The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View [Paperback]

Richard Tarnas (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 16, 1993

"The most lucid and concise presentation I have read, of the grand lines of what every student should know about the history of Western thought. The writing is elegant and carries the reader with the momentum of a novel... It is really a noble performance."

--Joseph Campbell, 
author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Here are the great minds of Western civilization 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. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESTERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Tarnas charts the development of Western thought from the ancient Greeks, throwing a sharp light on ideas central to the modern outlook.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"It is a superb, enthralling book--a masterpiece: as gripping as a detective story; as moving as a poem. Tarnas writes lucidly, brilliantly, passionately, unfolding the great drama of the evolution of the Western mind act by act, scene by scene in precise and scholarly detail."

--Anne Baring, Resurgence

"One of the most illuminating, satisfying, beautifully written, lucidly argued--and important--books I have ever read."

--Keith Thompson, Utne Reader

"This brilliant classic is essential reading."

--David Lorimer
The Scientific and Medical Network Review

"The most thrilling narrative of the West's 3,000-year odyssey in pursuit of truth accessible to a broad public of which this reviewer is aware. . . . A work of genius."

--Harrison Sheppard, The Hellenic Journal

"[This] magnificent critical survey . . . allows readers to grasp the big picture of Western culture as if for the first time."

--Patricia Holt, San Francisco Chronicle

"It is stunning; it is brilliant; it is the single best book of intellectual history--in any field--that I have ever read."

--William Tanksley
Professor of English, Fordham University

"[This] magnificent critical survey, with its inherent respect for both the 'West's mainstream high culture' and the 'radically changing world' of the 1990s, offers a new breakthrough for lay and scholarly readers alike....Allows readers to grasp the big picture of Western culture for the first time."
- San Francisco Chronicle

"The Passion of the Western Mind is as fine an account of the story of the Western mind, in all of its complexity and tensions, as I believe exists anywhere."

--Dale Cannon
Professor of Philosophy, 
Western Oregon State College

"No other such overview provides, in equal compass, as clear and cogent a survey. Its scholarship is impeccable....For its length it is the best intellectual history of the West I have ever seen." --Huston Smith, Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley
"The most lucid and concise presentation I have read of the grand lines of what every student should know about the history of Western thought."--Joseph Campbell

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; Ballantine Book edition (March 16, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345368096
• ISBN-13: 978-0345368096
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (81 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #74,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #28 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Reference

More About the Author

Richard Tarnas was born in 1950 in Geneva, Switzerland, of American parents. He grew up in Michigan, where he studied Greek, Latin, and the classics under the Jesuits. In 1968 he entered Harvard, where he studied Western intellectual and cultural history and depth psychology, graduating with an A.B. cum laude in 1972. For ten years he lived and worked at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, studying with Joseph Campbell, Gregory Bateson, Huston Smith, James Hillman, and Stanislav Grof, and later served as director of programs and education. He received his Ph.D. from Saybrook Institute in 1976. From 1980 to 1990, he wrote The Passion of the Western Mind, a narrative history of Western thought which became a best seller and continues to be a widely used text in universities throughout the world. He is the founding director of the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he currently teaches. He gives many public lectures and workshops in the U.S. and abroad.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

95 of 99 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Passionate Mind - Note the Passion! December 9, 2005

By Marcus Anthony

Format:Paperback

The title of the book says it all, and not to be overlooked. This is a book that seeks to ascertain the passion that underpins the development of the western mind. Tarnas does a tremendous job of what is the Herculean task of tracing the roots of that development from the Ancient Greeks, through the birth of Christianity, the middle ages, the enlightenment and the birth of the modern world.

Make no mistake. This is NOT a text defining the means by which modernist science came to be the one and only defining truth of the cosmos. Those with a modern western mindset or scientific predilection might be lulled into this impression in the early chapters. But such an initial misunderstanding, to be fair to Tarnas, would be more due to the bias of the modern mind, rather than a function of the text. For throughout the development of his narrative, Tarnas is painstaking in his description of the interplay of the spiritual, the philosophical, and the empirical/scientific. I noted that a prior viewer fell into this trap, no doubt expecting Tarnas to conclude with a denunciation of the spiritual and philosophical vestiges of prehistory, depositing these schools into the waste bin of History, whilst announcing the triumph of the modernist worldview. Far from it. Tarnas' penultimate analysis examines what he calls "the crisis in modern science" and the emergence of postmodern thought, both of which undermined the roots of certainty. Yet the postmodernist too may be dismayed when Tarnas concludes in his epilogue with a broad sweep of the hand, finally positing an essentially spiritual teleological thrust to the very human development he has traced. It may be anathema to those within the dominant modernist science and postmodernist schools, where spirituality and grand narrative are respectively derided - but it is nonetheless a brave attempt to make sense of it all beyond the respective materialist and relativist stranglehold of the modern and postmodern discourses.

But it is not necessary to agree with Tarnas' worldview to benefit from this fine text. The 95% of the book that traces the history of the interplay between the often opposing spiritual/metaphysical and skeptical/empirical/scientific forces within western history is well worth the journey. I highly recommend the text for anybody wanting a broad overview of some of the most influential minds of the western world in the last three millennia.

It may be a little light on the twentieth century history of science. So, if you want a History of Science from the modernist perspective read John Gribbin's "Science: a History" or Andrew Gregory's "Eureka!" If you want a summative account of the modernist perspective on History/Evolution, read Bill Bryson's "A Brief History of Everything." But if you want something that broadens the horizons, Tarnas may be the man for you.

Marcus T. Anthony, author of "The Mind Reader" and "Integrated Intelligence."

41 of 43 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars At last I understood the roots of my Western education March 25, 2002

By Caroline Webb

Format:Paperback

I went to one of England's " best " schools, and a leading university where I studied Social Anthropology. I assumed I was well educated - until I read Rick Tarnas' book, sitting on a beach in India, and realized that I knew virtually nothing about the history of thought in the West. And I realized that without that knowledge, all that I thought I knew was rendered paper-thin. I could not put the book down. It was an incredible experience to trace the history of Europe, the West and thus the modern world, through the lens of philosophical, religious and scientific thinkers and, for the first time ever, feel that I could see the map, grasp the background to my own personal experience, and thereby address the ever more urgent questions arising in me about our world.

In addition to the question of at last becoming familiar with the underpinning of the Western way of thinking and acting, I found great pleasure in the way Richard Tarnas uses language. He writes with extraordinary lucidity and elegance. It drew me on, feeding my aesthetic appetite, which I found as important as the content, finally, for this book is an experience. It does what all writers hope for in their writing, but few can really achieve.

A few years after that experience, I ended up coming to study in the place where Rick Tarnas teaches, the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. I have found him to be as elegant a speaker and teacher as I found his writing to be.

My final thought is that this book should be required reading for ALL students in senior grades of high school, or in the first year of university - whether studying Sciences or Humanities. The way we think is of critical importance for the well-being of the world. The first essential step is to understand how we have got to where we are. From there a creative critique can be born. And at no time has it been more urgent that we learn everything we can about our habits of thought, and become capable of activating our creativity for a more functional, more equitable, more sustainable world. And a world that can value beauty in all its forms. All disciplines, the entire spectrum, developed as they have been in the European mind, need the contribution of aware, creative, innovative minds. This book helps us towards that goal.

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars No Value Judgments July 5, 2000

By Bruce Ware

Format:Paperback

I found this book to be an enjoyable introduction to the huge expanse of Western philosophy. It is obviously intended as a "jumping-off" point for individuals (non-professional philosophers) to go further on their own. I particularly enjoyed the Greek Enlightenment and Socrates sections.

The negative reviews on this list seem to be centered on Dr. Tarnas's equally enthusiastic presentation of the major philosophical movements throughout history. That is, he assiduously avoids assigning a value judgment to certain ideas simply because they turned out horribly. I think the reviewers would prefer to see him assign a value, rather than present these ideas uncritically, writing about all the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Patently, the interested student will go on and conduct his own research, creating for himself the principles upon which to assign a value judgment. I have discounted postmodernism and Marxism based on my further readings, readings that I would not have done if not for the enthusiasm of Tarnas's work.