considered a sin if the excessive desire for food causes it to be withheld from the needy.
Because of these scripts, gluttony can be interpreted as selfishness; essentially placing concern with one's own interests above the well-being or interests of others.
Medieval church leaders (e.g., Thomas Aquinas) took a more expansive view of gluttony,arguing that it could also include an obsessive anticipation of meals,
and the constant eating of delicacies and excessively costly foods.Aquinas went so far as to prepare a list of six ways to commit gluttony, comprising:
- Praepropere – eating too soon
- Laute – eating too expensively
- Nimis – eating too much
- Ardenter – eating too eagerly
- Studiose – eating too daintily
- Forente – eating wildly
(3) Greed
Greed , also known as avarice, cupidity or covetousness,
is, like lust and gluttony, a sin of excess. However, greed (as seen by
the Church) is applied to a very excessive or rapacious desire and
pursuit of material possessions. Thomas Aquinas wrote, "Greed is a sin
against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things
eternal for the sake of temporal things." In Dante's Purgatory, the
penitents were bound and laid face down on the ground for having
concentrated too much on earthly thoughts. Hoarding of materials or objects, theft and robbery, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority are all actions that may be inspired by Greed. Such misdeeds can include simony, where one attempts to purchase or sell sacraments, including Holy Orders and, therefore, positions of authority in the Church hierarchy.
As defined outside of Christian writings, greed is an inordinate
desire to acquire or possess more than one needs, especially with
respect to material wealth.
(4) Sloth
Sloth
can entail different vices. While sloth is sometimes defined as
physical laziness, spiritual laziness is emphasized. Failing to develop
spiritually will lead to becoming guilty of sloth. In the Christian
faith, sloth rejects grace and God.
Sloth has also been defined as a failure to do things that one should
do. By this definition, evil exists when good men fail to act.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) wrote in Present Discontents
(II. 78) "No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm,
can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory,
unsystematic endeavours are of power to defeat the subtle designs and
united Cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must
associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a
contemptible struggle."
Over time, the "acedia" in Pope Gregory's order has come to be closer
in meaning to sloth. The focus came to be on the consequences of acedia
rather than the cause, and so, by the 17th century, the exact deadly sin referred to was believed to be the failure to utilize one's talents and gifts.Even in Dante's time there were signs of this change; in his Purgatorio he had portrayed the penance for acedia as running continuously at top speed.
(5) Wrath
Wrath (Latin, ira), also known as "rage",
may be described as inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and
anger. Wrath, in its purest form, presents with self-destructiveness,
violence, and hate that may provoke feuds
that can go on for centuries. Wrath may persist long after the person
who did another a grievous wrong is dead. Feelings of anger can manifest
in different ways, including impatience, revenge, and self-destructive behavior, such as drug abuse or suicide.
Wrath is the only sin not necessarily associated with selfishness or
self-interest, although one can of course be wrathful for selfish
reasons, such as jealousy (closely related to the sin of envy). Dante described vengeance as "love of justice perverted to revenge and spite". In its original form, the sin of wrath also encompassed anger pointed internally as well as externally. Thus suicide was deemed the ultimate, albeit tragic, expression of hatred directed inwardly, a final rejection of God's gifts.
(6) Envy
Envy ,
like greed and lust, is characterized by an insatiable desire. Envy is
similar to jealousy in that they both feel discontent towards someone's
traits, status, abilities, or rewards. The difference is the envious
also desire the entity and covet it.
Envy can be directly related to the Ten Commandments,
specifically, "Neither shall you desire... anything that belongs to
your neighbour." Dante defined this as "a desire to deprive other men of
theirs". In Dante's Purgatory, the punishment for the envious is to
have their eyes sewn shut with wire because they have gained sinful
pleasure from seeing others brought low. Aquinas described envy as
"sorrow for another's good".
(7) Pride
Pride , or hubris
(Greek), is considered, on almost every list, the original and most
serious of the seven deadly sins: the source of the others. It is
identified as believing that one is essentially better than others,
failing to acknowledge the accomplishments of others, and excessive
admiration of the personal self (especially holding self out of proper
position toward God); it also includes vainglory (Latin, vanagloria)
which is unjustified boasting. Dante's definition of pride was "love of
self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbour". In Jacob
Bidermann's medieval miracle play, Cenodoxus,
pride is the deadliest of all the sins and leads directly to the
damnation of the titulary famed Parisian doctor. In perhaps the
best-known example, the story of Lucifer, pride (his desire to compete with God) was what caused his fall from Heaven, and his resultant transformation into Satan. In Dante's Divine Comedy, the penitents are burdened with stone slabs on their necks which force them to keep their heads bowed.
2.Hubris
Hubris means, in a modern context, extreme pride
or self-confidence; in its ancient Greek context, it typically
describes violent and excessive behavior rather than an attitude. When
it offends the gods of ancient Greece, it is usually punished. The adjectival form of the noun hubris is "hubristic".
