Before Forgiveness

1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-0-521-19940-7
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 206 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 459 g

In this book, David Konstan argues that the modern concept of interpersonal forgiveness, in the full sense of the term, did not exist in ancient Greece and Rome. Even more startlingly, it is not fully present in the Hebrew Bible, nor again in the New Testament, or in the early Jewish and Christian commentaries on the Holy Scriptures. It would still be centuries - many centuries - before the idea of interpersonal forgiveness, with its accompanying ideas of apology, remorse, and a change of heart on the part of the wrongdoer, would emerge. For all its vast importance today in religion, law, politics, and psychotherapy, interpersonal forgiveness is a creation of the 18th and 19th centuries, when the Christian concept of divine forgiveness was finally secularised. Forgiveness was God's province, and it took a revolution in thought to bring it to earth and make it a human trait.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Konstan, David

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Antike Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Geschichte der klassischen Antike
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. What is forgiveness?
2. Before forgiveness: Greeks and Romans on guilt and innocence
3. Did they forgive? Greek and Roman narratives of reconciliation
4. Divine absolution: the Hebrew and Christian bibles
5. Humility and repentance: the church fathers
6. Enter forgiveness: the self transformed.

Über Autor(innen)

Konstan, David
David Konstan is the John Rowe Workman Distinguished Professor of Classics and the Humanistic Tradition and Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. In 2010, he will begin teaching at New York University. Among his most recent books are Friendship in the Classical World (1997), Pity Transformed (2001), The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks (2006), and 'A Life Worthy of the Gods': The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus (2008). He has also served as President of the American Philological Association and on the editorial board of journals in several countries.

David Konstan is the John Rowe Workman Distinguished Professor of Classics and the Humanistic Tradition and Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. In 2010, he will begin teaching at New York University. Among his most recent books are Friendship in the Classical World (1997), Pity Transformed (2001), The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks (2006), and 'A Life Worthy of the Gods': The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus (2008). He has also served as President of the American Philological Association and on the editorial board of journals in several countries.