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EAN : 9780192152077
576 pages
RIA (01/01/1971)

Note moyenne : /5 (sur 0 notes)
Résumé :
This is not a Book !... This is a Cathedral... Its well cut corner stones are great ideas developed by the last masters of history of our times. And the master of them all is as cautious as an engineer, as talented as any genius and - especially - as creative as some great lawyers and most great architects are about their lifetime's work. Montaigne once wrote something like " My work of art is my life". After reading Toynbee, one feels almost compelled to say just t... >Voir plus
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Que lire après A Study of HistoryVoir plus
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http://eye-robot.blogspot.fr/2006/04/this-is-not-book.html?m=0
Lien : http://eye-robot.blogspot.fr..
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This is not a Book !... This is a Cathedral... Its well cut corner stones are great ideas developed by the last masters of history of our times. And the master of them all is as cautious as an engineer, as talented as any genius and - especially - as creative as some great lawyers and most great architects are about their lifetime's work. Montaigne once wrote something like " My work of art is my life". After reading Toynbee, one feels almost compelled to say just the opposite: Well, it may be only a book - even one originally published in twelve volumes - but this is his work of art. For many other lives have been lived, and never lost, in the shadows of this construction and into the blessed light of its interior. Sources for the whole master plan in Toynbee's masterpiece include perhaps less Thyucydides, Vico and Cantemir and more of such names as Abd al-Rahman Ibn Mohammad Ibn Khaldun, Gibbon, de Gobineau, Smuts, and lord Acton.

Countless, sometime arcane shelves of dusty bibliographical materials are treaded here into a delicate work of Gothic stone. Looking like fine laces, and sometimes like solid monoliths, the strong and yet delicate architecture of the book is both visible in any detail and compelling in toto, to say the least. Criteria for such modestly named " a " study appeared to the author almost all by themselves. It further took only some simple empirical development to turn the " knowledgeable field of studies " into a land of plenty. But what helped most, throughout the process of creation was the mind of the great master, Toynbee, bringing everything into one piece.

And then again, it's really the vision which commended a sense of wholeness and oneness in this blessed accomplishment of human genius. Toynbee had it while travelling by train somewhere in South-Eastern Europe and dutifully translated it into an incredibly simple grand projet that - subsequently - took thirty years to complete. It's perhaps a small tribute to the author - but not an avoidable choice - to read the whole set of volumes and not the many abridgements and the few but strange full editions of this masterpiece. If you do so, the results are incredibly deep and certainly worth the effort. You'll laugh for instance finding famous French historians busy at work - seeing their mind-entrenched " hexagone " wherever it never existed, by virtue of some retrospectoscope-minded methodology.

You'll almost hear a lawyer pleading in court in a feast of intellectual cases, like that of Mahmud of Gazana. You'll grasp the desperately - and terminally - futile emptiness of " the West and the Rest " frame of mind. And you'll see how ideas pass from one mind to another as if by miracle, in the gentle light of spiritual and caring understanding. Like Sfântul Duh, this isn't straightforward, and could be invoked but not produced. As Jean Cocteau wrote, in an ironical epitome of ambient nationalistic fury, about France, " C'est le coq sur le fumier. Enlevez le fumier et le coq se meurt ". Arnold Joseph Toynbee's twelve-volume masterpiece is by far the greatest book of the 20-th century produced by a single mind. The other one, which is unrestricted, is Father Dumitru Stăniloae's translation of the Church Fathers, collected in Filocalia românească. If the professor Toynbee were not the greatest historian since Thucydides, he would no doubt be a prophet. Written with profound wit - sometimes deeper than we may grasp at our first reading, but always tasty - such a text could be easily produced in any court of law. It would win the day ! No juror and few judges would afford to take it superficially... Especially nowadays... For here you will read nothing less than a crystalline mind in the process of thinking clearly and expressing itself simply and completely on the matter of civilization. It's a cardinal paradigm. It's a dream came true.

