Integral Bibliography of the Self
unedited raw material of a bibliographic project undertaken in 2006
Bibliography
1. FIRST QUADRANT: THE EVOLUTION OF THE SELF (the evolution of the subject as an individual with his ‘inner’ life)
table of contents part one
- 1.1 Introduction: the self / the individual 3 - THE SELF AND ITS GENESIS 3 - THE SELF TODAY 8 - THE SELF TOMORROW 10 - THE SELF IN ITS DEVELOPMENT/EVOLUTION (STAGE THEORIES) 12 - INDIVIDUALISM AND ITS EVOLUTION 18 - THE SELF AND THE WORLD/ THE EXISTENTIAL CHALLENGE 21 - 1.2 aspects of the self 23 - THE SELF AND ITS AESTHETIC JUDGMENT (ART, TASTE) 23 - THE SELF AND THE BODY 24 - THE SELF AND ITS CARE: PSYCHOLOGY 25 - THE SELF AND ITS EMOTIONS 27 - THE SELF AND ITS POWERS 30 - THE SELF AND ITS RATIONALITY 31 - 1.3 organisation by mode of consciousness / historical epoch 36 - CONSCIOUSNESS (GENERALITIES) 36 - THE UNCONSCIOUS: GENERALITIES 37 - THE ARCHAIC MODE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 37 - THE MAGICAL MODE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 38 - THE MYTHOLOGICAL MODE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 40 - MENTAL/RATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS 44 - THE INTEGRAL MODE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 45 - POSTRATIONAL/SPIRITUAL FORMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 48 - 1.4 organisation by topic 49 - CHILDHOOD 49 - DEATH AND DYING 50 - EVIL 50 - LANGUAGE 51 - MEMORY 51 - NARCISSISM 52 - NATURE (relationship with) 52 - PSYCHEDELICS 52 - TIME 53 - VIOLENCE 55 1.5 Subjective values: the quest for Truth, Beauty and the Good 56 THE QUEST FOR TRUTH 57 THE QUEST FOR THE GOOD 57 THE QUEST FOR BEAUTY 57
bibliography
HOW TO READ ABOUT THE SELF?
This bibliography covers the genesis, evolution and future of the subject, i.e. the self, the individual, and human consciousness in general.
First, we would want to know how this self came about (1.1), with extra subsections on our detachment from animality and the biological basis of the self, and how some philosophers have conceived the self. After an understanding of its genesis, we look at the self today, i.e. the modern unified self, but also the postmodern diversified self. We should of course investigate the possibilities of going beyond selfhood as well, a possibility which is especially described in the eastern religions and according to these traditions, attainable through meditative and contemplative practices or ‘psychotechnologies’. Next comes an overview of developmental theories, i.e. stage conceptions of the self, whereby the self is not seen as a permanently fixed identity, but seen in its evolution from one state of equilibrium to another. Since the self is a developing entity, integration becomes important and hence we add a subsection on integrative approaches, and another on moral development in particular. The latter area has been characterised by discussions about gender-specificity.
Next, we pay particular attention to the specific condition of individualism, the dominant mode of being in contemporary times, and whether in can be transcended. An important subsection, only in its starting phase, concerns the ‘existential’ positioning of the self in the world, and should introduce some of the basic philosophical and spiritual answers that have been given to the human predicament.
After this, we will examine particular aspects or qualities of the self (1.2): the sense of beauty (art and aesthetics), the relationship of the self with the body and the emotions; an important subsection concerns the place of reason, and what we could call the ‘Crisis of Reason’; with particular attention to the instrumentalisation of reason in our current economic system, its relations with the irrational, which includes the imagination, the imaginal, symbolism, and religious belief.
The third section examines the evolution of consciousness in historical time, in the forms of typical ‘constellations of consciousness’, as defined by integral philosophers such as Jean Gebser, Wilber, and others. Hence, there is a correlation between the psychogenesis of individuals, mentioned in a section above, with the sociogenesis of society. This section includes works that can help us to understand what are called the archaic, magical, mythological, mental-rational, and integral consciousness. It should be followed by sections on the transmental stages, sometimes defined (as by Ken Wilber) as the psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual stages. We intend to identify some works related to the physical basis of consciousness, as disclosed by the rapidly expanding field of the cognitive sciences.
Finally, the last section makes room for extra topics that are strongly related to the development of the self, such as: childhood, death and dying, evil, language, memory, narcissism, psychedelics, the relationship with nature, time, with in particular a side note on our contemporary culture of speed, violence, with a sidenote on psychic violence or the psychic basis of violence, i.e. authoritarianism.
A future concluding section will contain works on the quest for truth, beauty, and the good, starting from the traditional conception that the evolved human being has three basic immaterial needs: the metaphysical need for truth, the esthetic need for beauty, and the ethic need for the good. In a contrasting section on Intersubjectivety (quadrant four), we will pay more attention to intersubjective values such as equality, fraternity, and freedom.
- 1.1 Introduction: the self / the individual
- THE SELF AND ITS GENESIS
PSYCHO-GENESIS
- Gilbert Simondon. l’Individu et sa genese physico-biologique. Paris: PUF, 1964.
(recommended Negri and by Multitudes as a key author)
- Sources of the Self. By Charles Taylor (Harvard Univ. Press, 1989)**
(“one of the most complete analyses of self-conception throughout history; /// French: Les sources du moi : la formation de l'identité moderne. Boréal, 1998 ///The Charles Taylor bio, i.e. Charles Taylor et l'interprétation de l'identité moderne. Guy Laforest et Philippe de Lara. Presses de l'Université Laval, 1998 is considered to be: "un Livre magnifique sur une époque charnière de l'histoire de l'Occident ///Other books by the same author: La Liberte des modernes, 1997; Multiculturalisme: difference et democratie, 1994; Le Malaise de la Modernite, 1994; Rapprocher les solitudes, 1992 /
“Une des théoriciens les plus importants du multiculturalisme et du communautarisme nord-américain, Charles Taylor cherche dans Les sources du moi à expliquer la formation de l'identité moderne, c'est-à-dire de la conception de soi dominante dans les sociétés issues de la tradition occidentale.”)
- The Invention of Self. By John. O. Lyons. Southern Ill. Univ. Press, 1978
- Coming to our senses: body and spirit in the hidden history of the West. Morris Berman.
(a history of self-conceptions and how strong periods of self-awareness are expressed by an important role of mirrors, and how the medieval disintegration can be seen in the disappearance of mirrors; compares the idealized self of the Greeks, as expressed in the bust sculptures, with the individualized sculptures of the Roman period. Recommended by Alan Combs.)
- Nikolas Rose, Inventing ourselves: Psychology, power, and personhood (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
(“the historian of psychology and political scientist Nikolas Rose has argued that psychology is necessary in capitalistic democracies.”)
- Norbert Elias. 1) La Societe de Cour. Calmann-Levy, 1974 ; 2) La societe des invididu, Fayard, 1991
(the genesis of the individualist self, recommended Etatsgeneraux.org)
- Propriete privee, propriete sociale, propriete de soi. Robert Castel. Fayard, 2001.
(the self and property, by an important French thinker associated with Marcel Gauchet)
- Le Monde Interpersonnel du nourrisson. Daniel Stern, PUF, 1985
(“une exploration remarquables des formations subjectives preverbales de l’enfant” - rec Guattari)
extra: THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF THE SELF AND HUMAN NATURE
- E.O. Wilson. On Human Nature. 1978
(“a book that combines uncompromising intellectual objectivity with a tragic and poetic vision of what Darwinism implies for human hopes” - New Statesman)
- The Blank Slate: the modern denial of human nature. Steven Pinker. Allen Lane, 2002.
(“provides an invaluable survey of the evidence showing that what Pinker calls the ‘official theory’ of the mind - that it is in some deep way a social and cultural construction - is false. Both genetics and research in the advancing science of the brain show the human mind to be firmly rooted in the biology of the human animal” - New Statesman, rec. by John Gray)
extra: THE SELF IN PHILOSOPHY
- Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard. By Mark Taylor (Univ. of Calif. Pr, 1980).
(Traces roots of self in Christian mythology.)
- Anthony J. La Vopa, Fichte: The Self and the Calling of Philosophy, 1762-1799, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
- Technologies of the Self: A Seminar With Michel Foucault. Luther H. Martin (Editor),
("contains essays by Foucault-scholars and Foucault himself. It concentrates on Foucault's later works, where there is a shift of focus from the power/knowledge axis to the axis of ethics. This collection of should be of interest to anyone who are interested in Foucault's work on ethics and subjectivity” – rec. Michael Purdy, Gebser list)
- The Care of the Self. Michel Foucault.
(this is the third part of his History of Sexuality, in which he analyses a growing unease with sexuality during the late part of the Roman Empire)
- The Era of the Individual: A Contribution to a History of Subjectivity. by Alain Renaut . Princeton University Press
(“In The Era of the Individual, widely hailed as Renaut's magnum opus, the author explores the most salient feature of post-structuralism: the elimination of the human subject. At the root of this thinking lies the belief that humans cannot know or control their basic natures, a premise that led to Heidegger's distrust of an individualistic, capitalist modern society and that allied him briefly with Hitler's National Socialist Party. While acknowledging some of Heidegger's misgivings toward modernity as legitimate, Renaut argues that it is nevertheless wrong to equate modernity with the triumph of individualism. Here he distinguishes between individualism and subjectivity and, by offering a history of the two, powerfully redirects the course of current thinking away from potentially dangerous, reductionist views of humanity. Renaut argues that modern philosophy contains within itself two opposed ways of conceiving the human person. The first, which has its roots in Descartes and Kant, views human beings as subjects capable of arriving at universal moral judgments. The second, stemming from Leibniz, Hegel, and Nietzsche, presents human beings as independent individuals sharing nothing with others.”)
- Dieter Wyss HISTORY OF DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY (rec Kenneth Smith lifetime reading list)
- Werner Bonefeld. Marxism and Subjectivity: Searching for the Marvelous (Prelude to a Marxist Notion of Action)
extra: THE SELF IN RELIGION
- Le sujet en Islam. Malek Chebel. Seuil 2002. (rec Noms de Dieux)
- Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard. By Mark Taylor (Univ. of Calif. Pr, 1980).
(Traces roots of self in Christian mythology.)
extra: THE SELF IN POLITICS
- Rosenberg, S.W. (1988). Reason, Ideology and Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (rec Sara Ross, postconpol)
- Rosenberg, S.W., Ward, D., Chilton, S. (1988). Political Reasoning and Cognition. Durham: Duke University Press. (rec Sara, postconpol)
- Beyond Individualism. Reconstituting the Liberal Self. JACK CRITTENDEN, Arizona State University
(“In the examination of the conception of human nature, a duality is commonly perceived--the liberal self as atomistic, self-contained, even selfish; and the communitarian self as socially situated and defined through its environment. Crittenden argues that neither view is acceptable, drawing on recent psychological research to expound on a theory of "compound individuality." This work includes a discussion of the compound individual as the self of liberalism, as well as a discussion of the sort of political organization that can generate personal identity constituted by liberal autonomy and communitarian sociality.”)
- Werner Bonefeld … Marxism and Subjectivity: Searching for the Marvelous (Prelude to a Marxist Notion of Action)
THE PREMODERN/EARLY MODERN SELF
- See the sections on the archaic, magical, and mythological modes of consciousness in section 1.3
- Julian Jaynes, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind".
(His central thesis is that modern self-aware consciousness is a quite recent phenomenon, arising in Mesopotamia towards the end of the Second Millennium BC. Based on the neurophysiological discovery of the bicameral mind (left and right hemisphere), Jayes maintains that ancient peoples could not "think" as we do today, but heard 'voices' coming from the left hemisphere, interpreting these as coming from the Gods.”)
- The Classics: The Confessions by St. Augustine, inaugurating a new type of self at the dawn of the Christian age; Samuel Pepys, a Londoner who kept, for about ten years, an impressive daily account of his life in the eighteenth? century; The Essays by Montaigne, a close account of his thoughts.
-Ian Watt. Myths of Modern Individualism. Cambridge Un. Pr. 1996
(analysis of modern literary mythologies, such as Faust, Don Juan, Don Quichote, Robinson Crusoe, contrasting those of the Renaissance era with those of Romanticism - strongly rec. by Todorov)
- THE SELF TODAY
THE MODERN SELF
- Herbert Marcuse. One-Dimensional Man.
- The Culture of Narcissism. By Christopher Lasch (Norton, 1979)
(on the narcissic self of the post-sixties generation which led to the dominance of antisocial elites)
- Nathan Schwartz-Salant . Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Character
Transformation.
