Criticism
Religious scholar Robert Segal has pointed out that the dichotomy between a personal and an impersonal view of the world is not absolute, as the Frankforts' distinction between ancient and modern thought might suggest: "Any phenomenon can surely be experienced as both an It and a Thou: consider, for example, a pet and a patient." Furthermore, Segal argues, it is "embarrassingly simplistic" to call the ancient Near East "wholly mythopoeic", the Hebrews "largely nonmythopoeic", and the Greeks "wholly scientific."
Read more about this topic: Mythopoeic Thought
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)