lunachick

The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas.

I started reading it while on holiday last week. It's slow going for a high school expellee (is that a word?) like myself, but I'm learning much. Based on what I've read so far - which is only the section on the Greek World View, at this stage - I enthusiastically recommend it to anyone with an interest in philosophy and how our present Western world view has been shaped by the great minds of the past.

The back cover blurb reads as follows:

"Here are the great minds of Western civilisation and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud. Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them."

"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."


Thank you for writing this book, Richard Tarnas. Much obliged.