(“The most advanced psychological [Jungian] study”, Gebser list)
- Hannah Arendt, La condition de l'homme moderne
(Hannah Arendt plaide pour qu'on ne rabaisse pas l'homo sapiens à l'homo faber, au travailleur. L'homme n'est pas ce qu'il fait mais ce qu'il est (dit et pense). Elle recoupe beaucoup de thèmes écologistes dans son souci de la durabilité, sa défense de la pluralité, la mise en garde contre le dépassement des limites (hubris), l'unilatéralité, l'instrumentalisation de la nature et des hommes, le productivisme destructeur. - etatsgeneraux.org - English Title: The Human Condition)
THE POSTMODERN SELF
- The New Polytheism. By David Miller (Harper & Row, 1974)
(on the fractured self and the re-emergence of paganism)
- Alain Ehrenberg, La Fatigue d’etre soi. Odile Jacob, 1998.
(La question de l'autonomie. Précarité et souffrance de l'individu autonome dépourvu d'un soutien institutionnel. recommended Etatsgeneraux.org)
- The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Everyday Life. By Kenneth Gergen. Basic Books, 1992
(an excellent overview of the postmodern self, which includes a history of former stages, such as the romantic self, the rationalistic self, etc...)
- Michel Foucault, La production de soi. Compte-rendu du tome IV des Dits et écrits, 1980-1988, nrf, Gallimard
(Le sujet n'est pas donné mais doit être produit. Le malentendu est tel sur Michel Foucault (c'est celui d'une époque), qu'il faut absolument lire ces dernières interventions où la critique des thèses qu'on lui prête est précise et répétée. - rec etatsgeneraux.org)
- Robert Jay Lifton. The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation. Basic Books, 1993.
- Christopher Lasch. 1) The Culture of Narcissism 2) The Minimal Self
(Item 2: “The Minimal Self (1984) made explicit Lasch's recognition that the insights of traditional religion retained their vitality while the moral and intellectual authority of Marx, Freud, and their epigones withered. Rejecting mere psychic "survival" as a meaningful goal, Lasch argued that "Self-affirmation remains a possibility precisely to the degree that an older conception of personality, rooted in Judeo- Christian traditions, has persisted alongside a behavioral or therapeutic conception." He added that it was this form of "self- affirmation" which alone seemed to offer genuine hope for "democratic renewal." While to many opinion-makers the memory of Auschwitz seemed to justify a "survival ethic" in a meaningless world, Lasch argued that "the only lessons Auschwitz has to offer" are "the need for a renewal of religious faith, the need for a collective commitment to decent social conditions." Lasch pointed out that a reading of memoirs from Auschwitz prisoners reveals that, by and large, survivors did not themselves turn to any survivalist ethic; they "found strength in the revealed word of an absolute, objective, and omnipotent creator . . . not in personal 'values' meaningful only to themselves.")
- L’Homme sans Gravite. Jouir a tout prix. Par Charles Melman et Jean-Pierre Lebrun. Denoel, 2002.
(a psychosocial approach based on Freud’s insights, but applied to postmodern man: “leur these centrale est qu’un ‘homme liberal’ serait en formation, bouleversant l’ancienne economie psychique. Nous serions en train de passer d’une culture base sur le refoulement, et donc sur la nevrose, a une culture qui promeut la perversion. La nouvelle economie psychique s’organise atour de la profusion d’objets et de l’exhibition de la jouissance”)
extra: THE POSTMODERN CHALLENGE TO THE SELF
- Key author: Michel Foucault and his concept of the ‘end of man’
- The Era of the Individual: A Contribution to a History of Subjectivity. by Alain Renaut . Princeton University Press
(the summary of the elimination of the subject in postmodern philosophy: “In The Era of the Individual, widely hailed as Renaut's magnum opus, the author explores the most salient feature of post-structuralism: the elimination of the human subject. At the root of this thinking lies the belief that humans cannot know or control their basic natures, a premise that led to Heidegger's distrust of an individualistic, capitalist modern society and that allied him briefly with Hitler's National Socialist Party. While acknowledging some of Heidegger's misgivings toward modernity as legitimate, Renaut argues that it is nevertheless wrong to equate modernity with the triumph of individualism. Here he distinguishes between individualism and subjectivity and, by offering a history of the two, powerfully redirects the course of current thinking away from potentially dangerous, reductionist views of humanity. Renaut argues that modern philosophy contains within itself two opposed ways of conceiving the human person. The first, which has its roots in Descartes and Kant, views human beings as subjects capable of arriving at universal moral judgments. The second, stemming from Leibniz, Hegel, and Nietzsche, presents human beings as independent individuals sharing nothing with others.”)
- Frantz Fanon. Black Skin, White Masks. Grove Press, 1967.
(“A landmark book that shows how the self is constructed by the Other. Shows why futures from non-whites must first deal with the problem of the West. Passionately written.” - Sohail Inatullah)
- Kathy Ferguson, The Man Question: Visions of Subjectivity. University of California Press, 1993.
(“Using genealogy and interpretation, examines praxis, cosmic, and linguistic feminism. Excellent introduction to poststructural textual strategies.” - Sohail Inatullah)
- THE SELF TOMORROW
- The Future of Immortality. By Robert J. Lifton. (Basic Books, 1987)
(on the concept of the ‘protean self’)
- The Evolving Self: a psychology for the third millennium. By Myhaly Csikzentmihalyi. HarperPerennial Library, 1994. (sd lib)
BEYOND THE SELF?
Can we go beyond the (postmodern) self? Several areas of the investigation are the following: Miguel Benasayag, a radical left philosopher, has been discussing a new subjectivity that turns away from individualism towards personhood, which is a different condition that recognizes our fundamental intersubjective nature. The work of integral philosophers and psychologists would seem to point towards a next stage that they call with various names such as vision-logic, or ‘integral consciousness’. See in particular the developmental psychologies mentioned in the next section for this aspect and in particular the subsection on the integral mode of consciousness. Further away are the transmental states, ‘beyond the ego’, as practiced and realized in the various spiritual practices.
POLITICAL ‘INTERSUBJECTIVE’ APPROACHES
- Miguel Benasayag. La Nouvelle Radicalite.
(in his different books he describes the emergence of a new subjectivity that rejects atomized individualism and opts for intersubjective personhood)
SPIRITUAL ‘INTRASUBJECTIVE’ APPROACHES
- Frances Vaughan. 1) The Inward Arc: Healing in psychotherapy and spirituality. 2) Paths Beyond Ego: The transpersonal vision 3)Transpersonal Psychology & Spirituality: Shadows of the Sacred
(“Practical wisdom for healthy human development from a transpersonal perspective.” 2) A comprehensive, edited volume of the best authors in transpersonal psychology.”)
- David Loy. Nonduality.
(“the most clarifying exposition of how the duality between the self and the world, between subject and object, seer and seen, agent and action, is overcome in Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism and Taoism, as well as in some Western texts”)
- Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof. Spiritual Emergency.
(Before going higher, there is often a descent in the darker side, and this confuses the moderns who lock people with these symptoms away, while there are other techniques which can help people transcend these temporary difficulties on the path)
. How to get there: The meditative process and other psychotechnologies
- The Meditative Mind. Daniel Goleman.
(“excellent overview of what meditation is all about” - Charles T. Tart)
- Arthur Deikman. The Observing Self.
(“shows an acute understanding of meditation and the different kind of self at work in that process” - Charles T. Tart)
- THE SELF IN ITS DEVELOPMENT/EVOLUTION (STAGE THEORIES)
GENERALITIES
- Paradigms of Personality by Jane Loevinger, (1987), Freeman and Company New York
( is a very compact and readable survey across the field ranging from Psychoanalysis to Cognitive Developmentalism. postconpol)
- Ego Development by Jane Loevinger, (1976), Jossey-Blass San Francisco
(is 500-page opus which ranges across theories, theoreticians, and methodologies. Not for the faint hearted. postconpol)
- Measuring Ego Development Parts 1 & 2 by Loevinger and others (1970), Jossey-Blass San Francisco
(is the one which explains her theory and the stages in extreme detail. Vol. 1 is the theory part and vol. 2 is the scoring methodology. If you want to know what she found and why she interpreted then vol. 1 is a must read. Rec. by postconpol)
- Susan Cook-Greuter. Postautonomous Ego Development: A Study of
Its Nature and Measurement.
(Thesis of Dr. S. Cook-Greuter; available via address: Harthill USA 34 Campbell Rd. Wayland, MA 01778 U.S.A. or via email: [email protected]. An electronic test with booklet that Dr. Cook-Greuter will rate and comment is also available.)
- Robert Kegan The Evolving Self (1982) Harvard University Press
(covers cognitive developmentalism in very extensive detail in the first few chapters. he mainly covers Piaget & Kohlberg before he goes onto to discuss his own theory. postconpol)
- Lea Pukkinen and Avshalom Caspi: Paths to Successful Development. CUP
(“I just found a leaflet announcing a new book in English on the topic we have been discussing on: lifespan development. It is edited by Lea Pukkinen and Avshalom Caspi: Paths to Successful Development. CUP. Does anybody know anything about it and whether it presents a similar picture as I indicated in ref. to the German book by Juettemann/Thomae?” - Reinhard Fuhr, postconpol)
- Michael L. Commons. Adult Development. Vol 1. Comparison and Applications of Developmental Models. Praeger, 1989. (rec Wilber)
- Alexander and Langer. Higher Stages of Human Development. (rec Wilber)
GENDER-SPECIFIC EVOLUTION
- Erich Neumann: 1) The Great Mother (‘a monumental study’); 2) Amor and the Psyche: the Psychic Development of the Feminine
(author was one of the great Jungian experts on the development mythology and how it reflects the evolution of the psyche, here focusing especially on the specific evolution of the feminine)
- Hekman, Susan. Moral Voices, Moral Selves: Carol Gilligan and feminist moral theory. Cambridge: Polity; University Park: Penn State Press, 1995.
( Gilligan pioneered the view of a separate developmental logic for women. “Over the last two decades, Gilligan's work has provided the legitimating theory for a large and popular school of thought that took the sloppy romantic arguments about gender difference and the imperilment of girlish psyches even further than Gilligan had taken them. In Women's Ways of Knowing (1986), for instance, Mary Belenky, Blythe Clinchy, Nancy Goldberger, and Jill Tarule contended that women not only reasoned through moral dilemmas differently--they reasoned differently, period. Women, unlike men, distrusted debate because it "threatened the dissolution of relationships"; and they seemed to take "naturally to a nonjudgmental stance"; they excelled at subjective and intuitive interpretations, and valued "truth that is personal, particular, and grounded in firsthand experiences." The more womanly they were, the more they suffered under the "tyranny of expectations," which is to say, the common objective standards of schools and workplaces. And so on.”)
MORAL DEVELOPMENT
- Lawrence Kohlberg. 1) The Meaning and Measurement of Moral Development. Clark University Press, 1980; 2) Moral Stages: a current formulation and response to critics. Basel: Karger, 1983.
- Sohan Modgil & Celia Modgil. Lawrence Kohlberg: Consensus and Controversy (1985) Falmer Press Philadelphia.
(the best book I have found by far. It is a series of essays from psychologists where those with dissenting views are paired off to discuss their view of how Kohlberg got it right/wrong and then they respond to what they each said. While it lacks the essential synthesis that would take it to an Integral stage I still think it’s a terrific read”: postconpol)
- Hekman, Susan. Moral Voices, Moral Selves: Carol Gilligan and feminist moral theory. Cambridge: Polity; University Park: Penn State Press, 1995.
( Gilligan pioneered the view of a separate developmental logic for women. “Over the last two decades, Gilligan's work has provided the legitimating theory for a large and popular school of thought that took the sloppy romantic arguments about gender difference and the imperilment of girlish psyches even further than Gilligan had taken them. In Women's Ways of Knowing (1986), for instance, Mary Belenky, Blythe Clinchy, Nancy Goldberger, and Jill Tarule contended that women not only reasoned through moral dilemmas differently--they reasoned differently, period. Women, unlike men, distrusted debate because it "threatened the dissolution of relationships"; and they seemed to take "naturally to a nonjudgmental stance"; they excelled at subjective and intuitive interpretations, and valued "truth that is personal, particular, and grounded in firsthand experiences." The more womanly they were, the more they suffered under the "tyranny of expectations," which is to say, the common objective standards of schools and workplaces. And so on.”
Thinking of Carol Gilligan's work as social science has always been a bit of a stretch, but that is how it has generally been received by critics and adepts alike: as a body of psychological research supporting certain controversial hypotheses about the differences between men and women, probably the most influential such hypotheses of the last twenty-five years. Gilligan's famous contention is that girls and women are possessed of a distinctive morality more attuned to maintaining relationships and caring for others than to arguing for justice and equity. This generalization has often been taken as the product of stringent empirical research. So has Gilligan's idea that plucky and confident girls wilt into diffidence on the cusp of adolescence.
