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Zusatztext "Impressive. . . . Boorstin reminds us what intellectual history on the grand scale looks like." — The New York Times Book Review "Unexcelled. . . . [It] confirms Boorstin's rank as one of the giants of twentieth-century American scholarship." —George F. Will "Delivered with . . . skill! unalloyed admiration! and a keen eye for detail." — Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel "An admirable volume! thoroughly researched and beautifully arranged." — Washington Times Informationen zum Autor Daniel J. Boorstin was the author of The Americans , a trilogy ( The Colonial Experience; The National Experience , and The Democratic Experience) that won the Francis Parkman Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1989, he received the National Book Award for lifetime contribution to literature. He was the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, and for twelve years served as the Librarian of Congress. He died in 2004. Klappentext A New York Times Notable Book of the Year From the author of The Discoverers and The Creators , an incomparable history of man's essential questions: "Who are we?" and "Why are we here?" Daniel J. Boorstin, the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Americans , introduces us to some of the great pioneering seekers whose faith and thought have for centuries led man's search for meaning. Moses sought truth in God above while Sophocles looked to reason. Thomas More and Machiavelli pursued truth through social change. And in the modern age, Marx and Einstein found meaning in the sciences. In this epic intellectual adventure story, Boorstin follows the great seekers from the heroic age of prophets and philosophers to the present age of skepticism as they grapple with the great questions that have always challenged man.AN ANCIENT HERITAGE We have a common sky. A common firmament encompasses us. What matters it by what kind of learned theory each man looketh for the truth? There is no one way that will take us to so mighty a secret. --Symmachus, on replacing the statue of victory in the roman forum, a.d. 384 Great Seekers never become obsolete. Their answers may be displaced, but the questions they posed remain. We inherit and are enriched by their ways of asking. The Hebrew prophets and the ancient Greek philosophers remain alive to challenge us. Their voices resound across the millennia with a power far out of proportion to their brief lives or the small communities where they lived. Christianity brought together their appeal to the God above and the reason within--into churches, monasteries, and universities that long survived their founders. These would guide, solace, and confine Seekers for the Western centuries. PART ONE THE WAY OF PROPHETS: A HIGHER AUTHORITY When we do science, we are pantheists; when we do poetry, we are polytheists; when we moralize we are monotheists. --Goethe, Maxims and Reflections 1 From Seer to Prophet: Moses' Test of Obedience The future has always been the great treasure-house of meaning. People everywhere, dissatisfied with naked experience, have clothed the present with signs of things to come. They have found clues in the lives of sacrificial animals, in the flight of birds, in the movements of the planets, in their own dreams and sneezes. The saga of the prophets records efforts to cease being the victim of the gods' whims by deciphering divine intentions in advance, toward becoming an independent self-conscious self, freely choosing beliefs. The Mesopotamians experimented with ways to force from the present the secrets of the future. Diviners watched smoke curling up from burning incense, they interpreted the figures on clay dice to give a name to the coming year. They answered questions a...
