Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Buy Used
£2.80
Used: Good | Details
Sold by Tree Savers
Fulfilled by Amazon
Condition: Used: Good
Comment: A used book that is in good, clean condition. Your item will be picked, packed and posted FREE to you within the UK by Amazon, also eligible for super saver delivery.

Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) is a service Amazon offers sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's warehouses, and Amazon directly does the picking, packing, shipping and customer service on these items. Something Amazon hopes you'll especially enjoy: FBA items are eligible for and for Amazon Prime just as if they were Amazon items.

If you're a seller, you can increase your sales significantly by using Fulfilment by Amazon. We invite you to learn more about this programme .

Have one to sell?
Sell on Amazon
Flip to back Flip to front
Listen Playing... Paused   You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more
See this image

The Passion Of The Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View Paperback – 4 Jul 1996

by
Richard Tarnas (Author)
› Visit Amazon's Richard Tarnas Page
search results for this author
Richard Tarnas (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars 15 customer reviews
See all formats and editions Hide other formats and editions
Amazon Price
New from Used from
Kindle Edition
"Please retry"
£9.99
— —
Hardcover
"Please retry"
—
£42.17 £12.25
Paperback
"Please retry"
£16.54
£9.35 £9.80
Paperback, 4 Jul 1996
—
£27.35 £0.01

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.
Back
  1. Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View
    Richard Tarnas
    3.7 out of 5 stars 6
    Paperback
    £17.99 Amazon Prime
  2. Christ and Culture (Torchbooks)
    H. Richard Niebuhr
    4.2 out of 5 stars 4
    Paperback
    £11.99 Amazon Prime
  3. Prometheus the Awakener: Essay on the Archetypal Meaning of the Planet Uranus (Dunquin Series)
    Richard Tarnas
    5.0 out of 5 stars 2
    Paperback
  4. The Story of Art Pocket Edition
    EH Gombrich
    4.8 out of 5 stars 29
    Paperback
    £14.86 Amazon Prime
  5. Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead
    Tosha Silver
    4.8 out of 5 stars 57
    Hardcover
    £13.48 Amazon Prime
  6. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
    Iain Mcgilchrist
    4.5 out of 5 stars 71
    Paperback
    £12.99 Amazon Prime
Next

Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

  • Apple
  • Android
  • Windows Phone

To get the free app, enter your e-mail address or mobile phone number.

Product details

  • Paperback: 560 pages
  • Publisher: Pimlico (4 July 1996)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0712673326
  • ISBN-13: 978-0712673327
  • Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 3.4 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 871,657 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Review

"The most thrilling narrative of the West's 3000-year odyssey in pursuit of truth accessible to a broad public. . . A work of genius." (Hellenic Journal)

"[This] magnificent critical survey, with its inherent respect for both the 'West's mainstream high culture' and the 'radically changing world' of the 1990s, offers a new breakthrough for lay and scholarly readers alike. . . Allows readers to grasp the big picture of Western culture as if for the first time." (San Francisco Chronicle)

"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)

"quite brilliant" (Vera Rule 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

See all Product Description

Inside This Book

(Learn More)
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

Customer Reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
5 star
12
4 star
3
3 star
0
2 star
0
1 star
0
See all 15 customer reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Top Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsA unique reading experience
By A Customer on 16 Sept. 1999
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.
1 Comment 31 of 33 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsLife and Death in the Western Mind
By BookMaven on 23 Aug. 2007
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.Read more ›
1 Comment 27 of 29 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsa history of ideas; the best of its kind
By Mr. Robert Marsland on 9 Sept. 2011
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
The Passion of the Western Mind must be among the best studies in the History of Ideas ever written. It charts man's passage from the enchanted world of Ancient Greece through to the current disenchanted postmodern situation. On the whole he gives a thoroughly objective account of each era and examples to show his arguments. A must read for any reflective person.
Comment 6 of 6 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsReunion with nature
By Erland.Lagerroth on 10 Aug. 2009
Format: Paperback
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 history of the Western mind up to our days, and in this way shows how our world view originated - the world view where Man monopolized conscious intelligence, while cosmos is turned blind and mechanistic, and God is dead. Man has become a stranger in his own world. This, however, has generated a longing for the communion that was lost. The deepest passion of the Western mind, Tarnas means, is to transcend this worldview by a reunion with Nature, from which Man once emerged. "The telos, the inner direction and goal of the Western mind has been to reconnect with the cosmos in a mature participation mystique, to surrender itself freely and consciously in the embrace of a larger unity that preserves human autonomy while also transcending human alienation" (p. 443 f). This, one might say, is the same idea and feeling that is found in Selma Lagerlöf's compositions on Man and Nature, and in Prigogine's demonstration that the whole world - Man included - functions as self-organizing systems.
Comment 2 of 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsmagnificent
By yl on 31 Mar. 2006
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
Comment 10 of 11 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsThe book that replaces 20 others!
By M. Bould on 29 April 2010
Format: Paperback
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.
Think of a philosopher and read a resume of his ideas.
(By the way, women were not allowed to think until the 20th century...)
Comment 3 of 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
4.0 out of 5 starsSuperb - apart from the last bit!
By A Customer on 23 Mar. 2006
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
This is without a doubt the most comprehensive, interesting and easy-to-read history of western philosophy I have ever read. By presenting the evolution of thought in an unbiased way, Tarnas allows the reader to formulate their own opinions about the development of the western mind and the meanings behind it. I genuinely could not put this book down in parts and have found that it has vastly increased my understanding of other philosophical subjects by providing the big picture.
However: I would strongly recommend that you skip the prologue at the end of the book. After a monumental and groundbreaking analysis of western thought, Tarnas proceeds to deliver one the most bizarre and fantastic personal theories I have ever read. This is not to say that it isn't valid, it just doesn't fit well at the end of such an impartial book.
Nevertheless, this should definitely be read by anyone wanting to gain a better understanding of the roots of philosophy, psychology etc.
Comment 10 of 12 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse

There's a problem loading this menu at the moment.

Learn more about Amazon Prime.

Look for similar items by category

Feedback