Gilligan has always had it both ways. The fact that her writing in In a Different Voice and Between Voice and Silence was fervent, oracular, tremulous with concern about the fate of girls in a patriarchal culture, and laden with literary examples helped to popularize her work and to confer upon her the status of an American sage; and the fact that she was a psychologist and a Harvard professor who conducted interviews with real girls gave her work the imprimatur of science, even when most of her scholarship was anecdotal, or inclined to what seemed like foregone conclusions. Gilligan has a way of making her readers, especially her female readers, feel at once good and smart, virtuous and rigorous.” The New Republic)
- Michael Commons and Cheryl Armon, editors. Adult Development. Praeger, 1988
(They also edited a book titled Beyond Formal Operations. Both volumes give an overview and the current research in adult development.)
- Susan Cook-Greuter et al. Transcendence and Mature Thought in Adulthood. Roman and Littlefield, 1994
(updates and verifies Kohlberg, rec by Ken Wilber)
- D. Schaffer. Social and Personality Development.. 1994
(“although Kohlberg’s stages do not cover all facets of morality, they have proven cross-culturally sound for the ground they cover .. so they seem universal structures and a invariant sequence”, cited by Wilber, who refers to studies in Mexico, Bahamas, Taiwan and half a dozen other countries”)
‘INTEGRATIVE’ APPROACHES TO SELF-DEVELOPMENT
Approaches that want to take into account the different stages of evolution of the self as described in the types of book just above.
- Integral Psychology. Ken Wilber.
(Wilber has offered several syntheses combining the understandings of major psychological schools, each subsequent version bringing a new level of integration. This last one has an extraordinary series of comparative tables, but previous versions are still very much worth reading: 1) Spectrum of Consciousness; 2) The Atman Project; 3) No Boundary)
- Pourquoi la Psychanalyse. Elisabeth Roudinesco. Fayard
(‘vibrante defense et illustratrion de la psychanalyse’, l’auteur nous avait deja fournit une impressionante Histoire de la Psychanalyse)
- Cent Ans Apres. Patrick Frote. Gallimard, 1998.
(“entretiens avec neuf pontes”: How has psychoanalysis evolved over the last hundred years, what is its legacy and current states, by nine of the foremost experts in the field - Le Monde des Debats)
- A.H. Almaas. The Point of Existence: Transformation of Narcissism in Self-Realisation. Shambhala, 2000
(the Diamond approach by Almaas, one of the more recent ‘integrative’ approaches)
- Victor Frankl. Man’s Search for Meaning. Washington Square Press, 1984.
- Jenny Wade. Changes of Mind: a holonomic theory of the evolution of consciousness. State Univ. Press of NY, 1996.
- Jean Houston. Life Force - The Psycho-Historical Recovery of the Self
- John C. Lilly. Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer
W0RKING ON THE SELF
- Pierre Hadot. Exercices Spirituels et philosophie antique. Albin Michel
(“demontre comment la philosophie etait regardee par Socrate et les Stoiciens comme une metamorphose totale de l’etre, concernant la vie dans sa totalite”; Voire aussi son livre d’entretien: La philosophie comme maniere de vivre)
- Epictetus. A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life. A.A. Long. Oxford Univ. Pr.
(“a definitive introduction” to the writings of this extremely influential freed slave)
extra: erotic/tantric paths
- Nik Douglas and Penny Slinger. Sexual Secrets
(‘good introduction but mired by a white-light weltanschauung”, New York Press)
- Demons of the Flesh: the Complete Guide to the Left Hand Path Sex Magic. By Nikolas and Zeena Schreck. Creation Books.
(the definite guide to sexual alchemy and ‘truly lucid’: “the Schrecks have been around the block a few times and have more than a few pithy things to say about the Western tendency to exploit this phenomena for personal gain. They offer an excellent critique of Aleister Crowley and the various fraternities dedicated to preserving his legacy. There are numerous warnings as regards the parasitic exploitation that was Crowley’s specialty.”)
extra: Autobiographies of personal development
PREMODERN APPROACHES
- The Classics: The Confessions by St. Augustine, inaugurating a new type of self at the dawn of the Christian age; Samuel Pepys, a Londoner who kept, for about ten years, an impressive daily account of his life in the eighteenth? century; The Essays by Montaigne, a close account of his thoughts.
MODERN APPROACHES
- Brian Caldwell. We all fall down.
("As an aside, there is a wonderful novel called We All Fall Down by Brian Caldwell which seems to take quite a bit of Wilber's theory, and even mentions him several times in the book. The novel is a great example of a man caught trying to transform his life into something better, but who is able only to translate. It's about the frustration and difficulties in trying to move up to the next level of consciousness. Technically, it's set in a Christian framework, but it elevates past that small structure and uses it to really bring home quite a few of Wilber's theories. It's a wonderful novel and I'd highly recommend it to any fan of Wilber.")
JOHN LILLY
(John Lilly was a controversial biologist who pioneered cross-species communications, especially with Dolphins, invented the isolation tank, and inspired the famous Ken Russel movie Altered States, also based on his extensive experimentation with hallucinogens; his books should be read as testimony of the stirrings of the counterculture in the sixties, and could be usefully updated with the writings of Robert Anton Wilson, Terence McKenna and Timothy Leary)
- The Center of the Cyclone: an autobiography of inner space. By John Lilly. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972.
- John Lilly: The Scientist: a metaphysical autobiography. Ronin Publishing, 1996
- John & Antonietta Lilly. The Dyadic Cyclone. The autobiography of a couple. New York: Paladin Books, 1978.
(other recommended book by John Lilly: Simulations of God, the Science of Belief)
- INDIVIDUALISM AND ITS EVOLUTION
GENERALITIES
- Louis Dumont, Essais sur l'individualisme - Une perspective anthropologique sur l'idéologie moderne. Paris, Seuil, 1983, 272 p. (coll. « Esprit »).
(Son analyse des concepts d'individualisme et d'holisme, doublée de ses réflexions sur les notions d'individu-hors-du-monde et d'individu-dans-le-monde, permet une meilleure appréhension de nos catégories mentales modernes. L.D. n'aurait réussi que cela qu'il aurait contribué à une meilleure compréhension des autres et de nous-mêmes, des différences et des ressemblances. Toutefois, son apport à la compréhension du concept de hiérarchie dans le cadre des études en sciences humaines demeure capital. )
- The Culture of Narcisism. Christopher Nash
(a classic and very harsh critique of modern elites, by an author who rejects any notion of progress. See also by the same author, this title recommended by Philippe Vandenbroeck: The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy)
- The Culture of Morality: Social Development, Context, and Conflict by Elliot Turiel
(“William Bennett had better beware! The claim that Bennett and other neoconservatives have made so much of--that America is in moral decline--has attracted a relentless new critic. Challenging the key terms in this widely accepted claim, Turiel argues that an authentic morality not only can survive breaks with communal traditions but also often demands such ruptures. Among civil rights leaders of the 1960s and among Arab feminists today, Turiel finds exemplars of pioneers who risk conflict to end cultural practices that lend to oppression the name of morality.”)
- Norbert Elias, La société des individus
(Le processus de civilisation est celui d'une normalisation, de la répression de la violence (monopolisée par l'Etat) au profit de règles sociales (cour, politesse, sport, marché). L'individu est un produit de la différenciation sociale et de l'intériorisation des contraintes. )
- Claudine Haroche et Robert Castel, Propriété privée, propriété sociale, propriété de soi ?, Entretiens sur la constitution de l'individu moderne, Paris, Fayard, 2001, 210 p.
- Louis Dumont : Homo Hierarchicus
(“Un travail détaillé sur les mecanismes de la plus sophistiquée des sociétés " holistes " : l'inde des castes. Un compagnon indispensable de ses essais sur l'individualisme”, i.e. Homo Aequalis - remi sussan)
-Gilles Lipovetsky - L'ère du Vide, Essais sur l'individualisme contemporaine
(rec. by Philippe Vandenbroeck after query on extreme individualism)
- Marshall Berman. The Politics of Authenticity: radical individualism and the emergence of modern society. 1970 (web biblio)
- Steven Lukes. Individualism. 1973
extra: FICTION ON INDIVIDUALISM
-Ian Watt. 1) Myths of Modern Individualism. Cambridge Un. Pr. 1996; 2) The Rise of the Novel
(1) analysis of modern literary mythologies, such as Faust, Don Juan, Don Quichote, Robinson Crusoe, contrasting those of the Renaissance era with those of Romanticism - 2) montre comment la nouvelle ideologie individualiste et empiriste qui se fraie un chemin au XVIIe siecle, transforme la prose narrative en roman” - strongly rec by Todorov)
- Reading note by science-fiction author Chris Moriarty on individualism as a theme in s-f literature
“In the SF context you're more likely to see individuality (and the idea of individual identity itself) questioned. Individuality and identity are central issues for many SF writers, and I think it would not be an exaggeration to say that one of the core themes of science fiction in general is the ways in which our identities, worldviews and life paths are shaped by society and technology.
I know this is a central theme in my own work. In both my Bantam Spectra novels (Intraface and Metaface) the central characters come from societies in which individualist/humanist values are at war with technologies and ideologies that problematize individuality. The main characters in Intraface are a genetic construct and an AI living in a society run by (and for) humans. Both of them struggle with the contradictions between their own identities as clones/machines and their cultural ideas about individuality, which are inherited from a human society much like ours. In Metaface the main character is a clone from a breakaway group that has established a utopian (sort of) world based on cloning. When he travels back to the human worlds he has to reexamine everything he's ever been taught about what makes a person worthy and valuable in society. Neither of these books will be in bookstores until next summer, but if you're interested I'll be posting excerpts from Intraface on my website sometime this month, and I'd also be happy to have Random House send you a galley when they're ready.
Other books that explore individuality include:
Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix. Schismatrix explores Sterling’s multifaceted Shaper-Mechanist universe, and more than any other SF book it looks at the idea of what a post-human society and post-human personalities would be like. Sterling shows a whole range of societies in this future universe ranging from 'hive' type societies in which there is no individual identity separate from one's gene line or hive to societies based on gene sculpting or mechanic prostheses in which individuals are extremely autonomous and sometimes close to immortal. This is probably the widest ranging and boldest exploration of these themes you're likely to find. Sterling's basic claim I think is not that extreme individuality (or extreme conformity) are either good or bad in themselves but that it's all up for grabs and we need to start opening our minds to new models instead of trying to be that traditional homo sapiens that (he would argue) we're not anymore.
C.J. Cherryh. Cyteen. This book goes to the opposite extreme and questions whether individual identity (let alone individualism) is even possible. Cherryh sets up a hypothetical society in which humans have created clones, turned them into slaves and developed a technology through which they essentially shape their personalities and memories by deep hypnosis. Of course sooner or later, the humans turn their personality-shaping technology on themselves ... and then Cherryh starts her readers wondering who's human and who's not and whether anyone--including us--is really his or her own person.
L.E.Modesitt, Jr., Adiamante. This book talks about what I would argue is a radically individualist society in which people are essentially bound to an extremely simple and materially spare lifestyle by a complicated ‘credit' system. It's an interesting twist on the idea of individualism (Modesitt argues that self-sufficiency in an ecological sense is really the way to define independence, and not material freedom)
David Brin has written a number of books that touch on themes of how individuals and societies interact. One idea of his that comes to mind is his 'peripatetics' who travel constantly at near light speed while exploring distant planets. Time dilation causes them to lose contact with the rest of humanity and results in individuals completely outside of society and culture ... the ultimate individualists.
Another good but very disturbing book about individualism/identity is Susan R. Matthews' Exchange of Hostages, which follows the training of a torturer in a society where torture is a respected (in fact the most respected) profession.
All in all, none of these books are what I would call illustrations of societies based on extreme individualism. Which brings me back to my first response: that SF authors tend to problematize identity so much that there's not much room for even the idea of societies based on extreme individualism. I think, based on conversations with other writers and on reading their books, that most SF authors writing today (and particularly cyberpunk authors) would say that traditional SF, from Asimov to Bova, is flawed by the adoption of a kind of 1950s modernist worldview one of whose components was the idea that individualism and individual freedom are the most important values in society. If you look at the work of contemporary SF writers from Gibson to Stephenson to Asaro I think you'll see that one of the central threads running through their work is a questioning of whether our traditional ideas about individuality and identity even apply in the post-human world (a world a lot of writers would argue we've already entered ...).”
BEYOND INDIVIDUALISM
- Miguel Benasayag. La Nouvelle Radicalite.
