The Heavens and the Earth: Graeco-Roman, Ancient Chinese, and Mediaeval Islamic Images of the World (International Comparative Social Studies, 52)

Review

"This is a magisterial overview of the formulations of important philosophical topics in three world civilizations. It is framed as a comparative study of the emergence among philosophers, historians, and geographers of a universalistic humanism in these three traditions. Its focus is on the conceptualizations of human nature and the ways in which philosophers, geographers and historians thought about 'others.' But it also provides an insightful and enlightening overview of ontology, geography, scientific and historical epistemology - the nature of reality, the known world, time, space and theories of eternity and creation." -- Christopher Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside
"A monumental work on the longue durée of the Eurasian world history and civilizations." -- Mehdi P. Amineh, University of Amsterdam

Product Description

Vittorio Cotesta’s The Heavens and the Earth deals with the images of the world peculiar to the Graeco-Roman, Ancient Chinese and Medieval Islamic civilisations, each with its own way of conceiving the universe, life, death, society, power, humanity and its destiny, while aspired by a shared universal form of life.

About the Author

Vittorio Cotesta is Professor of Sociology at Università degli Studi Roma Tre (Rome). His main fields of interest are Global Society, Human Rights, Modernity, and Civilizations. Among his publications: Max Weber on China. Modernity and Capitalism in a Global Perspective (Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2018); Kings into Gods. How Prostration Shaped Eurasian Civilizations (Brill, 2015); Global Society and Human Rights (Brill, 2012); Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights (ed.) (Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2013).