Tarnas - The passion of the Western mind : understanding the ideas that have shaped our world view

THE BEST HISTORY OF WESTERN THOUGHT I HAVE READ. MASTERFUL.

Robert A. McDermott
Chairman, Philosophy Department
Baruch College, City University of New York

An extraordinary work of scholarship. It not only places the history of Western thought in perspective, but derives new insights concerning the evolution of our thinking and the future of the whole human enterprise.

John E. Mack
Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Pulitzer Prizewinning author of A Prince of Our
Disorder and The Alchemy of Survival

This is the most creative and comprehensive treatment of the history of Western thought I know. The book is a real masterpiece.

Stanislav Grof
Professor of Psychology
California Institute of Integral Studies
Author of Realms of the Human Unconscious
and Beyond the Brain

I revelled in the intellectual pleasure and stimulation it gave me from beginning to end. And when I got to the end, I wanted to read it all over again. I have added it to a small set of booksabout ten, and including my dictionary, the Bible, etc.which sit in my permanent collection on my desk. A perfect book, without flaw. No accolade would be excessive.

Kenneth Ring
Professor of Psychology, University of Connecticut
Author of The Omega Project

AN INTELLECTUAL TOUR DE FORCE

that presents a brilliant overview of the development of the Western world view in accessible form. The summary of the postmodern mind alone is worth the price of the book.

Stanley Krippner
Professor of Psychology
Saybrook Institute

A work of high adventure and intellectual daring.

Gary Lachman
Bodhi Tree Review

The Passion of the Western Mind is a masterful chronicle of the roots and major flowerings of the Western search for understanding, from the pre-Socratic Greeks to the present day. It is also a powerful, multi-layered synthesis that precisely integrates the philosophic, spiritual, and scientific dimensions of that search, and prophesies its coming transformation. A great work of art, an original illumination.

Harrison Sheppard
The Hellenic Journal

[Tarnas] has succeeded in weighing thousands of facts and welding them together into a breathtaking intellectual synthesis, presented in accomplished prose.

Georg Feuerstein, Spectrum Review

A sweeping intellectual overview of the emergence and evolution of human thought from the earliest times down to the present day. With this volume Richard Tarnas goes a long way toward establishing himself as a modern day Encyclopaedist.

The New England Review of Books

SUCCEEDS SPECTACULARLY AN EXCITING READ, A PAGE-BURNER.

Robert Craft
The Quest

Exceptionally well-organized extremely well-written. Above all, it is replete with insights that go off like wonderful little firecrackers throughout the text. Its radically interdisciplinary nature explicitly calls into question the division of knowledge into fields, which is, to be sure, a large part of the point of the tale and its significance: not trees, but the whole jungle in compelling articulation. [The book includes] the most concise and compelling account of early Christian history that I have ever read.

David L. Miller
Professor of Religion, Syracuse University
author of The New Polytheism

Richard Tarnas possesses a fascinating lucidity, and in The Passion of the Western Mind moves with ease among complex matters without sacrificing a bit of their complexity.

Jeffrey Hart
National Review

An important new interpretation for the comprehension of history, culture, and humanity itself. Uncompromising clarity, breadth, and simplicity.

Kevan Prosnick
The Inner Door

Truly on the cutting edge of thinking.

Harvard Center for Psychological Studies
in the Nuclear Age

AN INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURE,

this challenging synthesis throws a sharp light on ideas central to the modern outlook.

Publishers Weekly

Brilliantly conveys the drama of conflicting questions about mind and matter, faith and reason, cosmology and science, freedom and determinism. An essential guidebook to the permanent wisdom of past philosophers.

Joseph F. Keppler
The Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer

No other such overview provides, in equal compass, as clear and cogent a survey. Its scholarship is impeccable.

Huston Smith, Professor of Religious Studies
University of California, Berkeley, author of
The Worlds Religions and Beyond the Postmodern Mind

A measure of his success is that even those parts of the story which are familiar, are heard now with a renewed and deepened sense of their character, complexity, and paradox.

Eugene Fontinell
Cross Currents

Richard Tarnas speaks to our condition as humans alive at the end of the 20th century. Tarnas has accumulated a staggering amount of data, yet he spares us the confusion this knowledge could create in our minds. How does he manage this? He tells us not primarily about the things his mind has grasped, but rather about the things that have grasped his mind. Thus, his account grasps the readers mind, too.

David Steindl-Rast
coauthor of Belonging to the Universe

A GREAT BOOK

A passionate book about history, the ecstasy of thought, and thoughts relationship to the mystery of life. Its brilliance, craftsmanship, and courageousness should not be missed.

Walter R. Christie
Chrysalis

It is difficult to overpraise what Tarnas has accomplished. He has produced a much needed contemporary guide for the perplexed, a comprehensive yet readily accessible map of the potentially bewildering territory of Western intellectual history.

Sean M. Kelly
The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal

A compelling narrative history of the evolving Western world viewthe Western mind and spiritas seen through the pivotal interaction between philosophy, religion, and science. [Written] with the insight of a psychologist and the artistry of a novelist.

Keith Thompson
Utne Reader

Tarnas is one of those rare but valuable people who match a deep and lasting vision with impeccable scholarship, balance, and the sheer effort required to create something of world-changing quality.

Renn Butler
Common Ground

As close to perfect as any human project has a right to be.

Deane Juhan
Author of Jobs Body

A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Copyright 1991 by Richard Tarnas

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

This edition published by arrangement with Harmony Books, a division of Crown Publishers, Inc., New York.