(in his different books he describes the emergence of a new subjectivity which rejects atomized individualism and opts for intersubjective personhood)
- Beyond Individualism. Reconstituting the Liberal Self. JACK CRITTENDEN, Arizona State University
(“In the examination of the conception of human nature, a duality is commonly perceived--the liberal self as atomistic, self-contained, even selfish; and the communitarian self as socially situated and defined through its environment. Crittenden argues that neither view is acceptable, drawing on recent psychological research to expound on a theory of "compound individuality." This work includes a discussion of the compound individual as the self of liberalism, as well as a discussion of the sort of political organization that can generate personal identity constituted by liberal autonomy and communitarian sociality.”)
- THE SELF AND THE WORLD/ THE EXISTENTIAL CHALLENGE
In this section, I do not focus on intersubjectivity, as in the third quadrant bibliography, but on the existential situation of a self in the world, and what are the great answers to this fundamental situation.
PREMODERN
- Pierre Hadot. Exercices Spirituels et philosophie antique. Albin Michel
(“demontre comment la philosophie etait regardee par Socrate et les Stoiciens comme une metamorphose totale de l’etre, concernant la vie dans sa totalite”; Voire aussi son livre d’entretien: La philosophie comme maniere de vivre)
- Joseph Mace-Scaron. Montaigne, notre nouveau philosophe. Plon, 2002.
(an attempt to modernize and render more acute the contribution of Montaigne, the great 16th century essayist, which was favorably reviewed by the French press. Montaigne is sometimes considered to be the first ‘modern’, showing a ordinary thinking man in action, trying to find wisdom in the conduct of normal affairs)
- Marcus Aurelius. Persoonlijke notities. Flamingo Pockets
(classic stoic account on how to live difficult times - by an Emperor defending the empire, who considered philosophy as ‘his mother’)
MODERN
- Soren Kierkegaard FEAR AND TREMBLING / THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH (rec. by Kenneth Smith)
- Le sujet en Islam. Malek Chebel. Seuil 2002. (rec Noms de Dieux)
- Marx's Concept of Man. Erich Fromm (Editor)
(See also from the same author: “Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter With Marx and Freud”)
- Victor Frankl. Man’s Search for Meaning. Washington Square Press, 1984.
- Albert Camus. 1) L”Etranger 2) La Peste. 3) Le mythe de Sisyphe (essai) 4) La Chute
(an existentialist facing of the absurdity of life and the world)
TRANSMODERN
- David Loy. Lack and Transcendence.
(“a penetrating account of how the ultimate questions of life are approached in Western psychotherapy, existentialism, and Buddhism - truly cross-fertilizing these three traditions”)
PITFALLS OF THE SPIRITUAL PATH
- Mariana Caplan. 1)Halfway up the mountain: the error of premature claims to Enlightenment. Hohm Press, 1999.; 2) Do You Need a Guru? Understanding the student-teacher relationship in an era of false prophets. Thorsons, 2002.
(“the first book was an angry, unsparing dissection of self-deception among spiritual teachers and explorers; while her own missteps are related in the second book”, see realspirituality.com)
- Andrew Harvey. 1) Direct Path. Broadway Books 2) The Sun at Midnight: a memoir of the dark night. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.
(denounces the guru system as fundamentally toxic and describes his grueling separation process with Mother Meera; see andrewharvey.net )
- Alan Clements. Instinct for Freedom: finding liberation through living. New World Library.
(the author was for 30 years a monk in Burma and recalls his life and the illusions of the path: “the guru model is the old paradigm out of Asia, commodified and turned into income”; see also worlddharma.com)
- Arthur Deikman. The Wrong Way Home.
(one of the better treatments of the dangers of the ‘growth path’, such as cultic groups; from someone who takes personal and spiritual development seriously - rec. by Charles T. Tart)
- 1.2 aspects of the self
- THE SELF AND ITS AESTHETIC JUDGMENT (ART, TASTE)
- Edouard Panofsky. Meaning in the Visual Arts. (recommended by Gebser)
- Karsten Harries, The Meaning of Modern Art: A Philosophical Interpretation, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968.
- Erich Neumann: Art and the Creation of the Unconscious
(‘contains many essays on art and mythology’)
-Mennell, Stephen Français et anglais à table du moyen âge à nos jours. Flammarion, 1987
- Capitalisme et nouvelles morales de l'intérêt et du goût de J. Wajnsztejn.
L'Harmattan. 2002. (Temps Critiques - Multitudes)
MUSIC
- Through Music to the Self. Peter Michael Hamel. Shambhala, 1979. (rec Gebser Society)
- THE SELF AND THE BODY
- The Body in the Mind: the bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. By Mark Johnson. Un of Chicago Pr, 1990.
- Caroline Walker Bynum The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 220-1336. 1995
- David Le Breton. 1) « la sociologie du corps » en Que-Sais-Je, « L’adieu au Corps » chez Metailié 3) « Signes d’identité : Tatouages, piercing et autres marques d’identités » chez Metailié
(Chercheur en anthropologie à l’Université de Strasbourg. David Le Breton est Sociologue du corps. Il en analyse les transformations dans une bibliographie assez imposante… reco Net+Ultra)
- Le Corps et le sens. Dialogue entre un psychanalyste et un neurologue. Bianca et Bernard Lechevalier. Lausanne: Delachaux et Niestle, 1998. (rec. Nouvelles Clefs)
(an encounter between subjectivist psychology and objectivist psychology based on the latest insights of the neurosciences)
- L'inscription corporelle de L'esprit (the embodied mind) Varela Thompson et Raush, Seuil pour la traduction française.
(“Une introduction aux thèses de la " nouvelle intelligence artificielle " pour laquelle l'esprit, loin d'être un mécanisme abstrait de traitement des données, est entièrement intégrée à la structure de l'organisme. D'intéressants parallèles avec d'un côté la psychologie bouddhiste, et de l'autre la tradition phénoménologique de Husserl et Merleau Ponty.” - rec. Remi Sussan)
- The Future of the Body. By Michael Murphy.
(this book is an exhaustive reasoned catalog of all the extraordinary bodily and mental powers that humans have been able to attain through sport or spiritual practice, or by natural endowment.)
- THE SELF AND ITS CARE: PSYCHOLOGY
This section will focus on the different approaches of psychology.
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Under this heading we want to place this particular school of thought that aims to make human beings more efficient and adaptable to the contemporary demands of the network society. Though descendants of the protestant work ethic, they now totally focus on a instrumental goal of the human being and how he can most effectively pursue his goals, which most of the time would be actually defined as monetary. Hence, the parallel between the efficiency logic of modern networked enterprises, and their models inspired by the actual workings of the computer, and this view of human beings as ‘efficient machines’. Many of these approaches are reworkings of neuro-linguistic programming (and sometimes influenced by the psychological techniques used in Scientology, as for example in the earlier EST seminars of Werner Erhardt).
- Anthony Robbins. Awaken the Giant Within: how to take immediate control of your mental, emotional, physical and financial destiny! Fireside, 1992.
(a very radical interpretation of the instrumental vision, popular in the nineties)
- Stephen Covey. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: restoring the character ethic. Simon and Schuster, 1999
(a much more balanced and wiser approach than Robbins, more grounded in the traditional Protestant ethic)
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
So important as a reaction against the early behavioral schools of psychology which totally disregard the inner subjective aspects of the human. Freud’s psychoanalysis focused itself on how the psyche was influenced by the unconscious. These approaches are now seriously challenged by cognitive psychology and the neurosciences, who are in danger of themselves making the same reductionist mistakes as the early behaviouralism, seeing the humans as merely brain machines and denying any specific field to human subjective psychology proper. Against this, psychoanalysis remains an important body of insights.
.analytical psychology
- Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Carl Gustav Jung.
(this autobiography, which shows how Jung’s ideas evolved through his experience; is the best introduction to his work and the tradition of ‘analytical psychology’)
. Freudian
- Freud’s Shadow. By Paul E. Stepansky.
(rec by Jacques Barzun for its focus on Adler and other Freudian dissidents)
THE FREUD DISPUTE
Freudianism was always contentious and its scientific basis was assailed from the very beginning. However in the last two decades, US academia and conventional thinking has relegated psychoanalysis almost completely and it has in particular been charged that Freud has invented data and cases to support his theories.
- Frederick Crews, 1) The memory wars: Freud's legacy in dispute (New York: New York Review Book, 1995). 2) Frederick Crews, ed. Unauthorized Freud: Doubters confront a legend (New York: Penguin, 1998). 3) F. Cioffi. Freud and the question of pseudo-science. Open Court, 1998. 4) E. Erwin. A Final Accounting: philosophical and empirical issues in Freudian psychology. MIT Press, 1996.
(parallel with the rise of scientific neuropsychology, there has been a renewed assault on the rationality and scientificity of psychoanalysis and its founder, which includes controversial attempts to demythologise some of the founding myths)
HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY
- Abraham Maslow. Towards a Psychology of Being. John Wiley & Sons, 1999.
(classic restatement of the aims of psychology, which are neither behavioral, thus discounting the subjective, nor focused on pathologies, such as in psychoanalysis. Hence the focus of psychology must be on optimal being)
TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY
- Clinical Studies in Transpersonal Psychology. By Seymour Boorstein. State Universithy of New York. 1997
(while psychotherapy aims at strengthening the self, most spiritual traditions aim to obliterate it, pointing out that psychological illness arises from a belief in a objectified self, as in Hinduism or Buddhism, or due to separation from God, as in the monotheistic traditions. But this study by a psychologist who is also a practitioner of meditative disciplines show how they can be instrumental in healing as well)
- THE SELF AND ITS EMOTIONS
- Passions et Interets. Albert Hirschmann. PUF.
(“l’un des meilleurs theoriciens a avoir mis en evidence cette logique du moindre mal montre que l’interet, loin d’etre l’expression d’un fait naturel est un construit social et culturel destine a socialiser les passions humaines. Constatant que, de toutes les passions, la richesse est au total la moins dangereuse car elle porte sur des objets la ou les autres passions (comme le pouvoir) mettent en jeu la domination entre humains, la creation de l’interet a pour effet de rendre cette passion mesurable et previsible car sujette au calcul rationnel de ses couts et avantages” - Patrick Viveret)
- Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. By Antonio Damasio. GP Putnam, 1994. (sd bib)
- The Feeling of what happens: body and emotion in the making of consciousness. Antonio Damasio. Harcourt Brace, 1999. (sd bib)
- Maury, Liliane. Les émotions de Darwin à Freud. PUF 1993 (marx biblio)
- Hornstein, H. A. Cruelty and kindness: A new look at aggression and altruism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976
- Julian Janes. The origins of consciousness and the breakdown of the bicameral mind.
(this indispensable book pays a lot of attention to the origins of emotions such as guilt - philosphere)
THE ‘POSITIVE’ EMOTIONS
- William Ian Miller. The Mystery of Courage. Harvard Un Pr. 2002
(“an immensely wide-ranging and intelligent survey, which actually started as a book on cowardice, but where the author got side-tracked by encountering examples of courage” - BBC History mag)
.Love
- J. Kellenberger. Relationship Morality. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.
( "Here is our definition of Agape: 1. Agape is giving and not acquisitive. It is undemanding and is not conditional. It is spontaneous in the presence of persons. It seeks nothing in return. These are features importantly expressed in Agape's dispositional side. 2. Agape, as an affective attitude, also has a feeling side. There is in many cases an "Agape-experience" that appropriately invites comparison with sympathy. The Agape-experience is one form of, and even the primary form of, the affective response that is a part of the discovery of the worth of persons, of our person/person relationship to persons. 3. Agape is indifferent to the various forms of accidental value that persons may or may not have. It is a response to the inherent worth of persons as persons.”)
- Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, Philadelphia, Penna.: Westminster Press, 1953 [reprinted in A. Soble, ed., Eros, Agape, and Philia, p. 94]:
(An interpretation of one of the key concepts left to us by the Greeks, distinguishing two different types of love, that should be read together with some books on Thanatos, the death urge, a quote: “Eros is acquisitive and longing. Agape is sacrificial giving. Eros is an upward movement. Agape comes down. Eros is man's way to God. Agape is God's way to man. Eros is man's effort: it assumes that man's salvation is his own work. Agape is God's grace: salvation is the work of Divine love. Eros is egocentric love, a form of self-assertion of the highest, noblest, sublimest kind. Agape is unselfish love, it "seeketh not its own," it gives itself away. Eros seeks to gain its life, a life divine, immortalized. Agape lives the life of God, therefore dares to "lose it." Eros is the will to get and possess which depends on want and need. Agape is freedom in giving, which depends on wealth and plenty. Eros is primarily man's love; God is the object of Eros. Even when it is attributed to God, Eros is patterned on human love. Agape is primarily God's love; God is agape. Even when it is attributed to man, Agape is patterned on Divine love. Eros is determined by the quality, the beauty and worth, of its object; it is not spontaneous, but "evoked," "motivated." Agape is sovereign in relation to its object, and is directed to both "the evil and the good"; it is spontaneous, "overflowing," )
- Alan Soble, The Structure of Love (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990)
(“Just as the understanding of Agape we require cuts across Nygren's conception of Eros as recognizing value and his conception of Agape as creating value, so too it cuts across Alan
Soble's conception of Eros as love that is property-based and reason-dependent and his
conception of Agape as love that is neither. , 4-6 and passim. Agape, in our understanding is not dependent on any accidental property or value that those loved may or may not have, and is not based on reasons related to such properties; however, Agape does depend on - is in response to - a property that persons have as persons, their inherent worth.”)
