50 Questions on Humanities in Western Civilization - Quiz 3 | HUM 102 | Study notes Cultural History of Europe

Quiz III Study Guide (Greed)

Humanities 102: Introduction to Western Civilization

Mr. Vehse

1. Phyllis Tickle is the author of our current text, Greed. What is Ms. Tickle's profession?

2. How does Tickle define or, if you like, describe religion?

3. The metaphor Tickle uses to describe religion invokes the notion of strands, as in strings or threads. How

many strands does she cite in her description of religion?

4. The threads of religion are held together, according to Tickle, by an insulating, porous “inner sleeve.”

What is this sleeve that holds together the strands of religion?

5. The sleeve and inner strands of religion are “protected,” according to Tickle, by an outer casing or skin.

What is this supposedly protective casing?

6. When the outer casing and inner sleeve of religion rupture or are torn and the inner strands “are exposed

to view,” what generally happens to religion, according to Tickle?

7. During what centuries, according to Tickle, has religion in the Western world undergone the most radical

transformation of “rupturing, configuring, and informing” since the Protestant Reformation?

8. How, according to Tickle, has the “spirituality” of Americans significantly changed in the most recent

major shift of thinking with respect to matters of religion?

9. Tickle refers to “overt and institutionalized evidences of religion--its real estate, clergy, administrative

and professional hierarchies, institutions of learning and healing, canons, requirements of membership,

legal status, budgets, etc.” To which strand of religion is she making reference?

10. In the painting by Mario Donizetti, Avarice (1996), a figure clutches a bag or sack. What is the apparent

gender of this figure?

11. In the painting by Mario Donizetti, Avarice (1996), below the nude and to the right lies the figure of

something. It might be an emaciated body or corpse. What is attached at the far end of this figure that calls

to mind the image of the living figure who seems to look down toward it?

12. Morality, according to Tickle, sometimes “slips its encasement in story and intertwines itself with”

schemes of action and belief other than religion. When this happens, what else might we call it?

13. A growing, popular consideration of morality, according to Phyllis Tickle, has led to an increasing

preoccupation, especially American, with another concept. What is this other concept?

14. Western religious traditions like Judaism, Christiantiy, and Islam are persuaded that sin has spiritual

consequences in human life. With what other concept do Eastern traditions tend to address issues of

spiritual development or growth in life?

15. Humans come into the experience of time constructed and equipped not only with body parts and

consciousness, according to Tickle, but also with “inescapable companions of the interior” who taunt us.

What does she call these troublesome companions?

16. Tickle refers to “the seven,” by which she means, of course, the seven deadly sins. Without them we

“would never rest or eat or procreate or build or aspire,” she writes. We also would not murder, steal, or lie.

What is it that the “fascinating seven” make us?

17. How is it, according to Tickle, that greed differs from the other deadly sins?

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Quiz III Study Guide (Greed) Humanities 102: Introduction to Western Civilization Mr. Vehse

Phyllis Tickle is the author of our current text, Greed. What is Ms. Tickle's profession?
How does Tickle define or, if you like, describe religion?
The metaphor Tickle uses to describe religion invokes the notion of strands, as in strings or threads. How many strands does she cite in her description of religion?
The threads of religion are held together, according to Tickle, by an insulating, porous “inner sleeve.” What is this sleeve that holds together the strands of religion?
The sleeve and inner strands of religion are “protected,” according to Tickle, by an outer casing or skin. What is this supposedly protective casing?
When the outer casing and inner sleeve of religion rupture or are torn and the inner strands “are exposed to view,” what generally happens to religion, according to Tickle?
During what centuries, according to Tickle, has religion in the Western world undergone the most radical transformation of “rupturing, configuring, and informing” since the Protestant Reformation?
How, according to Tickle, has the “spirituality” of Americans significantly changed in the most recent major shift of thinking with respect to matters of religion?
Tickle refers to “overt and institutionalized evidences of religion--its real estate, clergy, administrative and professional hierarchies, institutions of learning and healing, canons, requirements of membership, legal status, budgets, etc.” To which strand of religion is she making reference?
In the painting by Mario Donizetti, Avarice (1996), a figure clutches a bag or sack. What is the apparent gender of this figure?
In the painting by Mario Donizetti, Avarice (1996), below the nude and to the right lies the figure of something. It might be an emaciated body or corpse. What is attached at the far end of this figure that calls to mind the image of the living figure who seems to look down toward it?
Morality, according to Tickle, sometimes “slips its encasement in story and intertwines itself with” schemes of action and belief other than religion. When this happens, what else might we call it?
A growing, popular consideration of morality, according to Phyllis Tickle, has led to an increasing preoccupation, especially American, with another concept. What is this other concept?
Western religious traditions like Judaism, Christiantiy, and Islam are persuaded that sin has spiritual consequences in human life. With what other concept do Eastern traditions tend to address issues of spiritual development or growth in life?
Humans come into the experience of time constructed and equipped not only with body parts and consciousness, according to Tickle, but also with “inescapable companions of the interior” who taunt us. What does she call these troublesome companions?
Tickle refers to “the seven,” by which she means, of course, the seven deadly sins. Without them we “would never rest or eat or procreate or build or aspire,” she writes. We also would not murder, steal, or lie. What is it that the “fascinating seven” make us?
How is it, according to Tickle, that greed differs from the other deadly sins?

