What Is Europe? The Greek Beginnings
What Is Europe? The Greek Beginnings

Summary/Abstract: The article begins with the statement that there are three concepts of Europe historically significant. The first concept of Europe looms out in the context of the clash between the ancient Greeks and the Persians, the second one is induced by Christianity and Islam meeting head-on whereas the third concept results from the European civilization confronting the cultures of the newly discovered peoples inhabiting other continents. It is just in the context of the indicated clashes that the concept of Europe is shaped as a phenomenon diversified not only geographically but also in terms of civilization as regards other cultures or civilizations. The article then concerns with the concept of Europeanism which in the cultural sense was crystallized in Greece at the turn of the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ. It emerged on the background of the opposition between the Greeks and Asians as well as other peoples, which were referred to as barbarians by the Greeks. The article concludes that it was culture and freedom which constituted two arms of Europeanness shaped by the ancient Greeks.

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