The History of Culture and Civilization

FOREWORD The present work conceived in several volumes - a first attempt of this kind in our country România, proposes itself to offer essential data linked to the rise and evolution of the great civilizations, emphasizing the specific features of each one and the principal influences they submitted to or exerted upon others. All things considered there exist as many civilizations and cultures as there exist nations ; but the number is rather small of tose which in...
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FOREWORD

The present work conceived in several volumes - a first attempt of this kind in our country România, proposes itself to offer essential data linked to the rise and evolution of the great civilizations, emphasizing the specific features of each one and the principal influences they submitted to or exerted upon others.
All things considered there exist as many civilizations and cultures as there exist nations ; but the number is rather small of tose which in Antiquity became historical civilizations. From the latter, we have selected those which all along their existance have developed on multifarious levels, all their creative posibilities ; those which have built up a profile of their own with a distinct originality, thus succeeding to impose themselves like vigurous, mature, complete organisms, becoming perfect models for some of the neighbouring peoples and consequently have brought substantial contributions to humanity's patrimony of values.
The aim of the author's work was to show these nations in the given concrete historical conditions, achieved a coherent mode of social, political, administrative, juridical, religious organization ; how they gave expression to their own vision on life, on man, on the world and formulating also their own system of values ; how they created their own ontology, metaphysics, ethics, literature, art - that is a great many forms of culture by which revealed their doubts and spiritual options, their ideals, expectations, frustrations or their repressions. Consequently each chapter dedicated to a certain culture and civilization aims at outlining the frame of its concrete conditions and possibilities ; at showing the lines of its creative capacites and its achievements ; its effictive contribution (inclusively its reflexives recorded in our culture) and the place it occupies in the history of humanity.
Culture includes in its sphere the attitudes, actions and works - as genesis, intention, motivation and finality - limited to the domain of the spirit and the intellect. The creative production, the action and the man of culture aim at the satisfying of spiritual and intellectual necessities : the revealing of the self, the discovery of the unknown, the explanation of mistery and the joy called forth by beauty. And in relation with nature, man and society they do not aim at the establishing of practical, utilitarian relations or the instrumentation of the one by the other, but are concerned with the establishing of a connection of communications, of seeking, of finding oneself in the other. Thus all that is tradition and customs, beliefs and religious practice, ornamentation and entertainment, the scientific, philosophic, literary works as well as music, architecture, painting, sculpture and decorative or applied arts, they all belong to the sphere of culture.
Of course, this division - the dichotomy civilization-culture - does not mean an opposition between the respective domains and so much less an unconciliatory opposition. All a long history, the interrelation civilisation-culture has frequently affirmed itself the communications between them pursuing the ideal - the plenary realization of man, of life and of the human community.
Starting from this conception and adopting methodological criteria accordingly, the present work does not claim to be of an exhaustive encyclopaedic character and neither does it claim to formulate explicity other considerations regarding the theory on culture and civilization. The author consulted in the first place the works of authors with an established autorithy in the matter and - as far as possible - the most recent ones. He thus wanted to place at the disposal of the non-specialist reader a sufficiently large bibliography to guide him ; but he did not want to render him the reading more laborious by adding precise, minute footnotes referring to the title or page of the consulted and cited author's work.