Toynbee extracted historical knowledge from the countless nationalistic shelves and transported it into the realm of metaknowledge, using empirical as well as historiographical science. Much unlike relativists and other nonsense-"historiographers" ( the name of Boia comes to mind as one of the worst counter-examples), he did not destroy national histories in the process. He only did what he knew best, telling the truth : He paid hommage to "the last infirmity of noble minds". Do not take this book with a grain of salt, with easy-going coffe-table albums or even with your usual intellectual arrogance. Take it into the island where you would retire! It's more than a book you are contemplating here ! It's the epitaph of the Western Civilization, carved in lasting, if delicately and well cut stone.
Commenter  J’apprécie          30
This is not a Book !... This is a Cathedral... Its well cut corner stones are great ideas developed by the last masters of history of our times. And the master of them all is as cautious as an engineer, as talented as any genius and - especially - as creative as some great lawyers and most great architects are about their lifetime's work. Montaigne once wrote something like " My work of art is my life". After reading Toynbee, one feels almost compelled to say just the opposite: Well, it may be only a book - even one originally published in twelve volumes - but this is his work of art. For many other lives have been lived, and never lost, in the shadows of this construction and into the blessed light of its interior. Sources for the whole master plan in Toynbee's masterpiece include perhaps less Thyucydides, Vico and Cantemir and more of such names as Abd al-Rahman Ibn Mohammad Ibn Khaldun, Gibbon, de Gobineau, Smuts, and lord Acton.

Countless, sometime arcane shelves of dusty bibliographical materials are treaded here into a delicate work of Gothic stone. Looking like fine laces, and sometimes like solid monoliths, the strong and yet delicate architecture of the book is both visible in any detail and compelling in toto, to say the least. Criteria for such modestly named " a " study appeared to the author almost all by themselves. It further took only some simple empirical development to turn the " knowledgeable field of studies " into a land of plenty. But what helped most, throughout the process of creation was the mind of the great master, Toynbee, bringing everything into one piece.

And then again, it's really the vision which commended a sense of wholeness and oneness in this blessed accomplishment of human genius. Toynbee had it while travelling by train somewhere in South-Eastern Europe and dutifully translated it into an incredibly simple grand projet that - subsequently - took thirty years to complete. It's perhaps a small tribute to the author - but not an avoidable choice - to read the whole set of volumes and not the many abridgements and the few but strange full editions of this masterpiece. If you do so, the results are incredibly deep and certainly worth the effort. You'll laugh for instance finding famous French historians busy at work - seeing their mind-entrenched " hexagone " wherever it never existed, by virtue of some retrospectoscope-minded methodology.

You'll almost hear a lawyer pleading in court in a feast of intellectual cases, like that of Mahmud of Gazana. You'll grasp the desperately - and terminally - futile emptiness of " the West and the Rest " frame of mind. And you'll see how ideas pass from one mind to another as if by miracle, in the gentle light of spiritual and caring understanding. Like Sfântul Duh, this isn't straightforward, and could be invoked but not produced. As Jean Cocteau wrote, in an ironical epitome of ambient nationalistic fury, about France, " C'est le coq sur le fumier. Enlevez le fumier et le coq se meurt ". Arnold Joseph Toynbee's twelve-volume masterpiece is by far the greatest book of the 20-th century produced by a single mind. The other one, which is unrestricted, is Father Dumitru Stăniloae's translation of the Church Fathers, collected in Filocalia românească. If the professor Toynbee were not the greatest historian since Thucydides, he would no doubt be a prophet. Written with profound wit - sometimes deeper than we may grasp at our first reading, but always tasty - such a text could be easily produced in any court of law. It would win the day ! No juror and few judges would afford to take it superficially... Especially nowadays... For here you will read nothing less than a crystalline mind in the process of thinking clearly and expressing itself simply and completely on the matter of civilization. It's a cardinal paradigm. It's a dream came true.