In an effort to combat her own boredom or tedium while preparing her lecture, Phyllis Tickle decided to approach the subject of greed “from the long view of history,” rather than from the perspective of headlines and evening newscasts. From the history of what era in Western civilization did she choose to approach this subject?
The last 2,000 years, according to Tickle, basically can be divided into three general periods; she calls them “two and a fraction.” Each period, then, is characterized by an “overarching sensibility.” The longest period is the first 1,500 years. What does she call it? The centuries of:
The shortest period is “the fraction” of the last century or so. What does she call this comparatively short time? The era of:
The following individual was a formative influence in the earliest days of Christianity. Tickle views him as the logical place to begin her historical survey, since he also was “the author of Christianity’s first imaging of greed.” Who was this pivotal individual?
Radix ominum malorum avarita is the Latin translation of the above individual’s teaching concerning greed: “The root of all evil is greed.” Christians during the fourth and fifth centuries CE took to writing this doctrine stacked as an acrostic. To what did they think the first letters of the acrostic referred?
Still during the age of “physical imagination” but later in the Roman Empire, a Christian in the province of Britannia named Aurelius Clemens Prudentius composed a poetic allegory of the seven deadly sins, the Psychomachia. What does this title mean?
“Of all the vices, there is none more frightening than greed,” writes Prudentius. Where does he depict greed prowling with her “rake-like fingers,” accompanied by “the brood of their mother Greed’s black milk:” murder, pillage, scavenging of the dead, civil war, etc?
In Prudentius’ allegory of sin, greed is temporarily defeated by reason when she tries to seduce a group of priests. She then changes her appearance, taking on a more benign form. What form does greed take when she assumes “the delicate veil of maternal concern?”
Two painters, according to Phyllis Tickle, “caught greed’s progress across” the century that produced both the Renaissance and Reformation better than any verbal commentary ever could have. The first of the two pictured the Seven Deadly Sins in a circle, with a human enactment of each sin portrayed in one of seven pie-shaped wedges. Whose painting of greed shows a corrupt judge receiving a bribe?
A second painting by this artist is a triptych or three-paneled work. In the first panel, Adam and Eve are being expelled from Eden. In the third panel, there are the tortures of Hell. In the middle panel, a wagon passes through a landscape with all manner of people riding, trying to catch a ride, or being run over, with others walking, standing, or resting along the way. What is this second painting called?
The second painter depicted greed in an engraving, entitled Big Fish Eat Little Fish. Whose painting depicts fish of various sizes vomiting smaller fish from their own wide mouths?
The Reformation, according to Tickle, began a process that made sin less grand and earthier. It was more about “the town square” than about “Zion and the mighty hills.” Together with its offspring, capitalism, to what process did Protestantism lead the way?
Less than two hundred years after the Reformation, the Englishman Thomas Hobbes would suggest a human source for sin in the Social Contract. A century or so thereafter, a Frenchman named Rousseau would reject the traditional Christian doctrine of sin, outright. What was this doctrine that had been weakened by the Reformation and in the course of the centuries was gradually overthrown by secular thinkers in Western civilization?

Tickle writes of “this place of Donizetti’s where, the smoke of the soul’s battle and the bold colors of deliberated progress having cleared, there is, exposed before us, the numinous spirit elegant and trembling in its death.” Who seems to represent to her this elegant, numinous spirit trembling in its death?
What presumably destroys or kills the human spirit in Tickle’s interpretation of Donizetti’s work?
Figure 1 in this text depicts a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board seated in front of a podium with microphones. A mixed media work from 2000 by Michael Bohbot, what is the title of this work?
Interestingly, one might compare Mario Donizetti’s painting, Avarice , with figure 7 in our text. Both show (beautiful?) women in compromising positions that suggest the insidious power of greed. Figure 7 is a still, in fact, from Erich Stroheim’s famous movie on the subject. Who is the actor from the still shown luxuriously reclining with her money in bed?
For what does Phyllis Tickle hope and pray, to what does she aspire for the human spirit as she reflects on the topic of greed and its mysterious representation in the painted work of Mario Donizetti?

50 Questions on Humanities in Western Civilization - Quiz 3 | HUM 102, Study notes of Cultural History of Europe

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