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Part Four - Europe |
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YOUR text tells us the role Europeans have played in history has been enormously important to every facet of human life and culture.
BUT what is Europe? Christopher Dawson describes Europe as "a community of peoples who share in a common spiritual tradition that had its origins three thousand years ago in the Eastern Mediterranean and which has been transmitted from age to age and from people to people until it has come to overshadow the world." Dawson goes on to say that "the tradition as a whole cannot, therefore, be strictly identified with the European continent. It has come into Europe and has passed beyond it, and what we call 'Europe' in the cultural sense is really only one phase of this wider development." Dawson argues:
We can only understand Europe and its historical development by the study of Christian culture, for this forms the Centre of the whole process, and it was as Christendom that Europe first became conscious of itself as a society of peoples with common moral values and common spiritual aims.Viewed from this Centre, the whole development of Western culture falls into three main stages -- Christian, pre-Christian and post-Christian, each of which may in turn be divided into two or three subordinate phases.
IN PART Four (Chapters 10, 11, and 12) your text explains who and what Europe is: "three main human traits -- the Christian faith, the Caucasian race, and the family of related languages called Indo-European."
The objectives of Chapter 10 will provide you with an understanding of European:
The objectives of Chapter 11 give an overview of Europe's culture, society, and economy:
The objectives of Chapter 12 consider European political geography: