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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mind-Boggling Intellectual Tour De Force!, February 10, 2001
This review is from: Crossing the Postmodern Divide (Paperback)
This is a fascinatingly interesting, endlessly provocative, and eminently worthwhile read penned by a thoughtful philosopher who seems to have one foot in the heavens and the other planted firmly in every-day life. Borgmann serves up a busman's tour of history, ranging from observations on icons such as Bacon, Descartes, and Locke, yet at the same time coldly,cautiously, and carefully illustrating how we have lost so much more than we have gained in our earnest struggle to free ourselves from tradition and its hold on us, as we have increasingly become the mindlessly individualistic souls so boldly detached from any meaningful connection to one another that we have now become both socially and spiritually bereft, strangers in a strange land indeed. Borgmann's view of contemporary society offers us nothing that others have not written even more eloquently about elsewhere; his gift to us is rather to illustrate with uncommon verve and precision exactly how the our dance in the history of ideas as well as our enthusiastic embrace of materialism has acted to gradually bankrupt us in terms of having any real meaningful sense of who we really are and why it is we are alive. According to the author, we are now living in circumstances so far estranged from any kind of natural connection to or relationship with the environment that we seem to believe that whatever artificially created surroundings we may have are mere furniture, incidental and unconnected to us or how we experience our lives, and therefore we cannot understand the ways in which this "mere furniture" fatefully influences and determines our own possibilities, both in terms of our material well being, and for Borgmann, at least, also in terms of our waning recognition of the possibility of any substantial spiritual existence. This is indeed a rather breath-taking vision, one that both encapsulates prior history, and also places that history in context as the meaningful prologue to what now exists. We have confidently left behind any belief in meaningful central authority, are ardently enthusiastic believers in the unalloyed superiority of the rational mode of thought, and are bravely rational progressives in the sense we take mere "material progress" to be the greatest possible good. Now at long last we awake from five centuries of striving to be free to find ourselves locked into a wide-open world of someone else's design, suddenly left in the lap of material luxury to try to cope with forces we neither understand nor fully appreciate in terms of their magnitude or consequence. Instead, we tune into the shallow commonweal of the media, where all things are hyped, and where nothing is scared, other than the stock market and the supposed spread of individual wealth. Is it any wonder we have collectively lost faith in the power of the present to satisfy us, or become suspicious that the future holds little but more of the same vacuous fare? As another reviewer states, it seems the more we grasp for meaning, the more ghostly our existences become. Borgmann, true to his beliefs, underscores the desperate need each of us has to find meaningful connection in the community of our peers. We must strive to overcome our addiction to living lives of material inconsequentiality by devoting ore energy and resources to exploring our common humanity with others in our own habitat. For in the end, according to Borgmann, it is as simple (and as problematic) as having the good sense to establish more human connections to our colleagues, neighbors, and friends. We need a life, according to Borgmann, richer in social interaction and shared community as opposed to continue to seek material ends. This is a book I highly recommend. Enjoy!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Post-modernism done post-modernly, July 11, 2011
This review is from: Crossing the Postmodern Divide (Paperback)
This is a strange book for those of us who are not philosophers. This review GREATLY differs from the others based on context and development.
On the positive side, the first three chapters do an excellent job of developing the themes and recapitulating general philosophical trends for the reader. One does not need to be a thoroughly read exegete of philosophy to understand the text, which is the impression one would get based on the other verbose and grandiloquent reviews.
On the negative side, the fourth chapter which is really the authors personal development falls short of clarity and new and incisive exposition. The reader who will have been drawn in by the first three chapters wonders what the fourth has to do with the previous three. This may really be a lack of good writing, as ideas become bogged down in vagaries.
This is even more problematic when the fifth and final chapter seems to disregard the entire book and delves wholeheartedly into urbanism and urban planning. While I liked this chapter and found it interesting, the linkage between this chapter and the previous four is tenuous at best. An entire book based on just the final chapter would have been more successful I believe. It is this continuous transition from abstraction to specificity that is the undoing of the text. To insist that the text was written in a way to mimic the 'crisis' of post-modernity would be ludicrous and I believe can be better attributed to lack of focus and an unmoored sense of the subject.
Finally there is a last moment delving into religion and its equation to democratic norms! When has real religious belief and practice across the centuries and continents ever been tied to contemporary notions of 'democracy'. Even the ancient Greeks knew better!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
And What a Twisting and Beautiful Terrain It Can Be...., December 29, 2007
This review is from: Crossing the Postmodern Divide (Paperback)
When reading philosophical monographs, the reader often finds him/herself in a maze of convoluted text that requires no small amount of eyebrow-furrowing and concentration to decode. Is it possible that the confusing landscape of social and conceptual issues of the postmodern condition could be plainly and poetically delivered in philosophical discourse? Albert Borgmann's volume "Crossing the Postmodern Divide" manages to do just this. It is an entrancing and fascinating read that guides the reader through a few of the philosophical conditions of modernism, traces their evolution into postmodernity, predicts the outcomes of these conditions, and proposes possible solutions to the less desirable aspects of these conditions.
Although Borgmann is not completely flawless in his logic, nor is he without his own bias, his analysis and conclusions "feel" right. Modernism, in light of Bacon's "aggressive realism," Descartes' "methodical universalism," and Locke's "ambiguous individualism," seems to directly relate to the postmodern ideals of "information processing," flexible specialization," and "informed cooperation."
Borgmann sees the postmodern atmosphere as transitional. He seems to feel that unless a newfound emphasis on local community is found, it will lead to "hypermodernity," in which the present dichotomy of sullenness and hyperactivity will create an unbridgeable gap between the real and unreal. In this scenario, the "hyperreality" of video games, movies, recorded music, and the undifferentiated commodification that shopping malls (much less online commerce) represent will come to dislodge us from everyday experience.
The Lowdown: I would suggest "Crossing the Postmodern Divide" to just about anyone who has an interest in the way in which the present-day world is shaped and is being shaped by Western ideals. Despite its 1993 publication date, it predicts a hauntingly familiar picture of the way in which a simple Amazon review can simultaneously contribute to and detract from contemporary reality.
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