- Francesco Alberoni. 1) Le choc amoureux. Pocket, 1993. ; 2) Genesis. Ramsay, 1992.
- Jacques Lebrun. Le pur amour de Platon a Lacan. Seuil, 2002.
(love in philosophy, theology, romanticism and psychology, and how it influenced the western thought tradition)
THE NEGATIVE EMOTIONS
- Sin and Fear: The Emergence of Western Guilt Culture, 13th-18th Century. New York: St. Martin’s, 1990.
(recommended Marcel Gauchet)
- Shame and Pride. By Donald Nathanson.
(‘important book’, cfr. Bennett bibliography: thesis, nothing comes into awareness without affective amplification)
subtopic: transforming the negative emotions
“one does not become enlightened by imagining futures of light but by making the darkness conscious”
- Romancing the Shadow: Illuminating the Dark Side of the Soul. By Connie Zweig and Steve Wolf.
(“one does not become enlightened by imagining futures of light but by making the darkness conscious”, wrote Carl Jung, and the Jungian authors weave together the perspectives of Jung, James Hillman, Greek myths, and archetypal images to show how this can be done.)
- Anger, Madness, and the Daemonic: the psychological genesis of violence, evil, and creativity. By Stephan A. Diamond. State University of New York, 1996.
(a scholarly exploration of the origins of rage and anger, by a clinical psychologist, who also examines the means to transform these powerful negative passions into constructive activity; foreword by Rollo May, an influential figure in the humanistic psychology movement)
- THE SELF AND ITS POWERS
Though these are controversial waters, mostly unrecognized by the scientific establishment, here are some of the better books that examine the wider possibilities of the human bodymind.
- Michael Murphy. The Future of the Body.
(the founder of the Esalen Institute, which was so instrumental in supporting the emergence of the humanistic and transpersonal psychology movement, has compiled a compendium on the extraordinary achievements of the human race)
- Jon Klimo. Channeling.
(“an excellent book that gives a thorough overview of channeling, both historical and current; ... read also With the Tongues of Men and Angels by Arthur Hastings, which gives a more psychological perspective but is out of print” - rec Charles T. Tart)
- Michael Grosso. 1) Frontiers of the Soul: exploring psychic evolution. 2) Soul Maker.
(“a philosopher who knows the big picture and how to write, all his books are recommended” - Charles T. Tart / Grosso also wrote the recommended Millennium Myth)
- Tom Shroder. Old Souls: the scientific evidence for past lives.
(“a good journalistic introduction to the work of Ian Stevenson, who reviewed thousands of children testimonies in solid case studies” - Charles T. Tart)
- Stanislav Grof. Beyond the Brain.
(a review of experiences beyond the material level, by one of the leading founders of the transpersonal psychology movement. You should at least read one book by Grof. - rec by Charles T. Tart)
- Robert Monroe. Journeys Out of the Body.
(the first of three books by the same author; and a classic; the author had no experience with OBE’s before it overtook him. Further titles are: Journeys; and Ultimate Journeys)
- THE SELF AND ITS RATIONALITY
GENERALITIES ABOUT REASON AND ITS CRISIS
- CARRILHO Manuel Maria, Rationalités. Les avatars de la raison dans la philosophie contemporaine, (Traduit du portugais par P. Martins), Editions Hatier. 1997. 80 pages.
- CARRILHO Manuel Maria, Rhétoriques de la Modernité, P.U.F. - Paris 1992 - 176 p.
("Ce livre se propose d'étre une façon de dire que la crise est terminée" : il s'agit de la crise de la modernité, ou de la philosophie, ou de "la conception de la raison comme faculté souveraine et suprême, capable de suturer ses fissures et d'ordonner le monde" (p.7). )
- Alfred Korwybski. Science and Sanity: an introduction to non-Aristotelian systems and general semantics.
(a classic, rec sd bib and Philosphere)
- "Alexandre Kojeve - The Roots of Postmodern Politics" by Shadia Drury (Westview Press, 1994).
(“It is a devastating critique of post-modernism by a scholar who has written a book length critique of Leo Strauss. The book shows the "common" intellectual heritage of Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, Francis Fukuymama (the Chicago mafia) Bataille, and M. Foucault. -- "Alexandre Kojeve is an enigmatic figure whose influence on postmodernism is better known than understood. Reading Hegel through the eyes of Marx and Heidegger simultaneously, Kojeve formulated a wild if not hypnotic mélange of ideas. In this book, Drury reveals the nature of Kojeve's Hegelianism and the extraordinary influence it has had both on French and American intellectuals. According to Drury, Kojeve believed that history was a tragedy in which a cold, instrumental and uninspired rationalism has conquered and disenchanted the world. Drury maintains that Kojeve's conception of modernity as the fateful triumph of this arid rationality is the cornerstone of postmodern thought. Kojeve's picture of this world gives birth to a dark romanticism that manifests itself in a profound nostalgia for what reason has banished - myth, madness, disorder, spontaneity, instinct, passion and virility. In Drury's view, these ideas romanticize the gratuitous violence and irrationalism that characterizes the postmodern world.")
- L'identité humaine, Edgar Morin, seuil, 2001
(“Tentative indispensable d'intégrer la liberté, l'imaginaire et la folie dans la raison humaine qui peut servir d'introduction à la pensée complexe. On en reste pourtant à une juxtaposition contradictoire de la raison et de l'irrationnel comme de l'ange et de la bête, du poétique et du biologique, alors que l'irrationnel est au coeur de la raison (principe de précaution) et que nous ne sommes plus ni ange ni bête mais plutôt citoyens.”)
- J. Cottingham. The Rationalists. 1988
(portrait of philosophical rationalism)
- Herbert Marcuse. Reason and Revolution.
- Alfred North Whitehead. The Function of Reason. (rec Kenneth Smith)
- Paul Grice, Aspects of Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. (rec Phil Agre)
REASON AND THE IMAGINARY/IRRATIONAL
- 1) Lloyd. Magic, Reason, Experience. 1979 ; 2) Rationality in Greek Thought. Ed. by M. Frede and G. Striker. Oxford, 1996.
(1 examines the emergence of reason in Greece, contrasting it with magical and mythological thinking and how it is the political process of the agora which led to rational philosophy - rec freeman / item 2 equally recommended by Freeman )
- Eloge de la Raison Sensible. By Michel Maffesoli. Grasset, 1996.
( “Comment pourrions nous penser l’irrationel, en equilibrant mieux affect et intellect, en franchissant l’obstacle epistemologique que constitue actuellement l’ideal de la raison abstraite et deconnecte du reel”.)
- Henri Atlan. "a tort ou a raison : intercritique de la science et du mythe". Point Seuil
(“henri atlan est un spécialiste de la biologie de l'autorganisation, de l'intelligence artificielle, etc. Mais c'est aussi un des membres du comité français de bioéthique (où il défend un point de vue extraordinairement ambigu et subtil sur le clonage),et simultanément, un spécialiste de la kabbale et du talmud. Son livre, "a tort ou a raison : intercritique de la science et du mythe" devrait te passionner si tu veux aborder les problèmes de "spiritualité et rationalité". Le livre est édité en Point Seuil, il est donc aisément disponible et pas cher. Si tu es prêt à investir un peu plus, le premier volume de sa "connaissance spermatique", les "étincelles du hasard" (seuil) est probabelement l'application contemporaine la plus brillante de la kabbale juive qu'il m'ait été donné de lire. Il existe aussi un livre "entre le cristal et la fumée" plus ancien, mais très interessant également. Atlan est brillant et fécond. Il est aussi subtilement agaçant, car il écrit dans un style très "académique", très "convenu". Mais les idées, elles sont très souvent très originales....” Source: Remi Sussan)
- Georg Lukacs. The Destruction of Reason. London: Merlin, 1980.
- Hubert Dethier. Crisis der rede. Humanistisch Verbond, 1980
(“de verzelfstandiging van de rede in de industriele samenleving, de verenging van de rede tot het domein der middelen”)
- Les grecs et l'irrationnel, E.R. Dodds (1959) champs flammarion 1977.
(“Plus qu'une simple étude mythologie, ce texte explore la difficile naissance de la raison, mais traite également de la naissance du moi " à l'occidental ", avec une comparaison très fine entre les " sociétés de honte " et les " sociétés de culpabilité". - remi sussan)
subtopic: IMAGINATION
- Gilbert Durand. 1) 'The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary'. the University of Queensland (French: Les structures anthropoligiques de l’imaginaire. Dunod,1992.);
2) L’imagination symbolique. PUF, 1993
(on the notion of the Imaginal, both recommended in postconpol; ‘a foundational book’).
- Jean-Jacques Wunenburger. L’imagination. Que sais-je?
- L’imaginaire arabo-musulman. Malek Chebel. PUF, 1993. (rec Noms de Dieux)
- Bronowski, Jacob, The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination, New Haven;
Yale University Press, 1978
.Cornelis Castoriadis
- Cornelis Castoriadis. The Imaginary Institution of Society. Trans. Kathleen Blamey. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press and Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1987. 418pp.
- Cornelis Castoriadis. World in Fragments. Writings on Politics, Society, Psychoanalysis, and the Imagination. Ed. and trans. David Ames Curtis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. 507pp.
.Jean-Paul Sartre
- Jean-Paul Sartre. L’imaginaire. Gallimard, 1940
- Jean Paul Sartre. L’imagination. Gallimard, 1950
subtopic: SYMBOLISM
- Ernst Cassirer. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms.
(“has shown how, in all peoples and in all religions, creation appears as the creation of light. Thus the coming of consciousness manifesting itself as light in contrast to the darkness of the unconscious, is the real ‘object’ of creation mythology. Cassirer has likewise shown that in the different stages of mythological consciousness, the first thing to be discovered is the ‘subjective reality’, the formation of the ego and of individuality”, cited by Erich Neumann in ‘The Origins of Consciousness’)
- T. Todorov. Theories du Symboles. Seuil, 1977
.Jungian
- John Van Eenwyk's Archetypes and Strange Attractors: The Chaotic World of Symbols.
(“a truly luscious book I included in my recent revisiting in depth - at this more, ahem, mature age - Jung and archetypes. This book is priceless”: Sarah Ross, postconpol)
- Carl Jung. Metamorphoses de l’ame et ses symboles. Poche, 1992.
(a classic on the interpretation of symbols expressing also the theory of the collective unconscious, i.e. symbols are not just an expression of the personal as in Freudian theory)
subtopic: RELIGION
- Andre Gernez. Biologie de la Croyance.
(“la croyance est une realite biologique, inscrite au plus profond de nos cerveaux et de nos genes, intrisiquement liee a la nature humaine” - rec by Nouvelles Cles)
- Religion and Rationality. By Jurgen Habermas. MIT Press. (rec NY Rev of Bks)
- Histoire litteraire du sentiment religieux. l’Abbe Bremond (rec CLC)
subtopic: The Dark Irrational
- Monsters: evil beings, mythical beasts, and all manners of imaginary terrors. David D. Gilmore. Pennsylvania Press.
(“the first exploration by an anthropologist of their role in the psyche and society” - NYRB )
- 1.3 organisation by mode of consciousness / historical epoch
The following books should be read to understand the workings of the different modes of consciousness, as described by Jean Gebser, in the Ever-Present Origin, and Ken Wilber in ‘Integral Psychology’.
- CONSCIOUSNESS (GENERALITIES)
- Julian Jaynes, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind".
(His central thesis is that modern self-aware consciousness is a quite recent phenomenon, arising in Mesopotamia towards the end of the Second Millennium BC. Based on the neurophysiological discovery of the bicameral mind (left and right hemisphere), Jayes maintains that ancient peoples could not "think" as we do today, but heard 'voices' coming from the left hemisphere, interpreting these as coming from the Gods.”)
- Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness
( According to a reviewer he "continued Jung's work, adding substantially, modifying and clarifying it and went much further into the origin and evolution of mental-egoic consciousness, and the depiction of this in the Great Mother/Hero myths. He alluded to symmetries between social and psychological structures, contemporary mythic systems and artistic and other cultural expressions." )
-La conscience expliquée : Daniel Dennet (editions odile jacob)
(“La dénonciation de la croyance au " théâtre cartésien ", qui postule l'existence d'un centre psychologique ou se tiendrait, immobile, l'observateur ou la conscience.” - Remi Sussan)
- Carl Jung. Les racines de la conscience. Poche, 1995. (rec Pascal Houba)
- Catalano, J. 2000. _Thinking Matter: Consciousness from Aristotle to Putnam
and Sartre_. Routledge. (rec David Chalmers biblio)
- THE UNCONSCIOUS: GENERALITIES
- Lancelot Law Whyte. The Unconscious Before Freud: Aspects of Form, Accent on Form
(strongly recommended by Philosphere)
- Henri F. Ellenberger. Histoire de la decouverte de l’inconscient. Fayard, 1994.
(“replace la decouverte de l’inconscient dans la longue duree historique”, english edition 1970 - rec. Nouvelles Clefs)
subtopic: THE COGNITIVE SCIENCES AND THE BRAIN
-La conscience expliquée : Daniel Dennet (editions odile jacob)
(“La dénonciation de la croyance au " théâtre cartésien ", qui postule l'existence d'un centre psychologique ou se tiendrait, immobile, l'observateur ou la conscience.” - Remi Sussan)
- THE ARCHAIC MODE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The stage where the human emerges out of the animal kingdom as something new and specific.
- 1.L'ouvert, De l'homme et de l'animal, Giorgio Agamben, Rivages, 2002
- 2. La part animale de l'homme, Esquisse d'une théorie du mythe et du chamanisme, Michel Boccara, Anthropos, 2002
(Ces deux livres renouvellent la question de nos rapport avec l'animalité. Leurs points de vue me semblent éclairer et compléter ce que j'ai pu avancer sur le rôle du cerveau dans l'ouverture au non-biologique (la distanciation). Nous verrons qu'alors que pour Giorgio Agamben, l'homme est tout entier dans son effort de différenciation de l'animalité (L'homme est un animal qui "se reconnaît ne pas l'être" 46), pour Michel Boccara, et sans contredire à ce processus d'arrachement au monde animal, notre humanité y reste profondément ancrée malgré tout, à travers le mythe ou le chant comme vécus qui nous renvoient au temps jadis où nous étions des animaux comme les autres, avant l'apparition d'un langage humain qui nous a rendu sourd au langage des oiseaux comme à la plupart de nos instincts. Nous verrons qu'il faut y voir le retour dans le langage de notre animalité perdue par le langage. - Jean Zin)
- THE MAGICAL MODE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
- The Golden Bough: a study in magic and religion. By James Frazier. Macmillan, 1890.
( recommended in a spiral dynamics bibliography; another review mentioned that there is a shortened a revised version that is better for reading because the most blatant forms of colonial patronising have been removed, but it remains one of the classical studies on magic)
- Lucien Levy-Bruhl. 1)How Natives Think, 1926.; 2) The Soul of the Primitive, 1928
(topic: “les fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures”, a dated title but the findings may still be worth retaining - cited by Neumann)
- Claude Levi-Strauss. 1) La Pensee Sauvage 2) Tristes Tropiques
(the classics by the founder of structuralist anthropology - rec by Todorov who says that the personal recollections of the second item are still ‘eminently readable’)
- Where the Spirits Ride the Wind: trance states and other ecstatic experiences. F. Goodman. Indiana Univ Pr, 1990. (sd bib)
- Bronislaw Malinovsky. The Father in Primitive Psychology, 1927 (cited by Neumann)
- Gilbert Murray. Five Stages in Greek Religion. (cited by Neumann)
- Otto Rank. The Myth of the Birth of the Hero. (cited by Neumann)
- Stuart Clark. Thinking with demons. The idea of witchcraft in early modern Europe. 1997.
subtopic: POSTMAGICAL REVIVALS
The following list suggested by Remi Sussan is not an expression of original tribal and magical forms of consciousness, but rather later reappropriations of it.
- La magie spirituelle et angélique de Ficin à Campanella. D.P. Walker (Ed?).
(“Une présentation érudite de la magie neoplatonicienne de la renaissance. Le texte De Walker, assez ancien, est souvent cité par des auteurs plus récents, (Yates, Couliano) comme une référence indispendsable.” - remi sussan)
- Eros et Magie à la renaissance. Ioan P. Couliano (Flammarion1984)
(“Bien au delà d'une simple étude sur la philosophie de la renaissance, c'est peut être le texte le plus extraordinaire jamais écrit sur la magie. Couliano établit la connexion entre magie et media et fait du magicien un véritable " ingénieur memetique " - remi sussan)
PRIMARY WORKS
- Works by and on Alistair Crowley, founder of the Order of the Golden Dawn, who created a new ‘magickal’ format.
- De la Magie (et " Des liens " (1590 env.) Giordano Bruno , éditions Allia (2001)pour la traduction française (inclus dans " cause principles and unity " Cambrige edition, pour la version anglaise (1998).
(“Deux livres courts, très denses, donnant une point de vue très philosophique sur la pratique magique. Pour Ioan couliano (voir plus haut), " Des liens " est le prototype des manuels de manipulation de masse, de propagande et de publicité.” - remi sussan)
- True and faithful relation of what passed for many years between Dr John Dee and some spirits. Edité par Meric Casaubon (1659), Kessinger.
(“Le témoignage le plus précis sur les " communications " entre un célèbre magicien de la fin de la renaissance et des "entités" proclamant être des anges. L'un des textes fondamentaux de la magie cérémonielle occidentale.” - remi sussan)
- La philosophie occulte.(1510) Henri Cornelius Agrippa, Berg.
(“Le grand classique de la magie en Occident. - remi sussan)
- THE MYTHOLOGICAL MODE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
- Ernst Cassirer. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms.
(“has shown how, in all peoples and in all religions, creation appears as the creation of light. Thus the coming of consciousness manifesting itself as light in contrast to the darkness of the unconscious, is the real ‘object’ of creation mythology. Cassirer has likewise shown that in the different stages of mythological consciousness, the first thing to be discovered is the ‘subjective reality’, the formation of the ego and of individuality”, cited by Erich Neumann in ‘The Origins of Consciousness’)
- Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness
(One of the best accounts on how the development of mythology reflects the development of the maturity of the self and conscious awareness. According to a reviewer he "continued Jung's work, adding substantially, modifying and clarifying it and went much further into the origin and evolution of mental-egoic consciousness, and the depiction of this in the Great Mother/Hero myths. He alluded to symmetries between social and psychological structures, contemporary mythic systems and artistic and other cultural expressions." )
- Other Books by Erich Neumann: 1) The Great Mother (‘a monumental study’); 2) Amor and the Psyche: the Psychic Development of the Feminine; 3) Art and the Creation of the Unconscious (‘contains many essays on art and mythology’)
- Religion and the Decline of Magic. Keith Thomas (rec NY Rv of Bks)
- Mircea Eliade. 1) Images and Symbols; 2) Myth and Reality.
(item 1: “shows that myth and symbol constitute a mode of thought that not only came before discursive and logical reasoning, but is still an essential function of human consciousness. He describes and analyzes some of the most powerful and ubiquitous symbols that have ruled mythological thinking of East and West”; item 2: “an informative guide to modern mythologies from societies where myth is still ‘living’ and gives meaning and value to life” / see also Mircea Eliade’s “Autobiography 1907-1937” though it may not be fortright about the author’s original fascist sympathies)
- Mythe et Epopee. G. Dumezil. Gallimard, Paris, 1968. 630 p.
(the great French mythologist focusing on Indo-European ‘trifunctionality’)
- Ladakh : The Peaks and Lamas/ by Marco Pallis. Reprint. 1998
("Marco Pallis spent several years in the eastern Himalayan region, travelling and collecting a vast material concerning Ladakh, Sikkim and Tibet. The present book is the story of his first travells to this mysterious region. He travels in a world inhabited by divinities, monks and Lamas, by hosts of Gods, demons and spirits who, peopling the snow-capped mountains, the wind-swept plains, the rushing rivers and broad but lonely valleys of Ladakh and Tibet, are easily annoyed by intruders. A world where nothing is devoid of meaning if one can but interpret the signs to view the reality with the eye of faith.” - Marco Pallis is considered one of the perennialist authors, and this account of Tibet is a good intro to the magical/mythological feeling/being of the region before the Chinese occupation)
- Mircia Eliade, Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return. New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1971.
(Looks at myth and time from a variety of religious traditions. Very important book in showing the underlying structure of the spiritual worldview.)
- Philippe Walter. Mythologie Chretienne: rites et mythes au Moyen-Age. Entente, 1994. (rec Antaios)
- Le Mythe et l’Homme. By Roger Caillois
- Ernst Cassirer LANGUAGE AND MYTH (rec K. Smith)
GREECE
- Classical Mythology . Sixth Edition . MARK MORFORD & ROBERT LENARDON
(“Classical Mythology, Sixth Edition, continues to build on its best-selling tradition of focusing on the literary tradition of Greek and Roman mythology through extensive translations of original mythological sources. Its coverage of comparative and interpretive approaches, as well as evidence from art and archaeology, grows with each edition. “)
- L’Univers des Dieux, les Hommes. Jean-Pierre Vernant. Seuil.
(“le grand helleniste raconte les mythes comme des histoire pour les enfants. Magnifique” - Nouvel Obs)
- Les ruses de l'intelligence, la Metis des grecs 1974, Vernant et Detienne, champs flammarion
(“Une étude sur la " sagesse pratique " incarnée par la déesse Metis, et dont Odysseus est la parfaite incarnation. Poiur l'esprit grec, feru d'abstraction, la connaissance technique était à la fois sujet de fascination et de mépris. Ce livre expose cette ambiguité fondamentale de la pensée greque.” - remi sussan)
- Les grecs et l'irrationnel, E.R. Dodds (1959) champs flammarion 1977.
(“Plus qu'une simple étude mythologie, ce texte explore la difficile naissance de la raison, mais traite également de la naissance du moi " à l'occidental ", avec une comparaison très fine entre les " sociétés de honte " et les " sociétés de culpabilité". - remi sussan)
- La survivance des dieux antiques: Jean Seznec.Champs flammarion
(“Comment les dieux de l'antiquité ont pu survivre sous différentes formes au cours du moyen age, pour reprendre leur plein puissance à la reanissance. - remi sussan)
- Les fictions d’Homere. L’invention mythologique et cosmographique dans l’Odyssee. Par A. Ballabriga. Paris: PUF, 1998.
(‘ouvrage nourri des analyses penetrantes et lumineuse de Dumezil et Rybakov’, Antaios)
- Ulysse et la lumiere grecque. Par G. Haldas. Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1998.
- Paul Veyne. Les Grecs ont-ils cru a leurs mythes. Seuil, 1983. (Gaudin)
INDIA
- Mythes et Dieux de l'inde. Alain Danielou champs flammarion.
(“Une présentation très complète de la pensée indienne, et une vibrante défense du polythéisme.” - remi sussan)
- Louis Dumont : Homo Hierarchicus
(“Un travail détaillé sur les mecanismes de la plus sophistiquée des sociétés " holistes " : l'inde des castes. Un compagnon indispensable de ses essais sur l'individualisme” - remi sussan)
VARIOUS WESTERN
- Mythes et Mythologies dans la litterature francaise. P. Albouy. Paris: Armand Collin, 1998.
(“dans une brilliante anthologie du XVIieme au XXe siecle; il suit la palingenesie des mythes et leurs seculaires metamorphoses”, Antaios)
- Mythologie et litterature a Rome: La reecriture des mythes aux Iers siecles avant et apres J.-C. Par J. Fabre-Serris. Lausanne: Payot, 1998
.Scandinavian/Germanic
- R.I. Page. Mythes Nordiques. Seuil, 1983.
- G. Dumezil. Mythes et Dieux de la scandinavie ancienne. Gallimard, 2000.
- P. Hermann. La mythologie allemande. Perrin, 2001. (Antaios)
.Western Medieval Mythology
- Mythologie Chretienne. Philippe Walter. Ed. Entente, 1992
(‘remarquable’, Antaios)
- Philippe Walter. 1) Merlin ou le Savoir du Monde. Imago, 2000; 2) Arthur. Imago, 2003; 3) Le Gant de Verre. Artus 1990; 4) Chretiens de Troye. Champion, 1997; 5) Le livre du Graal. Gallimard, 2001.
(third item on Tristan & Iseux myth; the author, who in his total oeuvre is covering all the important medieval mythological stories, is strongly praised by Antaios)
VARIOUS NON-WESTERN
- Henrietta McCall. Mythes de la Mesopotamie. Seuil, 1994.
