Modernity's Classics (Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context)

This book presents critical studies of modern reconfigurations of conceptions of the past, of the 'classical', and of national heritage. Its scope is global (China, India, Egypt, Iran, Judaism, the Greco-Roman world) and inter-disciplinary (textual philology, history of art and architecture, philosophy, gardening). Its emphasis is on the complexity of the modernization process and of reactions to it: ideas and technologies travelled from India to Iran and from Japan to China, while reactions show tensions between museumization and the recreation of 'presence'. It challenges readers to rethink the assumptions of the disciplines in which they were trained Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Introduction....Pages 1-19 Front Matter....Pages 21-21 The Making of New Delhi....Pages 23-54 Classics in the Garden: Suppers in an Earthly Paradise....Pages 55-76 A Classic Paving the Way to Modernity: The Ritual of Zhou in the Chinese Reform Debate Since the Taiping Civil War....Pages 77-99 Modernity’s Islamicist: Sayyid Qutb’s Theocentric Reconstruction of Sovereignty....Pages 101-120 Front Matter....Pages 121-121 Classical Scholarship and Arab Modernity....Pages 123-141 The Septuagint as a Jewish Classic....Pages 143-163 Phenomenon and Reference: Revisiting Parmenides, Empedocles, and the Problem of Rationalization....Pages 165-186 Towards an Anthropology of Reading....Pages 187-208 Front Matter....Pages 209-209 The Ruins of the Others: History and Modernity in Iran....Pages 211-230 Making New Classics: The Archaeology of Luo Zhenyu and Victor Segalen....Pages 231-260 Homer, Skepticism, and the History of Philology....Pages 261-292 Naked Presence and Disciplinary Wording....Pages 293-313 Middling Ages and Living Relics as Objects to Think with: Two Figures of the Historical Imagination....Pages 315-329 Back Matter....Pages 331-346 This book presents critical studies of modern reconfigurations of traditional concepts, of the 'classical', and of national heritage. Its scope is global and inter-disciplinary, it focuses on the complexity of the modernization process and of reactions to it.