Four Cultures of the West

by John W. O'Malley

Paperback, 2006

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The workings of Western intelligence in our day - whether in politics or the arts, in the humanities or the church - are as troubling as they are mysterious, leading to the questions: where are we going? What in the world were we thinking? This text provides a broad framework for addressing these questions.

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LibraryThing member rocscssrs

5 stars because it's a book which can fundamentally change the way you look at things. O'Malley sees four "cultures," or traditions of value, thought and expression, operating at varying strength and combination in Western culture and political life. The four are the prophetic (think Luther), the

rhetorical(Cicero, Gracian), the rational or academic (Aquinas, the universities), and the theatrical or artistic (Michelangelo). It makes for a wonderfully flexible and fertile mode of reflection on history and, indeed, present day society.

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LibraryThing member vpfluke

This is an excellent analysis of four systems of Western philosophy, thought, and education. O'Malley proposes that one, prophecy and reform, comes out of Jerusalem, and the other three out of Athens (ancient Greece). These three are the academy and the professions; poetry, rhetoric, and the common

good; and art and performance. The prophetic culture is symbolized by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Pope Gregory VII and Martin Luther. The academic/professional cutlure is symbolized by Plato and Aristotle and the university system of the West. The humanistic culture is symbolized by Homer, Isocrates, Cicero, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, Petrarch, Dante, and is the culture of the lycee and the gymnasium. The artistic culture is not one of words, like the other three, but music, the mass, Cluny, architecture, people like Phidia, Polycletus, and Praxiteles. This is good reading for understanding the Western civilization in its past ans present. It's an alternate shaping of this heritage to an older one of The Matter of Britain, the Matter of France, the Matter of Rome (& Athens), and the Matter of Jerusalem (by extension).

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