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`quite brilliant' --Guardian
Book Description
The most lucid and concise presentation of Western thought. The writing is elegant and carries the reader with the momentum of a novel. 'It really is a noble performance.' - Joseph Campbell
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book was completely engrossing. A great introduction to the history of Western thought for the interested lay person. For me, more readable than other versions (eg Russell's) because of the narrative approach - Tarnas doesn't go to great lengths to 'disprove' his predecessors, he keeps an open mind (as he explains) and just tells a fascinating story.
Minor quibbles - this book sometimes gets bogged down in huge sentences and obscure vocabulary where it's not helpful. And some ideas (eg the various attempts to describe the cosmos) would be better expressed in a diagram.
21 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Richard Tarnas has written an amazingly lucid, comprehensive and analytic account of the development of the way in which thinking in the West has evolved over millennia.
Tarnas identifies brilliantly the bifurcations and break-points in the thinking processes and the ideas espoused by the Western Mind. This text is not a cook-book, rather it is an educational privilege to read Tarnas thinking and analysis.
The fundamental tension running through the text is between mans independence from the world (his dreams, hopes and fears) and his dependence on a physical universe that is indifferent to him (his needs for physical well being: food, warmth, community).
An example of this tension is where the 'reason v faith' dichotomy is reassessed by the Romantics in the nineteenth century:
"The early modern dichotomy between secular science and the Christian religion, now became a more general schism between scientific rationalism on the one hand and the multifaceted Romantic humanistic culture on the other, with the latter now including a diversity of religious and philosophical perspectives loosely allied with the literary and artistic tradition."
In this way modern man has an "inner culture" of art, literature and religion while at the same time having an "outer culture" of nature, the cosmos and the limits of what it is possible to know.
Everywhere man finds himself free, but bounded, in a new set of double truths: inner-outer, subject-object, man-world, humanities-science. In short man became divided within and without. As Tarnas says "Modern man was a divided animal, inexplicably self-aware in an indifferent universe."
And so man has become trapped in a world of his own ideas and making. Tarnas says: `The crisis of modern man is an essentially masculine crisis.' It is at this point he suggests a surprising way forward. He points away from the masculine, and towards the feminine.
He suggests `the greatest passion of the western mind has been to reunite with the ground of its own being.' In short to come to terms with the great feminine principal in life which preserves human autonomy, while also transcending human alienation.
Tarnas ends with an intriguing question: "... why has the pervasive masculinity of the Western intellectual and spiritual tradition suddenly become so apparent to us today, while it remained so invisible to almost every previous generation?" His answer follows Hegel "... a civilization cannot become conscious of itself, cannot recognise its own significance, until it is so mature that it is approaching its own death."
And so is this the point of nuclear power, mutually assured destruction, global warming, AIDS, greed, avarice and the pernicious influence of globalization? That we are becoming aware of our death and are becoming ready to `reunite with the ground of our being.'
Perhaps there is a deeper meaning to the story about the Tree of Life and The Tree of Knowledge.
Tarnas' book is a fruitful educative source of learning and education. Well done Richard - five stars are yours.
Tarnas identifies brilliantly the bifurcations and break-points in the thinking processes and the ideas espoused by the Western Mind. This text is not a cook-book, rather it is an educational privilege to read Tarnas thinking and analysis.
The fundamental tension running through the text is between mans independence from the world (his dreams, hopes and fears) and his dependence on a physical universe that is indifferent to him (his needs for physical well being: food, warmth, community).
An example of this tension is where the 'reason v faith' dichotomy is reassessed by the Romantics in the nineteenth century:
"The early modern dichotomy between secular science and the Christian religion, now became a more general schism between scientific rationalism on the one hand and the multifaceted Romantic humanistic culture on the other, with the latter now including a diversity of religious and philosophical perspectives loosely allied with the literary and artistic tradition."
In this way modern man has an "inner culture" of art, literature and religion while at the same time having an "outer culture" of nature, the cosmos and the limits of what it is possible to know.
Everywhere man finds himself free, but bounded, in a new set of double truths: inner-outer, subject-object, man-world, humanities-science. In short man became divided within and without. As Tarnas says "Modern man was a divided animal, inexplicably self-aware in an indifferent universe."
And so man has become trapped in a world of his own ideas and making. Tarnas says: `The crisis of modern man is an essentially masculine crisis.' It is at this point he suggests a surprising way forward. He points away from the masculine, and towards the feminine.
He suggests `the greatest passion of the western mind has been to reunite with the ground of its own being.' In short to come to terms with the great feminine principal in life which preserves human autonomy, while also transcending human alienation.
Tarnas ends with an intriguing question: "... why has the pervasive masculinity of the Western intellectual and spiritual tradition suddenly become so apparent to us today, while it remained so invisible to almost every previous generation?" His answer follows Hegel "... a civilization cannot become conscious of itself, cannot recognise its own significance, until it is so mature that it is approaching its own death."
And so is this the point of nuclear power, mutually assured destruction, global warming, AIDS, greed, avarice and the pernicious influence of globalization? That we are becoming aware of our death and are becoming ready to `reunite with the ground of our being.'
Perhaps there is a deeper meaning to the story about the Tree of Life and The Tree of Knowledge.
Tarnas' book is a fruitful educative source of learning and education. Well done Richard - five stars are yours.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
beautifully written with a masterful grasp of the foundation of western ideas - author briliantly linked religion/science/philosophy into one single volume - Highly recommended for anyone who is interested in philosophy
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
a history of ideas; the best of its kind
The Passion of the Western Mind must be among the best studies in the History of Ideas ever written. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Mr. Robert Marsland
90% is excellent
The great majority of this book was - for this layman at least - a lucid and enjoyable account of the major ideas in Western philosophical, religious and scientific thought, from... Read more
Published 11 months ago by least weasel
rubbish history of the wester mind
I hated this book, and fumingly so, like an angry ghost, angry at the diagnoses of my dreary and pre-mundane reality. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Halifax Student Account
The book that replaces 20 others!
A great overview. seems dry at first but he does give a good balanced view.
Maybe too much to read from cover to cover, but very good to dip into. Read more
Maybe too much to read from cover to cover, but very good to dip into. Read more
Published on 29 April 2010 by M. Bould
Reunion with nature
Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind (1991, pocket edition 1993) offers an admirable survey, characterized by stringency and verbal intuition, Tarnas narrates the... Read more
Published on 10 Aug 2009 by Erland.Lagerroth
Superb - apart from the last bit!
This is without a doubt the most comprehensive, interesting and easy-to-read history of western philosophy I have ever read. Read more
Published on 23 Mar 2006
Passion of the Western Mind
This is the best of its kind on the history of the direction of western ideas, although its dense and on the occassion Tarnas tends to get bogged down in long sentenses, you get... Read more
Published on 22 Feb 2006
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