Za obzor Západu – Budil Ivo T. (2022)

The book deals with the emergence and development of anthropological thought against the backdrop of the expansion of Western civilization, from the High Middle Ages to the twilight of the Victorian era, taking into account broader historical, social, and cultural contexts. The author attempts to capture the distinctive nature of Western society, shaped since prehistoric times, and to understand key episodes of encounters and clashes with non-European civilizations and cultures that had a fateful impact on the development of modern Western thought, education, and science, such as missionary efforts, overseas expeditions, or colonial conquests. In the second part of his study, he describes in detail the formation of anthropology – as a scientific discipline about human diversity and difference – from the early modern period to the beginning of the twentieth century, when a period known as 'classical' arrives in the history of this field. Attention is primarily given to biblical anthropology, the intellectual influence of the Enlightenment and Romanticism on the formation of modern anthropology, classical evolutionism, diffusionism, the emergence of racial ideology, and the significance of the contributions of Émile Durkheim, Franz Boas, William Rivers, and other prominent figures at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The overview concludes just before the emergence...