John O'Malley's Four Cultures of the West will delight scholars, students, general readers, specialists, young and old, the learned and the merely curious because of its combination of great learning with simplicity of language, elegance of style, and narrative gifts. Whatever our place in the culture wars of our troubled present we will learn to see ourselves differently from O'Malley's analysis of styles of thought and expression flourishing side by side in what we call Western culture. -- Jill Ker Conway, author of A Woman's Education and True North. O'Malley's succinct analysis of the Four Cultures of the West is one of those rare books that uses history to tell us as much about the intellectual conflicts of the present as it does about those of the past. I predict his categorical analysis will be widely cited and widely debated by commentators well beyond academic specialists. -- Kenneth Woodward, contributing editor for Newsweek and author of Making Saints. This is a bold tour de force. -- Jaroslav Pelikan, author of Divine Rhetoric and Jesus through the Centuries.
John W. O'Malley is University Professor at Georgetown University.
John O'Malley's Four Cultures of the West will delight scholars,
students, general readers, specialists, young and old, the learned
and the merely curious because of its combination of great learning
with simplicity of language, elegance of style, and narrative
gifts. Whatever our place in the culture wars of our troubled
present we will learn to see ourselves differently from O'Malley's
analysis of styles of thought and expression flourishing side by
side in what we call Western culture.
*Jill Ker Conway, author of A Woman's Education and True
North.*
O'Malley's succinct analysis of the Four Cultures of the West is
one of those rare books that uses history to tell us as much about
the intellectual conflicts of the present as it does about those of
the past. I predict his categorical analysis will be widely cited
and widely debated by commentators well beyond academic
specialists.
*Kenneth Woodward, contributing editor for Newsweek and
author of Making Saints.*
This is a bold tour de force.
*Jaroslav Pelikan, author of Divine Rhetoric and Jesus
through the Centuries.*
In this erudite work of cultural history, O'Malley extends 'an
invitation to consider and notice' four distinctive paradigms or
cultures that, taken together, handsomely help decode Western
intellectual and cultural history. These four paradigms are the
prophetic, the academic, the humanistic, and the culture of art and
performance...O'Malley successfully showcases the affinities
between historic cultures (e.g., the Greco-Roman) and persons
(e.g., Aristotle, Aquinas, and Luther) and cultural realties in our
own time (e.g., the contemplative rhetoric of Lincoln at Gettysburg
prefiguring the rhetorical contemplation at Ground Zero).
*Library Journal*
O'Malley...offers a warm and conversational invitation to reflect
on four cultural configurations that feed into contemporary
consciousness...What does human culture have to do with the culture
of spiritual transcendence? His book, primarily concerned with the
manifestations of these various cultures in the history of
Christianity, spurs the reader on to meditate on the different
streams that jostle, but sometimes converge, in an 'ocean' we all
navigate.
*Publishers Weekly*
This sweeping survey of Western cultural history, by John W.
O'Malley, S.J., ought to be required reading for--among
others--literary and philosophical [unbelievers]: postmodernists,
New Agers, Generation-Xers and college students everywhere. It's a
clear cogent survey of the cultural roots we all have, willy-nilly,
consciously or otherwise...In all this Father O'Malley makes an
illuminating guide. His relaxed, agreeable prose (a blend of
cultures two and three) should attract a wide spectrum of
readers.
*America*
O'Malley has given us a readable book with very wide learning in
four cultures...This book will be of interest to and accessible to
anyone interested in the cultural life of the West. At a time when
the Christian origins of our culture, which in reality are so
fundamental, are ignored, it offers a very valuable reminder and
corrective.
*Times Higher Education Supplement*
Four Cultures of the West would make an excellent text for an
interdisciplinary seminar on Western civilization, but the
non-academic reader can enjoy and profit from it as well.
*National Catholic Reporter*
This wise and elegant little survey of western Christian culture
began life as the first Blessed Pope John XXIII lecture series at
the University of Notre Dame, and it is a fine example of rhetoric
in the best sense: an explicit exercise in epideictic, sorting out
praise and blame.
*Ecclesiastical History*
O'Malley's book is helpful in gaining a better understanding of the
intellectual underpinnings of what we call the "student-centered"
approach. This is one reason why the book will be of interest to
educators. Lucid, yet at the same time rich in history, it will be
attractive to students and teachers of world cultures in many
different disciplines.
