Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

This is awesome. I can't believe how much pedagogical material is put forward here. Incredible stuff.

All that being said, I think the larger concept is that one of the foundations of Western civ has found a way to be presented to Students and children of Eastern civ.

What about the other way around? I know that in university I had to specifically seek out Eastern civ courses qualified for my major. 20+ years later I find them perpetually a source of knowledge and inspiration when trying to understand modern geopolitics.

The Illiad, Beowolf, and other foundations of Western Civilization are no doubt important, but they are only part of the pantheon of modern global civilization for which classics like "Journey to the West" and the tales of the travels of Ibn Battuta are part of.

These stories have provided an important framework I have enjoyed when I'm trying to interpret what's happening in the world, and have helped me numerous times in building bridges with my fellow humans from across my planet.

Despite being a graduate of a world class Computer Science program, I am more proud that I know of the importance of Mansa Musa, Qin Shi Huang, Salah ad-Din, Shaka Zulu, and other global rulers were and the time spent considering the civilizations they came from.

I can only imagine being a Chinese teen, learning about the Iliad for the first time. It would be like learning who Hanuman and other legendary Eastern Asian heroes are. I wish that these legends were taught to Western students as mandatory. I had to learn "Foundations of Western Civ" in school, but I would have found "Foundations of Eastern Civ" just as enlightening.

I'd wager you will find far more Westerners who are familiar with (some of) the Eastern classics than the other way round. No idea how you would come to believe that the reverse is the case, or that correction is needed in that regard.

In fact, I suspect that more people in the West have read the Tao Te Ching or The Art of War than the Iliad, by quite a margin (if only because of the difference in length). The former two are certainly much more common to see in bookstores than the latter.

Also, I'm not sure whether Beowulf should be counted among the "foundations of Western Civilization". It's very rarely read outside the Anglosphere, and even there its importance is primarily linguistic.

This. Beowulf has near nothing to do with the Western Civilization. The Anglosphere it's delusional, sorry. It's was all about either Greek or Roman legacy. Or maybe, Don Quixote, shaping up the Modern Western civilization by making fun on the old Medieval farts (Don Quixote) against the more pragmatical and non-brainwashed Enlightenment era common folk people (Sancho Panza).

Even Lazarillo from Tormes has a more caustic and Western shaping anti-epic than Beowulf, as it depicts a cynical and treacherous society where even the old literal blind outsmarts the rogue kid.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarillo_de_Tormes

I'm sorry you don't think Germanic peoples have anything to contribute to Western Civilization.

The Illiad predates the Tao Te Ching and The Art of War by a millennium. They are not peer works at all.

The peer of the Illiad from a different culture would be the Jewish sacred books. And both, together with Theogony, are derivative of traditions that stretch two more millennia to Enuma Anu Enlil and Gilgamesh.

The copyright notice on the Iliad says it is “generally regarded as being composer around the 6th Century BCE, and is therefore in the public domain.”

So it’s around the same time as the art of war and Tao te Ching.

Seems like I mistook the eastern classics for second century CE works for some reason. My bad. But you're not all the way right. This copyright notice you're reading is out of date. Scholars currently think Homeric texts are likely to be 9th-8th century BCE works. Anyway, that would make them all roughly contemporary, yes. Thanks for pointing that out.

> I'd wager you will find far more Westerners who are familiar with (some of) the Eastern classics than the other way round. No idea how you would come to believe that the reverse is the case, or that correction is needed in that regard. >In fact, I suspect that more people in the West have read the Tao Te Ching or The Art of War than the Iliad, by quite a margin (if only because of the difference in length). The former two are certainly much more common to see in bookstores than the latter.

It would be interesting to find out. My East Asian POV is adopted from a Korean direction. My wife and all of her siblings studied Journey to the West, and a few Chinese classics, as well as the Greek epics and Beowulf in grade school.

My personal anecdote is that I had heard of the Confucian classics in history class, and seen the Art of War mentioned in mid-80s Western media as a "tips for business" fad. I had never heard of Journey to the West, or the Tao Te Ching or I Ching until I was well into adulthood in the late 90s.

> Also, I'm not sure whether Beowulf should be counted among the "foundations of Western Civilization". It's very rarely read outside the Anglosphere, and even there its importance is primarily linguistic.

I think many historians would disagree with you. It's cited as the first written work in an ancient English dialect and has been taught to billions of school children, and while in the dialect of the scribes who recorded it, it's well understood to represent northern Germanic people, places, and events, and captures a key historic period of the transitional period of Christianization of those people that predates many other records by hundreds of years, such as those produced by the court of Charlemagne.

Unless of course you don't think the Anglosphere or Germanic peoples have contributed anything to the formulation of Western Civilization and it's just a weird coincidence that it's assumed in most places in the world that when they see a Westerner, they assume they speak English on some level. Bah, no contribution of any kind.

Not the same as reading the source material but the youtube channel Overly Sarcastic Productions has great overviews/retellings of mythology/legends/ancient stories and they have a great ongoing series on Journey To The West and some decent one off eastern myths along with western stuff which they generally cover more. Especially since the source is in another language and a lot of it isn't super accessble to modern readers without being retold anyways I think it's great.

Beowulf is not among "foundations of Western Civilization" that's a wild statement.

Demonstrate to me that it's not.

> I wish that these legends were taught to Western students as mandatory.

Agreed. Due to colonial history, the entirety of "Western Education" has a decidedly "European" slant. "Eastern Civilizations" are covered only as much as they are "Exotic". But in this current day and age History needs to taught in a truly "Global" manner.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com