The (Coming) Age of Thresholding [Hardcover]

S.A. Erickson (Author), Stephen A. Erickson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0792359380 | ISBN-13: 978-0792359388 | Publication Date: August 31, 1999 | Edition: 1

As a philosopher, Stephen Erickson considers himself a messenger of sorts and the message he is delivering is an important and groundbreaking one. He convincingly argues that we are entering into a new historical moment, a period which will only be properly defined and named by those who come after us, as were the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Erickson predicts a failure and eventual breakdown of traditional values and institutions resulting in a dramatic change in our understanding of human life. This he illustrates with clear examples from contemporary political, economic and religious circumstances. To lessen the impact of this dramatic changeover, which will be initially experienced as upheaval and global anxiety, Erickson argues that we must do all we can to come into this new era, which he has called The Age of Thresholding, with a better understanding of our past and present. Only then can the message our future holds be properly received and understood. Many have asked why and when our century's values came into being, and why they have been sustained in the manner in which they have. These are legitimate historical questions, and I hope to supply some answers. But other questions should be directed toward our future. Over what threshold might we be crossing and what will have been ventured? What will have been gained, and what will be left behind? from The (Coming) Age of Thresholding

Editorial Reviews

Review

`Fascinating! I hope Steve Erickson is right, because if he isn't, I'm not sure how much longer I want to be here.' John Cleese, London, UK `Professor Erickson's concept of thresholding is highly illuminating, a guide to the perplexed who want to think seriously about how to find their way through the new era we have entered but the shape of which we do not yet fully discern. He is no false prophet. He makes one really pause and think through our situation and what it may portend. Amid all the books published on the eve of the millennium this is one to study carefully.' Timothy Fuller, Professor of Political Science, Colorado College, USA

Product Details

• Hardcover: 308 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (August 31, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792359380
• ISBN-13: 978-0792359388
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,625,330 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Book for a New Era, April 18, 2001

By 

John A. McCumber (Evanston, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The (Coming) Age of Thresholding (Hardcover)

Strange things are happening. The world population is surging, but the world economy is surging even faster, overall. Educational institutions are expanding to meet the challenge, but what students increasingly acquire from them is merely isolated skills, which are less and less useful in an increasingly simplified working world. Much of the formerly Communist world tries to recover from complete disaster, while much of the rest seems to be trying to "recover" from politics altogether, for democracy as prascticed in the West has somehow led to extreme disillusionment. Established religions are losing members, while spirituality of various other, less traditional sorts flourishes. Enlightenment reason finds itself under postmodern attack. And so on. The question of whether all these trends, and many others, are separate from each other or whether they are all symptoms of some still larger historical change is one few thinkers are equipped to face--those with the knowledge often lack the courage. Pomona College philosopher Stephen Erickson has both, and in this book argues that all these changes, and many more, are signs of an epochal historical shift on a scale with the birth of modernity itself some three hundred years ago. The most important harbingers of this shift, however, are not sociopolitical trends like the ones I have mentioned (though Erickson discusses them and many others), but people. His belief is that an increasing, but still relatively small, number of people find themselves profoundly out of step with their cultural surroundings, and that from these people will come the new age of his book: the age of thresholding. To see how subtle this argument is, note how hard it is even to formulate the thought that an important historical shift could take place through individuals. Doing that would require us to abandon both communitarian models, on which individuals are the objects of historical change rather than its instigators, and individualisic ones on which individuals are independent of all circumstances and thus of history itself. Even to formulate the idea of such an historical change requires us, in short, to view individuals as the necesary vehicles of meanings that are other and greater than they. And this is nothing less than the recovery of a sacral dimension--one which has been occluded by three hundred years of veiwing human as essentially economic and attempting to secure for them their proper spheres of control and agency. If intelligent response to the basic parameters of life is philosophy, then Erickson's threshholder is thus someone who lives in the service of a sacrally responsive philosophy. Philosophy is becoming central to ourt species in a way not seen since, perhaps, ancient Athens. Beyond that, Erickson believes, not much can be said about the age of threshholding; we are too early in the shift for its place of arrival to be described. Erickson's book, then, is less a description of an historical transition ,or even an argument that one is beginning, than an attempt to draw the reader into it,. to teach her to think in a "threshholding" way. As such, its prose is compelling but enigmatic, at least at first. A difficult book, but an important one for any reflective human being.

5.0 out of 5 stars mujahed ahmed M.D., June 28, 2010

By 

mikeahm - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The (Coming) Age of Thresholding (Hardcover)

This is truly one of the best works I have read. I also have heard this author on teaching co. course. The idea of thresholding is more true now than when this book was first published.
I recomend this work very highly