Der Mensch zwischen Weltflucht und Weltverantwortung

The contributions to this volume illustrate the cultural, historical, religious and philosophical patterns and procedures which influenced or inspired people in the ancient world to choose a certain way of life, and they look into the description and evaluation of these ways of life in pictorial and textual media, focusing on the question of how these are related to the external world and how they are located between the conflicting areas of receptiveness and dissociation, orientation towards this world or the hereafter, withdrawal from and acceptance of responsibility and between the imagined models and their implementation. The authors work in the fields of classical antiquity, Byzantine studies and theology. Their contributions originally formed part of an international colloquium on »Images and Models of Human Life between Accepting Responsibility for the World and Withdrawal from It,« organized by the research training group » Images of the Gods, of God and the World« at the University of Göttingen.