- Karl Taube. Mythes azteques et mayas. Seuil, 1995.
- Chantal Zheng. Mythes et croyances du monde chinois.
subtopic: modern/postmodern revivals
- The Power of Myth. Joseph Campbell. Doubleday, 1988.
- Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1968.
(“Surveys the journey of the Hero--the struggle, the challenges, the betrayals and the ultimate victory. Metaphor for the self and for the challenges facing society.” - rec Sohail Inatullah)
- Mythologies. By Roland Barthes. (a postmodern classic)
- Contexte sans contexte. George Trow
(“la societe moderne manquent de mythe ce qui entraine leur substitution par les contes de fees et les BD, et menent a une infantilisation de notre culture” - rec Dimensions Interieures)
- MENTAL/RATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS
- 1) Lloyd. Magic, Reason, Experience. 1979 ; 2) Rationality in Greek Thought. Ed. by M. Frede and G. Striker. Oxford, 1996.
(1 examines the emergence of reason in Greece, contrasting it with magical and mythological thinking and how it is the political process of the agora which led to rational philosophy – both items rec. by Freeman)
- J W Burrow's The Crisis of Reason: European thought, 1848-1914 (Yale University Press)
- Crosby, Alfred W., The Measure of Reality: Qualification (QUANTIFICATION?) and Western Society, 1250-1600, Cambridge, 1997.
(Alfred W. Crosby, Professor of American Studies at the University of Texas in Austin suggests in his latest book that: "Western Europeans were among the first, if not the first, to invent mechanical clocks, geometrically precise maps, double-entry bookkeeping, exact algebraic and musical notations, and perspective painting. They thus became world leaders in science, technology, armaments, navigation, business practice, and bureaucracy, and created may of the greatest masterpieces of Western music and painting." The Measure of Reality chronicles in charming detail these dramatic changes in mentalite, and how they radically altered the role of Europeans. He assigns a large measure of this success to the emergence of quantification -- in math, cartography, time competency, musical precision, artistic perspective, reductionists details, and other linear and analytical habits of thought.)
- Les grecs et l'irrationnel, E.R. Dodds (1959) champs flammarion 1977.
(“Plus qu'une simple étude mythologie, ce texte explore la difficile naissance de la raison, mais traite également de la naissance du moi " à l'occidental ", avec une comparaison très fine entre les " sociétés de honte " et les " sociétés de culpabilité". - remi sussan)
- THE INTEGRAL MODE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
- Jean Gebser. The Ever-Present Origin
(the classic that brought integral consciousness on the map)
- Spretnak, Charlene, The Resurgence of the Real: Body, Nature, and Place in a Hypermodern World, Addison-Wesley, l997.
(Spretnak, who co-authored Green Politics: The Global Promise with Fritjof Capra refutes the FS-Green claim that nothing is "real," only symbolic and then describes the transitions from "Modern" - 5th Level; then to Deconstructionist Postmodern - 6th Level -- then to sketchy definitions of the current worldview -- Ecological Postmodern that has strong elements of 7th Level (yellow) thinking. Her description of the inherent assumptions and elaborating behaviors part and parcel of 5th Level (Modern) on pages 219 - 220 is well worth the price of the book. Here is a Five Star ***** that is easy reading and provides more support for the nature of emerging human systems. - sd bib)
- Spretnak, C. (1991) States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. San Francisco: Harper-Collins.
- CARRILHO Manuel Maria, Rhétoriques de la Modernité, P.U.F. - Paris 1992 - 176 p.
("Ce livre se propose d'étre une façon de dire que la crise est terminée" : il s'agit de la crise de la modernité, ou de la philosophie, ou de "la conception de la raison comme faculté souveraine et suprême, capable de suturer ses fissures et d'ordonner le monde" (p.7). Le projet de ce livre est au moins original, à l'heure ou chacun se croit tenu d'annoncer ou de dénoncer "la crise" (de la démocratie, de l'économie, de la morale, de la science, etc...) enfin un chercheur qui nous déclare que l'une de ces crises -sans doute la plus "importante", celle "du bon usage de la raison" - est terminée ! "Façon de dire", sans doute, mais les occasions d'optimisme sont trop rares pour qu'on s'en prive ! D'autant plus que cette conclusion d'apparence paradoxale est fort soigneusement argumentée par un large balayage des discours contemporains sur les philosophies de la rationalité (bien qu'il manque nombre d'autres arguments qui corroboreraient aisément la thèse, que développent par exemple H.A. Simon, J. Piaget ou E. Morin). Si soigneusement argumentée qu'elle a, pour l'essentiel "emporté ma conviction". Etais-je"convaincu d'avance" ? Il est alors précieux de recevoir quelques solides renforts...pour le cas où... ! La thèse pourtant est ambitieuse "Le fait est que la sortie de la crise - et de l'immense parasitage théorique qui l'accompagne, multipliant les figures de l'impasse et de la clôture - n'est possible que par l'abandon de la logique qui l'a produite ; et plus particulièrement des conceptions qui ont fait de la nécessité l'axe majeur de la compréhension du monde, et de l'universalité la norme supérieure de la compréhension du sujet et de la raison" (p.7). "La reformulation de l'articulation rhétorique/rationalité ouvre les voies à une révision des moyens, des finalités, et, plus que tout, des problèmes de la philosophie" (p.8). )
- ARDOINO Jacques et DE PERETTI André, Penser l'hétérogène, Desclée de Brouwer, 1998
(Jacques Ardoino et André de Peretti nous entraînent, sous forme de dialogue, dans leur voyage à la fois complice et conflictuel en complexité. Sans doute faut-il entendre, en toile de fond de leurs échanges, la question de l'éducation. Mais leur propos est bien plus large, et vise à élaborer les conditions de possibilité (théoriques, épistémologiques) d'une pensée complexe, sans concession réductrice, inscrite dans son ampleur anthropologique et politique. Au fil de quinze entretiens, ils déploient leurs questions, leurs références, leurs doutes, leurs différends, leurs manques, reviennent parfois en arrière, se répètent, laissent quelques réflexions inachevées en suspens, et nous donnent ainsi une magnifique illustration d'un "chemin faisant" coélaboré, qui serait à la fois bouclé sur lui-même et qui pourtant aurait su avancer. reco complexity site)
- Ferrer, J. (2001) Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
- Skolimowski, H. (1994) The Participatory Mind. London: Arkana.
- Alfred Korzybski. Science and Sanity: an introduction to non-aristotelian systems and general semantics.
(a classic, rec sd bib and Philosphere)
- "Wisdom, Its Nature, Origins and Development", Ed Robert Sternberg, 1990.
(“There is an article by Deidre A. Kramer called "Conceptualizing Wisdom - the primacy of affect-cognition relations". She argues that cognitive and affective development reciprocally interacts to produce a number of wisdom-related skills or processes that enable wisdom to operate through the individual. As these skills and processes address the stressors of adult life then that in turn allows for continued cognitive and affective development.” - Sarah Ross)
- Jonas Salk. Anatomy of Reality: Merging Intuition and Reason (New York, Columbia University Press, 1983)
(“Jonas Salk, most famous for his development of the Salk vaccine, and the founding of The Salk Institute, was a pioneer in evolutionary biology and philosophy, applying the lessons of how nature evolves to our own social evolution. He writes in Anatomy of Reality: "The most meaningful activity in which a human being can be engaged is one that is directly related to human evolution. This is true because human beings now play an active and critical role not only in the process of their own evolution but in the survival and evolution of all living beings. Awareness of this places upon human beings a responsibility for their participation in and contribution to the process of evolution. If humankind would accept and acknowledge this responsibility and become creatively engaged in the process of metabiological evolution consciously, as well as unconsciously, a new reality would emerge, and a new age would be born." )
- Existential Psychotherapy. Irvin Yalom.
(“A dozen years ago Martina and I had the privilege of being asked to translate the book "Existential Psychotherapy" into German for publication. I think it is the best Irvin Yalom has ever written (in 1980), and I would warmly recommend this book to all who want to deal with these issues. The job of translating this text really was worth two longterm therapies. Yalom examines each of the basic uncertainties of life ("ultimate concerns") in depth: death, isolation, freedom/responsibility and sense(lessness). Once we have accepted these ultimate concerns of life (and this will be a lifelong process, I guess), the "defense mechanisms" (in psychoanalytic terms) of anxiety can be loosened and the information and enlightenment discourse you, Roar, mentioned, may fall on fertile ground. Otherwise I fear that the existential anxiety and unconscious or subconscious fear of uncertainty will remain the permanent sub-subtext to the text *and* the subtext, and anxiety will pop up violently as soon the defense mechanisms at each evolutionary level are questioned or attacked. “ - postconpol)
- Pearce, Barnett & Littlejohn, Stephen: Moral conflict - When social worlds collide. 1997.
(“deals with deep-rooted value-based conflicts and draws quite heavily on Robert Kegan's work - One of the consequences of this pattern is increased conflict and, as I have been arguing, an increased sensitivity to our differences. This is why I believe we need to switch from discourses about solutions to discourses about creating sensitive dialogues. For those who are interested in this theme, I recommend this book” - postconpol)
quote: "As a form of speech that bridges or encompasses various moral communities, transcendent eloquence has five general characteristics; it is (1) philosophical, (2) comparative, (3) dialogic, (4) critical, and (5) transformative.
First, transcendent eloquence is philosophical. By this we mean that it attempts to uncover the assumptions about knowledge, being, and values that lie behind the positions in conflict. As a philosophical discourse, transcendent eloquence is educational, aiming to help those involved to understand the basis of the conflict belief systems on a deep level. […]
The second characteristic is that transcendent eloquence is comparative. It attempts to create categories that can be used to compare otherwise incommensurate systems. It conceives a language with which people can talk with one another about their assumptions and see the relative powers and limits of each side. […] incommensurate and incompatible ways of thinking are not normally comparable because from within either system, there is no conceptual or logical frame sufficient to account for their differences. Therefore, such frames must be created outside the conflicting positions. This does not mean that the disputants themselves cannot do this, only that they have to get out of their own frame of reference to do so. […] It is a creative process of inventing a set of dimensions along which the two systems might be compared. […] Such comparison is always local and specific to the dispute in question because there can be no single, universal scheme that compares all systems. […] Transcendent eloquence, like comparative ethnography, aims to find or create a context within which the two sides can be compared on some dimension. [Ray, this section well captures one of the reasons behind my emphasis on the need to nurture the idiographical approach.] […] The process involves a reconceptualization of the nature of the conflict and makes rational discourse between the parties possible. The transformed conflict forces spokespersons to deal directly with their own assumptions, which may give pause to see the rationality of the other side and even to open disputants to change. In essence, this type of move is a shift from experiencing the conflict from within one's own moral order to viewing it from an outside, more objective position. […]
The aim would be not to reach agreement, but to understand better the basis for disagreement. In sum, then, productive comparisons cannot be made in intractable conflicts until higher-level categories are created for this purpose, and when that is done, true dialogue on radical issues may occur. This experience can provide concepts that the participants never considered before, ideas that might be used as a common reference point in analyzing the statements and actions of each side.
The third characteristic is that transcendent eloquence is dialogic. It attempts to move the debate from statements designed to convince to statements designed to explore. It transforms a debate in which attributions are hurled back and forth into an interaction in which the relationship itself can be discussed. This approach changes from accusing and belittling and an attitude of exclusiveness to realizing that both sides are limited by the axioms of their respective realities and an attitude of inclusiveness. […] in dialogue, one speaks in order to take a turn to an interpersonal process that affects all participants. […]
[…] trancendent eloquence should make participants aware and respectful of the moral tradition of opponents, even though they may continue to disagree. […]
The fourth characteristic is that transcendent eloquence is critical. It exposes the powers and limits of each side in a controversy, and, more important, it exposes them to the advocates on both sides. It enables participants and viewers to weigh alternatives on the basis of these strenghts and weaknesses. It deconstructs the assumed truth values of conflicting claims so that choices must be made, not on the basis of which side is correct according to some set of criteria or whose interests will be promoted or how decisions makers happen to "feel" about the issue but on the basis of the powers and limits of the various positions when they are held up side by side. […]
Customary methods of managing disputes in our society are designed to clarify goals, articulate reasons, make choices, and compromise. They rarely compare the powers and limits of conflicting views directly, and they almost never allay assumed truths. […]
The final characteristic of transcendent eloquence is that it is transformative. It reconstructs the context in which the conflict is to be understood. […] Within a moral conflict, then, what spokespersons say is interpreted within some context, which is in turn affected reflexively by their talk, gestures, writings, and actions. The Religious Right, for example, understands its dispute within a context of good against evil. In turn, statements made by advocates of the Religious Right, as well as those of their opponents, further bolster the context-a struggle for morality versus immorality. The other side, however, understands the struggle differently. For the liberals, the conflict is one between freedom of speech and religion and narrow-minded forces of repression. Their statements and actions and those of their conservative opponents are understood in this light and in turn reinforce their understanding of what is going on. […] It sometimes happens that people will speak and act in ways that transform the context so that their acts can be understood differently. To change the context means to change the identity of the community in which one acts. […] Transcendent discourse reconstructs contexts in large measure by changing the meaning of winning. […] Transcendent eloquence holds out the hope of transforming the context so that parties to a dispute can understand themselves, the opponent, the issues, and the relational patterns in different terms.")
