Beyond the Post-Modern Mind, Third and Updated Edition: The Place of Meaning in a Global Civilization (Paperback)

~ (Author) "If we think of contemporary Westerners from all walks of life and the numberless directions in which their hopes and thoughts extend, we can only..." (more)
Key Phrases: modern religion, sacred unconscious, incredible assumption, Great Origins, Perennial Philosophy, Flakes of Fire (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An invaluable collection of essays by the foremost religious writer in America today." --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Description

"Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods," says Huston Smith, "but a new metaphysics can rescue us." In this new revised edition, Smith explores the "dark woods"—modernity—which can be characterized by a loss of faith in transcendence. Through his fourteen critically acclaimed essays, he invites us to step outside our current Western outlook to see our worldview in perspective. He distinguishes between the "traditional" worldview that placed God at the center of the universe; the "modern" view in which science ruled; and the "postmodern" view that doubts whether the universe makes sense at all.

Smith begins by tracing the course of Western civilization that has brought it to the postmodern period. This enables him to establish a vantage point for viewing the Modern/Postmodern scene, and then to examine several aspects of contemporary culture, such as science, theology, education, and the humanities. In the final chapters, Smith offers suggestions for moving out of the woods and into a twenty-first century that affirms the ultimate truths of love, the human soul, and the Divine. With a new preface and a new final chapter, this edition proves to be a guiding light in a time of doubt.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Quest Books; Third Edition edition (July 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0835608301
• ISBN-13: 978-0835608305
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #304,054 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book if you're interested in alternative worldviews., June 8, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Beyond the Post-Modern Mind (Quest Book) (Paperback)

The book is a collection of speeches and journal articles written by Huston Smith over the last few decades. From previous experience, I know that Professor Smith has a penchant for presenting complex topics in a readily accessible form. While I like this about his writing, I feel that he does not describe these terms in all of their complexity. The essays are polemical in nature and focus on Professor Smith's desire to revive metaphysics especially ontology and redirect modern epistemology away from control and towards awareness. As important as these topics are, I felt that Professor Smith avoided the social and political nature of any type of knowledge. Since I believe that this is one of post-modernism's thorniest critiques, time and space must be given to the real-time consequences of imposition of his hierarchic ontology. On the other hand, as a person of faith, this collect of essays challenges my worldview and forces me to consider how I have made space for a transcendent reality within the West's naturalistic worldview.

45 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The good, the bad, and the ugly., June 16, 2001

By	New Age of Barbarism "zosimos" (EVROPA.) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Beyond the Post-Modern Mind (Quest Book) (Paperback)

I read this book hoping for a much needed clarion call for a return to tradition, a la Rene Guenon and Fritjof Schuon, et al. I was somewhat dissappointed. Anyway:

The good. In this book, Huston Smith a professor of religion presents a series of essays about overcoming the post-modern (or as it's now spelled "postmodern") worldview and re-establishing metaphysics with an emphasis on transcendence. He presents a unique Weltanschauung based upon the world's major religions and a return to traditionalist thought. In this much, I agree with him. His version of perennialism, the primordial philosophy, is far better than the nonsense that passes for philosophy under the guise of post-modernism (postmodernism).

The bad. The problem is that Smith seems to think that all the evils of the West can be attributed to that universal bugbear science, and its growing infiltration into the humanities and philosophy. He is correct in that science is the guiding principle (dare I say, religion) of our times. However, the problem is that he takes this anti-scientism to an absurd extreme. Saying that science (and it's practical application in technology) is the sole cause of the loss of transcendence within our worldview is about as goofy as saying that it can be blamed on "mixing with inferior races". For instance, while the Darwinian theory certainly has problem areas and is ultimately rooted (in perhaps suspect) philosophical assumptions, his dismissal of it strikes me as incredibly facile. At the risk psychologizing things, and thereby engaging in a veiled argumentum ad hominem, I believe his problem with science might best be explained as a personal dislike attributable to working as a professor of religion and philosophy at MIT, a school devoted almost entirely to science and engineering. Perhaps a little bitterness at his colleagues crept in here. Sorry for that.

The ugly. Finally, it's a minor point, but good heavens. Someone needs to tell this guy that outside of the snooty confines of academia no one gives a care about whether you refer to them as "humans", "man", "woman", "womyn", or whatever. Chiding G. K. Chesterton (a conservative Catholic writer) for not being politically correct and referring to humanity in the masculine form "man" is about as ridiculous as someone saying Hitler's _Mein Kampf_ is "marred by an anti-Jewish bias". Sorry for that, but these things need to be said folks. It gets annoying.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There Will be Some Who Will Understand, April 17, 2009

By	OAKSHAMAN "oakshaman" (Algoma, WI United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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While I would not necessarily recommend this book as a first introduction to the Perennial Philosophy, I would recommend it as the best single volume critique of the Modern Western Mindset. Indeed, I wish that this book would have been available in my younger years when I intuitively knew that there was something inherently wrong with the modern worldview yet I was not scholar enough to pin it down. Fortunately, Huston Smith is such a scholar.

While the chapters on the Perennial Philosophy and the relevance of the great religions are concise and to the point, it is the way that he deconstructs the deconstructionists that is unique and powerful. The way he proceeds to point out the flaws in the basic assumptions of the major modern schools of philosophy is refreshing to say the least. There is really no convincing foundation to the materialist (or naturalist) mindset. The scientism and dualist mindset that has grown to dominate the West since the 17th century has no real justifiable basis. The major thinkers in modern philosophy recognize this and have declared their own discipline as dead- except in the most technical and relatively insignificant technical areas. When they conspired to kill metaphysics they killed the source of all possible meaning in the world.

Still, it is not all an attack on modernity. When the author mentioned his discovery of Schuon's works I knew exactly the excitement that he was talking about. They served to validate conclusions that had been brewing in my mind for some time. In the same way, this book has served as a powerful validation.

One thing that jumped out at me was his discussion of the alienation and atomization that characterizes modern life. It is a direct result of the dualist mindset that has gained dominance over the past several centuries. So much of our lives are compartimentalized into separate closed boxes that no one sees us as total human beings- and as such they cannot reflect back this complete understanding to us. Combine this with bankrupt modern philosophies that deny even the possibility of meaning in the world- or our ability to even know reality- and you have the dehumanizing mess that that passes for modernity.

The author repeats the argument of Mara the Tempter when he tried to persuade the Buddha not to teach. The Buddha was told that it was hopeless since no one would be able to fathom his teachings. His response was, " There will be some who will understand."