Proposed outline with key items so far:
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Part 1: Defining the West
1. Greece, Rome and Germanic Tribes
The use of Western languages as a means of transmitting mythology — nominative, descriptive and discrete.
2. Greek Philosophers
Socrates we know only from what Plato says. Plato emphasizes logic as a higher standard. In the process, he proposes pure reason rather as a depersonalized god, a disembodied deity. Aristotle pushed out the implications of this. He was not atheist, but an agnostic. His primary question was not, “What can we know?” — the common understanding of epistemology. His question was, “What can we know such that we can act on it?”
3. Roman Organization
Less cerebral and theoretical; much more pragmatic and application. Most modern Western alphabets are Roman.
4. Germanic Mythology
Germans did not so much invade Rome as were invited to do the hard labor of defense. Eventually they were promoted up the ranks until they ruled.
Epitomized in Beowulf. Gives us the notion of manhood in the storm gods and womanhood in Oester, the Earth Mother.
5. Western Church
Attempts to tame the German tribes and Christianize simply for the purpose of raising the Church back up to her former political status she had under Constantine and friends. They lusted for that political power. So the Church compromised until the Germans would swallow it.
Defending against the advance of Islam did not prevent Islamic contributions to the intellectual heritage of the West. Arabs gave us the symbolism for abstracting concrete Greek geometry with algebra. They also gave us a much broader awareness of nature in the form of medicine and biological inquiry.
The various political movements reacting to the ascendancy of the Church were not necessarily what is popularly believed. The Reformation was more about changing both the logic of theology and the resulting political leverage.
6. Pinnacle: The Enlightenment
Secularized and agnostic, an attempt to revive the classical culture of Greece and Rome, but with a powerful German flavor of morality.
