ON NOT FOUNDING ROME

This book is an attempt to critically embrace a tradition--a culture--in which the author was formed and against which he has often found himself in resistance, using academic disciplines in which he is well versed but about which he is deeply suspicious. This book began to come together as a book in a series of lectures on the history of Western thought at Shenzhen University in the Peoples Republic of China, an opportunity to cultivate disciplined criticism that might afford a second look at traditions behind the West which are being embraced all too quickly. In a time of acceleration, this book offers a meditation on the virtue of hesitation. The book is an invitation to philosophy and the history of ideas, but it is also a sustained critical reflection on the religious dimensions--explicit and implicit--of those ideas, with enough utopian vision left to imagine a city in which violence is not necessary. Combining erudition of a true scholar and insight of a gifted poet, professor Steven Schroeder offers his readers an adventurous pilgrimage of mind into the realms of cultural history, philosophy, and religion. This perfectly structured, consistent, and well-argued book is a good companion to anyone who wishes to transgress the boundaries of supposedly Western ideas and open new vistas to the territories that reflect the legacy of so many vanished civilizations. --Almantas Samalavicius Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and Vilnius University This new book by Steven Schroeder contains careful examinations of and insightful reflections on the intellectual history of the West. It not only provides us with guidance when journeying through the labyrinth of Western ideas, but it enables us to see how ideas, almost always intertwined with human desires and fears, are projected into the real world and contribute to transform the place we live in. It is highly illuminating for understanding the human creation of ideas, and therefore, is instructive to anyone wh