- POSTRATIONAL/SPIRITUAL FORMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
- The Moon of Hoa Binh . Cong Huyen Ton Nu Nha Trang & William L. Pensinger
(“A mind-blowing conceptual novel which uses the Vietnam War as a backdrop for contemporary explorations of the psychology and cosmology of George Gurdjieff and John Godolphin Bennett. The site includes excerpts, discussions of character's psychological profiles, and the diverse models contained in Bennett's landmark four volume 'The Divine Universe' (1997) magnum opus. Recommended by Anthony Blake and other teachers in the Gurdjieff/Bennett legacy.)
- Nonduality. David Loy
(a very concise explanation on how to overcome duality of self and world in Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism et al.)
GETTING THERE
- Frances Vaughan. Shadows of the Sacred: Seeing through spiritual illusions
(an exploration of the darker sides of the spiritual path, by one of the foremost transpersonal psychologists)
- 1.4 organisation by topic
- CHILDHOOD
- Centuries of Childhood. By Philippe Aries. (Random House, 1962)**
(famous history of the conditions of childhood which posits that it is a 17th cy development: before that childhood was not a distinct state; this view has been challenged by more recent historiography, see The Philippe Aries Debate in the section on Family Systems, third quadrant)
- Luc, Jean-Noël. L'invention du jeune enfant au XIXème siècle . Belin, 1997
(how childhood is a bourgeois invention)
- Stern, Daniel - The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology - New York, Basic Books, 1985
- Alice Miller. For Your Own Good
(“famous for her views on how childhood experiences contribute to violent personalities: In her second book, For Your Own Good, she used the example of Hitler's brutal treatment at the hands of his martinet father -- as well as the recollections of authoritarian upbringings by high-ranking SS officers -- to explore the human fallout of what she termed poisonous pedagogy. This was a style of child-rearing derived from a popular series of 19th-century manuals written by Daniel Schreber, a German doctor (whose son, a paranoid judge, wrote a memoir that became the basis of one of Freud's early case studies), which emphasized breaking the child's will at the earliest moment. The advice that Miller quotes is indeed hair-raising, but her sense of righteous horror seems to overlook the fact that the whole notion of children having rights of their own, worthy of respect and protection, is itself not much more than a century old." - rec postconpol)
- A Political History of Child Abuse. Lloyd de Mause. Psychohistory.com
(controversial but groundbreaking study on how children have been abused over the ages, but discerning a very specific line of development and evolution up to partnership parenting. According to the author: children were first universally killed, then abandoned, then physically abused, then mentally abused. This was followed by the conditional love of the Victorians and the emerging contemporary partnership parenting mode)
- DEATH AND DYING
- Ariès, P., 1) Essais sur l’histoire de la mort en Occident du Moyen Âge à nos jours, Paris, Seuil, 1975. 2) L'homme devant la mort, Paris, Seuil, 1977
(history of the conceptions on death and dying)
- On Death and Dying. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.
(one of the first works to bring death out of the closet in which modernity had placed it, by the founder of thanatology)
- EVIL
- André JACOB, L'Homme et le Mal. Paris, Les Éditions de CERF, collection Humanités, 1998, 126 p. (ISSN-2-204-06208-1)
- Badiou, Alain. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Verso Books. New York, 2001, 224 pages, Hardcover, ISBN: 1859842976.
- Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. by Erich Fromm
- Face a l’extreme. T. Todorov. Seuil, 1991.
(“vices et vertu face au mal extreme” - study on the advent of evil and the resistance against it, focusing on life and moral survival in the camps)
- Evil in Modern Thought. Susuan Neiman. Princeton University Press.
(“explores three centuries of philosophical thinking” - NYRB)
- Monsters: evil beings, mythical beasts, and all manners of imaginary terrors. David D. Gilmore. Pennsylvania Press.
(“the first exploration by an anthropologist of their role in the psyche and society” - NYRB )
- LANGUAGE
- The Symbolic Species: the co-evolution of language and the brain. WW Norton, 1997. (sd bib)
- MEMORY
- The Art of Memory. By Frances Yates. (1966)
(‘fascinating ... already a classic’ Pratum Book Co.)
- NARCISSISM
- Alford, C. Fred - Narcissism: Socrates, the Frankfurt School and Psychoanalytic Theory - New Haven and London, Yale University Press - 1988
- Christopher Lasch. The Culture of Narcissism.
(Devastating critique of the contemporary world where narcissism has become the norm)
- NATURE (relationship with)
- Keith Thomas. Man and the Natural World: A History of The Modern Sensibility. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.
- Gregory Bateson. Mind and Nature: a necessary unity. Bantam, 1979.
(French: La nature et la pensée Gregory Bateson,1979 Seuil 1984.)
("Quelle est la structure qui relie le crabe au homard et l'orchidée à la primevère ? Et qu'est ce qui les relie, eux quatre, à moi ? Et moi à vous ? Et nous six à l'amibe, d'un côté, et au schizophrène qu'on interne, de l'autre ? " au risque d'avoir l'air d'exagérer, c'est peut être un des livres les plus important du XX siècle. En tout cas, c'est mon avis, et je le partage.” - remi sussan)
- PSYCHEDELICS
HISTORY
- The Long Trip: a prehistory of psychedelia. By Paul Deveraux. Penguin, 1997. (sd bib)
- Writing on Drugs. Sadie Plant.
(“an exhilirating literary exploration which traces the history of drugs and drug use through the work of some of our most revered writers” - rec Jan Geerinck)
PHENOMENOLOGICAL DESCRIPTIONS OF THE EXPERIENCE
- The Invisible Landscape: mind, hallucinogens, and the I Ching. By Terence and Dennis McKenna. Harper San Francisco, 1994.
- The Doors of Perception. Aldous Huxley.
- 1) Cosmic Trigger. Robert Anton Wilson; 2) Valis. Philip K. Dick 3) The Syrian Experiments. Doris Lessing
(item 1 is a classic account from the sixties from a leading underground writer, while 2 and 3 are fictional accounts by well-known science-fiction writers. For details on the Dick experience, with an explicit acknowledgement that Valis is based on real psychedelic experiences, see the biographical and conversational account by Gregg Rickman, “Philip K. Dick, the last testament” - all item rec’d by RAW in second foreword of Cosmic Trigger, published on disinfo.com)
- TIME
GENERALITIES
- The Dance of Life. Edward T. Hall. Intercultural Press.
(“complex analysis of how the perception and use of time varies among cultures and what the implications for society are”)
- Figures du Temps.Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 1997.
(contributions to colloqium treating of conception of time from antiquity to science fiction. According to Antaios: uneven but worthwile).
- The Nature of Time. By Prof. GJ Whitrow (Penguin, 1975)
- The Twin Dimensions: Inventing Time and Space. By G. Szamosi (McGraw-Hill, 1986)
- Elias, Norbert. (1992). Time: An Essay. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
ECONOMIC TIME
- Eric Alliez. Les temps capitaux.
(on ‘time’ in the work of Marx? - rec Negri)
- Rifkin, J. (1987). Time Wars: The Primary Conflict in Human History. New
York: Henry Holt & Co.
SPIRITUAL TIME
- Tarthang Tulku Book: Time, Space, and Knowledge: A New Vision of Reality
(“Time, Space, and Knowledge delves questions of personal identity and of time and space like few other books. Practical, extensive exercises are included to demonstrate the concepts. One of these includes the visualisation of an immense human body and its detailed exploration until one becomes familiar with it. Then the form is superimposed on one's own body, which is then similarly explored down to the microscopic, even to the quantum effect, where we can see: where does your body 'end' and the 'outside' world begin? In effect, parts of the 'world' are enclosed by you, and the world encloses you. The exercise results in a liberation of ideas from previously-rigid concepts and a reassessment of one's self as an identity. “)
- Hari Shankar Prasad, ed. Time in Indian Philosophy. Delhi, Indian
Books, 1992.
(“740 pages of all you wanted to know about time and Indian philosophy. Chapters in German are a bit tough going if you don't speak German but otherwise just lovely. Opening essay on the problem of time is an excellent summary of the book.”)
- Dane Rudhyar, Astrological Timing. New York, Harper and Row, 1969.
(“Long wave theory of history and the future using astrological cycles. Even if one is skeptical of this method, the insights that come from this view of mind, self and history are often far deeper than what emerges from conventional psychological theory, Freud or Skinner. Believes we are in the midst of a grand transformation, the first of many to come in the next centuries.”)
subtopic: speed
- Hyperculture: the human cost of speed. Stephen Bertman.Praeger, 1998.
- VIOLENCE
- Dave Grossman. On Killing: the psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society. Little Brown, 1996.
- IN THE NAME OF IDENTITY: Violence and the Need to Belong, By Amin Maalouf, Translated from the French by Barbara Bray, Arcade Publishing: 164 pp
- Base Instincts: What Makes Killers Kill . By Jonathan H. Pincus, M.D.
Norton
(“Here's a neuro-physiological one by Jonathan Pincus. After 20 years of research into cold-blooded murderers, he concluded that three factors have to be present: 1) mental illness 2) physical neuro-physiological damage 3) child abuse. None of the cases he examined had not at least two of the three factors.” - GG)
- Rene Girard. 1) La Violence et le Sacré (Grasset, 1972) ; 2) Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde (Grasset, 1978)
(Item 1: A controversial classic that wants to show how society is founded on the sacrifice of innoncents in a endless cycle, rendered symbolic thanks to Christianity)
- Alice Miller. For Your Own Good: hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence. Farrar; Strauss, Giroux, 1990.
(“famous for her views on how childhood experiences contribute to violent personalities: In her second book, For Your Own Good, she used the example of Hitler's brutal treatment at the hands of his martinet father -- as well as the recollections of authoritarian upbringings by high-ranking SS officers -- to explore the human fallout of what she termed poisonous pedagogy. This was a style of child-rearing derived from a popular series of 19th-century manuals written by Daniel Schreber, a German doctor (whose son, a paranoid judge, wrote a memoir that became the basis of one of Freud's early case studies), which emphasized breaking the child's will at the earliest moment. The advice that Miller quotes is indeed hair-raising, but her sense of righteous horror seems to overlook the fact that the whole notion of children having rights of their own, worthy of respect and protection, is itself not much more than a century old." - rec postconpol)
- T. Todorov. Face a l’extreme.
(“une etude sur la vie morale dans les camps de concentration”)
PSYCHOLOGICAL VIOLENCE OR AUTHORITARIANISM
- T Adorno & E Frenkel-Brunswick THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY (rec Kenneth Smith lifetime reading list)
- Stanley Milgram OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY (rec Kenneth Smith lifetime reading list)
- Works by Wilhelm Reich
(Reich was originally a freudo-marxist who focused on sexual represssion as the basis of the creation of the frustrated and authoritarian personality. Among his works are ‘Character Analysis’, the Mass Psychology of Fascism, the Sexual Revolution, and many more. A must read)
- the Psychohistory Institute
(at psychohistory.com, you will find fascinating accounts by Lloyd deMause and others, who believe that the structure of the unconscious of the subject, is a strong determinant of history. See in particular the ‘Political History of Child Abuse. However, according to some, the authors are sometimes loose with the facts. Nevertheless, it is strongly recommended to acquaint oneself with this school of thought)
1.5 Subjective values: the quest for Truth, Beauty and the Good
Traditionally, it was said that every individual has three important and immaterial ‘value’ needs. First, the metaphysical need, for Truth, which is the quest to understand the world. Second, the ethical need the Good, to be able to act justly in one’s relation with the others; and third, the esthetic need for Beauty, in order to be able to experience the Sublime aspects of the world of nature, culture, art and eroticism. This section will cover books on these three great quests of mankind. In contrast, we have placed the great intersubjective aims such as Fraternity, Liberty and Equality, in the quadrant on Intersubjectivity.
THE QUEST FOR TRUTH
THE QUEST FOR THE GOOD
THE QUEST FOR BEAUTY
- Edmund Burke. A Philosophical Inquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful. 1787
- Friedrich Schiller ON THE AESTHETIC EDUCATION OF MAN (rec Kenneth Smith)