In part two, ''Communal Search,'' he provides thumbnail sketches of the ideas of Western political thinkers like Thomas More, Machiavelli, Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson and Hegel. Under the rubric of ''the heroic Way of Prophets and Philosophers'' Boorstin describes the Hebrew prophets, Athenian philosophy and Christianity. Subject ''three grand epochs of seeking'' in the West. ''The Seekers,'' the last wing of a vast edifice of words devoted to Western intellectual history, takes as its Won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bancroft Prize and the Francis Parkman Prize.

A former Librarian of Congress and author of ''The Americans,'' a historical trilogy, among many other scholarly books for the general reader, Boorstin has Societies cannot function without grand narratives any more than individuals can function without memory and foresight.īoorstin reminds us what intellectual history on the grand scale looks like. ''Unmasking'' and ''deconstructing''Īll concepts leads to paranoia and solipsism. One may debate the definition of WesternĬivilization, but no one can dispute that postclassical Euro-American societies share traditions that they do not share with Middle Eastern, South Asian, African or East Asian nations.

By now most intelligent liberals have joined conservatives in the reaction against the excesses of multiculturalism. Boorstin provides in ''The Seekers,'' the third volume of an ambitious trilogy that includes a history of Western science, ''The Discoverers,'' and of Western art, ''Theīut it may be that Boorstin represents the wave of the future rather than the receding past. In chanting, ''Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go!'' Nothing, therefore, could appear to be more untimely, and in some quarters unwelcome, than the synoptic overview of the history of Western religion and Jesse Jackson, joined students at Stanford It was not that long ago that a contender for the Democratic Presidential nomination, the Rev. Has been attacked as an ideological fiction enlisted in the service of evils like white supremacy. At the same time, the idea of Western civilization N recent decades, intellectuals have looked with suspicion on encyclopedic summae and comprehensive narratives. Boorstin leads a counterattack in the final volume of his trilogy on art, science and philosophy.

The discoverers by daniel j boorstin