Toynbee extracted historical knowledge from the countless nationalistic shelves and transported it into the realm of metaknowledge, using empirical as well as historiographical science. Much unlike relativists and other nonsense-"historiographers" ( the name of Boia comes to mind as one of the worst counter-examples), he did not destroy national histories in the process. He only did what he knew best, telling the truth : He paid hommage to "the last infirmity of noble minds". Do not take this book with a grain of salt, with easy-going coffe-table albums or even with your usual intellectual arrogance. Take it into the island where you would retire! It's more than a book you are contemplating here ! It's the epitaph of the Western Civilization, carved in lasting, if delicately and well cut stone.
Commenter  J’apprécie          20
Les Dieux des Ethiopiens sont noirs.
Commenter  J’apprécie          20

Video de Arnold Toynbee (1) Voir plusAjouter une vidéo
Vidéo de Arnold Toynbee
Henry Laurens, professeur du Collège de France et titulaire de la chaire Histoire contemporaine du monde arabe, présente son cours de l'année 2017-2018 : Les crises d'Orient : le Moyen-Orient à partir de 1914.
Retrouvez les vidéos de ses enseignements : http://www.college-de-france.fr/site/henry-laurens
Mon cours de cette année, et certainement des années suivantes, partira de 1914 au moins jusqu'aux années 1970. Mes cours seront en quelque sorte une histoire politique du Moyen-Orient comme objet géopolitique. le but est évidemment de montrer que la source des violences, à travers les complexités des analyses historiques, réside beaucoup plus dans la géopolitique que dans une quelconque culture.
Un exemple assez amusant par ses échos contemporains, c'est le fait que l'Allemagne de Guillaume II a encouragé un vaste projet de jihad contre la France et l'Angleterre, qu'on avait surnommé à l'époque le "jihad made in Germany", qui a échoué lamentablement parce que les musulmans de l'époque n'y croyaient pas vraiment en dépit des travaux des émissaires allemands qui sont allés jusqu'à l'Afghanistan.
Une idéologie est d'abord une recette, un instrument pour une lutte politique.
La thèse principale avait déjà été développée il y a près d'un siècle par l'historien britannique Arnold Toynbee : nous avons une question d'Orient au sens où vous avez des puissances occidentales qui se confrontent au niveau de différents intérêts économiques, stratégiques, coloniaux, etc., dans cette région du monde, eh puis nous avons la question de l'occidentalisation des sociétés, c'est-à-dire l'adoption du modèle universel de l'État-nation et donc, par exemple, ceux qui avant 1914 étaient considérés comme des communautés au sens générique du terme deviennent à partir de 1919 des minorités parce qu'on plaque sur le Proche-Orient le vocabulaire des traités concernant l'Europe centrale et orientale de 1919-1920.
L'effondrement de l'Empire ottoman a évidemment créé des successions d'États homogènes de population ce qui a engendré, aussi bien dans le Caucase, dans les Balkans, au Proche-Orient, etc., ce qu'on a pu appeler des "terres de sang", c'est-à-dire des espaces dans lesquels les constructions étatiques étaient faites sur la base d'épurations ethniques, de déplacements forcés de populations, voire de génocides. L'Anatolie a été une terrible terre de sang durant la première guerre mondiale et les années qui ont suivi, ce qui fait qu'il y a eu une relative homogénéisation ethnique, relative puisqu'il reste maintenant encore face à face les Kurdes et les Turcs en Anatolie avec des violences qui se poursuivent jusqu'à aujourd'hui. Aujourd'hui les terres de sang sont devenues la Syrie et l'Irak.
La violence au XXe siècle vient de l'Europe. Les conflits mondiaux sont des conflits européens et les Européens se battent sur plusieurs continents. le problème spécifique du monde arabe c'est qu'il est à la fois trop proche de l'Europe et trop près de Dieu, ce qui constitue un cocktail absolument détonnant qui explique la violence d'aujourd'hui car j'avoue que mon cours a été inspiré par une réflexion sur les événements les plus actuels : c'est à partir des déclenchements de la guerre civile syrienne et avant irakienne que je me suis posé des questions pour savoir si on n'était pas là à un ixième épisode d'un système politique qui s'était mis en place il y a plus de deux siècles.
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Quiz Voir plus

Quelle guerre ?

Autant en emporte le vent, de Margaret Mitchell

la guerre hispano américaine
la guerre d'indépendance américaine
la guerre de sécession
la guerre des pâtissiers

12 questions
3139 lecteurs ont répondu
Thèmes : guerre , histoire militaire , histoireCréer un quiz sur ce livre

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