{"id":115,"date":"2010-04-12T15:24:38","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T19:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/iass\/?page_id=115"},"modified":"2011-03-03T21:06:31","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T02:06:31","slug":"comparative-civilisations","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/iass\/research\/comparative-civilisations\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparative Civilizations"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Since human societies do not  lend themselves to laboratory experiments, the historical-comparative  method represents for us the main approximation to experimentation. To  understand modern culture therefore, we must study not only this culture  itself but to place it in comparison with different cultures. The first  such comparison that the Institute has attempted is the culture of  Ancient Greece.<\/p>\n<p>The Hellenism and Modernity  Program was created in September 2003 with the support of the Greek  Ministry of Culture. Its purpose is to explore the influence of  Hellenism on modern consciousness. One of the main areas of emphasis is  the impact of Ancient Greek political concepts on modern political  culture. Other areas include the ideas of the self, reason, individual,  social ethics, archaic religion, polytheism, the development of logic  and scientific method, and concepts of art.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The Hellenism and Modernity Program in the academic year  2003-2004 centered around the seminar on Ancient Greek culture (UNI  ID543). This seminar included several guest lectures by renowned  classicists, such as Professor Roochnik&#8217;s on Book XI of the <em>Odyssey <\/em> and Homeric conceptions of death, and Professor Scully&#8217;s discussion of  the <em>Homeric Hymn to Demeter <\/em> and ritual similarities of  weddings and funerals; discussions of Plato&#8217;s Socratic dialogues and  Aristotle&#8217;s <em>De Anima<\/em>; students&#8217; independent work (under the  supervision of Nikolas Prevelakis) on related subjects, in particular  the interconnection between monotheistic traditions and Aristotelian  logic. The best paper &#8211; by Xuan Vu, entitled &#8220;The monistic foundations  of Early Greek Philosophy&#8221; &#8211; received the prize of a ticket to Athens,  provided by the generosity of Olympic Airlines.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since human societies do not lend themselves to laboratory experiments, the historical-comparative method represents for us the main approximation to experimentation. To understand modern culture therefore, we must study not only this culture itself but to place it in comparison with different cultures. The first such comparison that the Institute has attempted is the culture [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3039,"featured_media":0,"parent":21,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/iass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/115"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/iass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/iass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/iass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3039"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/iass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/iass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/iass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/115\/revisions\/117"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/iass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/iass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}