The synthesis of christian faith and classical culture as the foundations of european civilization. Herbert Werner Rüssel: Christian Humanism

Abstract

The selection of values in interwar Christian humanistic wayfinding is characteristic in Rüssel’s works. His essay on Christian Humanism published in 1940 opened new frontiers in the history of Western self-interpretation. Rüssel was one of the representatives of conservative but progressive humanist „Europeanism”, an idea advocated by contemporary intellectuals. While contemporary philosopher Jacques Maritain defended Christian humanism on behalf of Neo-Thomism, Rüssel expressed methods and images on history from an intellectual classical philologist’s viewpoint. (...)