*Bridges*
John O'Malley's Four Cultures of the West will delight
scholars, students, general readers, specialists, young and old,
the learned and the merely curious because of its combination of
great learning with simplicity of language, elegance of style, and
narrative gifts. Whatever our place in the culture wars of our
troubled present we will learn to see ourselves differently from
O'Malley's analysis of styles of thought and expression flourishing
side by side in what we call Western culture. -- Jill Ker Conway,
author of A Woman's Education and True North.
O'Malley's succinct analysis of the Four Cultures of the
West is one of those rare books that uses history to tell us as
much about the intellectual conflicts of the present as it does
about those of the past. I predict his categorical analysis will be
widely cited and widely debated by commentators well beyond
academic specialists. -- Kenneth Woodward, contributing editor for
Newsweek and author of Making Saints.
This is a bold tour de force. -- Jaroslav Pelikan, author of
Divine Rhetoric and Jesus through the Centuries.
In this erudite work of cultural history, O'Malley extends 'an
invitation to consider and notice' four distinctive paradigms or
cultures that, taken together, handsomely help decode Western
intellectual and cultural history. These four paradigms are the
prophetic, the academic, the humanistic, and the culture of art and
performance...O'Malley successfully showcases the affinities
between historic cultures (e.g., the Greco-Roman) and persons
(e.g., Aristotle, Aquinas, and Luther) and cultural realties in our
own time (e.g., the contemplative rhetoric of Lincoln at Gettysburg
prefiguring the rhetorical contemplation at Ground Zero). -- Sandra
Collins * Library Journal *
O'Malley...offers a warm and conversational invitation to reflect
on four cultural configurations that feed into contemporary
consciousness...What does human culture have to do with the culture
of spiritual transcendence? His book, primarily concerned with the
manifestations of these various cultures in the history of
Christianity, spurs the reader on to meditate on the different
streams that jostle, but sometimes converge, in an 'ocean' we all
navigate. * Publishers Weekly *
This sweeping survey of Western cultural history, by John W.
O'Malley, S.J., ought to be required reading for--among
others--literary and philosophical [unbelievers]: postmodernists,
New Agers, Generation-Xers and college students everywhere. It's a
clear cogent survey of the cultural roots we all have, willy-nilly,
consciously or otherwise...In all this Father O'Malley makes an
illuminating guide. His relaxed, agreeable prose (a blend of
cultures two and three) should attract a wide spectrum of readers.
-- Peter Heinegg * America *
O'Malley has given us a readable book with very wide learning in
four cultures...This book will be of interest to and accessible to
anyone interested in the cultural life of the West. At a time when
the Christian origins of our culture, which in reality are so
fundamental, are ignored, it offers a very valuable reminder and
corrective. -- Richard Harries * Times Higher Education Supplement
*
Four Cultures of the West would make an excellent text for
an interdisciplinary seminar on Western civilization, but the
non-academic reader can enjoy and profit from it as well. --
Darrell Turner * National Catholic Reporter *
This wise and elegant little survey of western Christian culture
began life as the first Blessed Pope John XXIII lecture series at
the University of Notre Dame, and it is a fine example of rhetoric
in the best sense: an explicit exercise in epideictic, sorting out
praise and blame. -- Diarmaid MacCulloch * Ecclesiastical History
*
O'Malley's book is helpful in gaining a better understanding of the
intellectual underpinnings of what we call the "student-centered"
approach. This is one reason why the book will be of interest to
educators. Lucid, yet at the same time rich in history, it will be
attractive to students and teachers of world cultures in many
different disciplines. -- Dr. Dovile Budryte * Bridges *
O'Malley (The First Jesuits), a scholar of church history at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, offers a warm and conversational invitation to reflect on four cultural configurations that feed into contemporary consciousness. First comes the style of thought that the author terms "prophetic culture" and which might also be conceived of as a culture of inspired revolution, encompassing Gregory VII, Martin Luther and his spiritual heir Martin Luther King Jr. Second is the paradigm of restless, insistent, academic analysis-the perennial mode of questioning that was first institutionalized in the medieval universities and the one to which Father O'Malley professionally adheres. The third culture, to which his friends suspect that he really belongs, is the humanistic world of letters, with its fondness for multivalent ambiguity and well-rounded manners, a style that became pervasive in the classical world and re-emerged in the Renaissance. Finally comes the silent but ebullient culture of image and ritual, art and performance. What, O'Malley asks throughout, echoing the words of the late Roman polemicist Tertullian, has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What does human culture have to do with the culture of spiritual transcendence? His book, primarily concerned with the manifestations of these various cultures in the history of Christianity, spurs the reader on to meditate on the different streams that jostle, but sometimes converge, in an "ocean" we all navigate. (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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