The Human and the Divine

The Human and the Divine

1) Introduction

Through out history, as man progressed from a primitive animal to a "human being" capable of thought and reason, mankind has had to throw questions about the meaning of our own existence to ourselves. Out of those trail of thoughts appeared religion, art, and philosophy, the fundamental process of questioning about existence. Who we are, how we came to be, where we are going, what the most ideal state is....... All these questions had to be asked and if not given a definite answer, then at least given some idea as to how to begin to search for, as humans probed deeper and deeper into the riddle that we were all born into.

As time passed, the works of many thinkers and artists added up and it became inevitable for the people who wanted to find some answers to the ancient question, the question of existence, to trace back to the times of the older thinkers to get an idea as to what we have been thinking about as an important source for reaching the goal. Also, for the people who want to study the ways of the people back in history, it is equally important to make a study of the thinkers and artists of that time in order to define the characteristics and personality of that age. So, as the goal of this report is to find out what the people of ancient western world thought in view of the concept and relationship between the human and the divine, it is inevitable for us to also look into the thoughts and arts of that time.

2) Cicero and Virgil

In the works of Cicero, we see him asking questions about social responsibility, about what it is that gives value to a human life. Cicero conveys to us his belief that it is most natural for a person to show the most defined charac...

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...elationship between the human and the divine.

5) Conclusion

As we have seen from the examples of Roman thinkers, Egyptian and Greek art, and early christian thoughts, the early western thoughts and arts, which became the founding steps of the western world, had its own particular way of seeing the connection between the Divine and the Human. For them, the qualities we most value in a human being was put in us by the divine powers so that humans could live in accordance with God's original design. Therefore, the good in us are perfectly natural and it is only right that we have it within us. And also therefore, it is our duty to act out our goodness in the form of "love" so that we can live in harmony with God's will.

Bibliography:

2, Anthony, Classical and Biblical Backgrounds to Western Literature, Sogang University Press, 1996