the passion of the western mind by richard tarnas

The contemporary world of postmodern thought, according to Tarnas, is caught 'between the inner craving for a life of meaning and the relentless attrition of existence in a cosmos that our rational scientific world view has assured us is empty, dead, devoid of all purpose.'

Thus the modern condition begins as a Promethean movement toward human freedom, toward autonomy from the encompassing matrix of nature, toward individuation from the collective, yet gradually and ineluctably the Cartesian-Kantian condition evolves into a Kafka-Beckett-like state of existential isolation and absurdity-an intolerable double bind leading to a kind of deconstructive frenzy. Finally, in postmodern thought, meaning is seen as projected onto or constructed in an empty, meaningless world. 20th century man tended to find spirituality in modern psychology rather than in traditional religion. Eventually, mankind became disenchanted with and alienated from the world. With the Scientific Revolution, and subsequent secularization of Europe, the overwhelming success of science and technology eroded belief in the existence of the transcendent God. The human subject, on the other hand, became empowered, liberated, and autonomous. Mankind began to see the world as an objective reality which can be studied by science and manipulated with technology. The cosmos became a de-sacralized object, which is no longer imbued with divinity and meaning.

In monotheistic religion, God is transcendent. The rise of the great monotheistic religions began with the Axial age in the sixth century BCE. Tarnas first describes the ancient world view, in which the self is undifferentiated from the world-soul in a participation mystique.

He proposes that a potential resolution, which he calls the participatory framework, has also been in development in the West for centuries. He then argues that with the advent of postmodernism, the modern world is in a serious spiritual crisis, which manifests as the global ecological crisis. Tarnas outlines the intellectual-cultural development of the modern world view from its origins in Greek and Judaeo-Christian mythologies. Tarnas argues that the movement from the Greek and Christian world views, through modernity and to postmodernism can be seen as a natural and dialectical unfolding of a collective mind or psyche. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View is a 1991 book by the cultural historian Richard Tarnas.

The passion of the western mind by richard tarnas