Hubris is usually perceived as a characteristic of an individual
rather than a group, although the group the offender belongs to may
suffer consequences from the wrongful act. Hubris often indicates a loss
of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence,
accomplishments or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting
it is in a position of power.
Also, the professor mentioned some writing system.
1. Cuneiform
Cuneiform script is one of the earliest systems of writing,distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus. The name cuneiform itself simply means "wedge shaped", from the Latin cuneus "wedge" and forma "shape," and came into English usage probably from Old French cunéiforme.
Emerging in Sumer in the late 4th millennium B.C.E. (the Uruk IV period), cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs.
In the third millennium, the pictorial representations became
simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use grew
smaller, from about 1,000 in the Early Bronze Age to about 400 in Late Bronze Age (Hittite cuneiform). The system consists of a combination of logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs.
The original Sumerian script was adapted for the writing of the Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Hittite, Luwian, Hattic, Hurrian, and Urartian languages, and it inspired the Ugaritic and Old Persian alphabets. Cuneiform writing was gradually replaced by the Phoenician alphabet during the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
By the 2nd century C.E., the script had become extinct, and all
knowledge of how to read it was lost until it began to be deciphered in
the 19th century.
Between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000 – 100,000 have been read or published. The British Museum holds the largest collection, c. 130,000, followed by the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin, the Louvre, the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, the National Museum of Iraq, the Yale Babylonian Collection (c.40,000) and Penn Museum. Most of these have "lain in these collections for a century without being translated, studied or published," as there are only a few hundred qualified cuneiformists in the world.
2. Hieroglyphs
A hieroglyph (Greek for "sacred writing") is a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". In Neoplatonism, especially during the Renaissance,
a "hieroglyph" was an artistic representation of an esoteric idea,
which Neoplatonists believed actual Egyptian hieroglyphs to be. The word
hieroglyphics may refer to a hieroglyphic script.
Last, the professor told us the three philosophers of Greek.
1.Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek (Athenian) philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. He is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes.
Plato's dialogues are among the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates
to survive from antiquity, though it is unclear the degree to which
Socrates himself is "hidden behind his 'best disciple', Plato".
Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus. The latter remains a commonly used tool in a wide range of discussions, and is a type of pedagogy
in which a series of questions is asked not only to draw individual
answers, but also to encourage fundamental insight into the issue at
hand. Plato's Socrates also made important and lasting contributions to
the field of epistemology, and the influence of his ideas and approach remains a strong foundation for much western philosophy that followed.
2.Plato
Plato was a philosopher and mathematician in Classical Greece, and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is widely considered the most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, especially the Western tradition. Unlike nearly all of his philosophical contemporaries, Plato's entire œuvre is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years.
Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student, Aristotle, Plato laid the very foundations of Western philosophy and science. Alfred North Whitehead
once noted: "the safest general characterization of the European
philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to
Plato."
In addition to being a foundational figure for Western science,
philosophy, and mathematics, Plato has also often been cited as one of
the founders of Western religion and spirituality, particularly Christianity, which Friedrich Nietzsche, amongst other scholars, called "Platonism for the people". Plato's influence on Christian thought is often thought to be mediated by his major influence on Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of the most important philosophers and theologians in the history of Christianity.
Plato was the innovator of the dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy, which originate with him. Plato appears to have been the founder of Western political philosophy, with his Republic, and Laws
among other dialogues, providing some of the earliest extant treatments
of political questions from a philosophical perspective. Plato's own
most decisive philosophical influences are usually thought to have been Socrates, Parmenides, Heraclitus and Pythagoras,
although few of his predecessors' works remain extant and much of what
we know about these figures today derives from Plato himself.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
describes Plato as "...one of the most dazzling writers in the Western
literary tradition and one of the most penetrating, wide-ranging, and
influential authors in the history of philosophy.
... He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word
“philosopher” should be applied. But he was so self-conscious about how
philosophy should be conceived, and what its scope and ambitions
properly are, and he so transformed the intellectual currents with which
he grappled, that the subject of philosophy, as it is often conceived—a
rigorous and systematic examination of ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological
issues, armed with a distinctive method—can be called his invention.
Few other authors in the history of Western philosophy approximate him
in depth and range: perhaps only Aristotle (who studied with him), Aquinas and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank."
3. Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaeum,was a comic playwright of ancient Athens.
Eleven of his thirty plays survive virtually complete. These, together
with fragments of some of his other plays, provide the only real
examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, and they are used to define the genre.
Also known as the Father of Comedyand the Prince of Ancient Comedy,Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author.His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries; Platosingled out Aristophanes' play The Clouds as slander that contributed to the trial and subsequent condemning to death of Socrates although other satirical playwrightshad also caricatured the philosopher.
His second play, The Babylonians (now lost), was denounced by the demagogue Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis.
It is possible that the case was argued in court but details of the
trial are not recorded and Aristophanes caricatured Cleon mercilessly in
his subsequent plays, especially The Knights,
the first of many plays that he directed himself. "In my opinion," he
says through the Chorus in that play, "the author-director of comedies
has the hardest job of all."
