| Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (Terry Lectures) |  | Author: Marilynne Robinson
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book
List Price: £16.99
Buy New: £7.99
as of 10/9/2010 19:33 UTC details
You Save: £9.00 (53%)
In Stock
New (34) from £7.99
Seller: Jim Lewis
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 4,293
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 176
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0300145187
Dewey Decimal Number: 201.65
EAN: 9780300145182
Publication Date: June 1, 2010
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
| |
| Features:
| • | New | | • | Mint Condition | | • | Dispatch same day for order received before 12 noon | | • | Guaranteed packaging | | • | No quibbles returns |
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Covers the topics in the history of human thought - science, religion, and consciousness. This title challenges postmodern atheists who crusade against religion under the banner of science. It explores the nature of subjectivity and considers the culture in which Sigmund Freud was situated and its influence on his model of self and civilization.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Absence of Mind August 23, 2010
book boffin
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Those who know Marilynne Robinson's sublime fiction will expect a level of description and analysis that gets to the very heart of anything she addresses. She does this brilliantly. Absence of Mind is difficult, the result of deep and wide philosophical and scientific reading, but thrilling in a truly intellectual sense. I have just read it and know I will have to read it again. Taking on what she calls the 'parascience'of popular writers about science as Dawkins, Dennett, Pinker, and E. O. Wilson, by way of Descartes, Nietzsche, Freud and others, Robinson's main contention is that in the reductive, mechanistic, neo-evolutionary world view that has prevailed since Darwin, what has been ignored is humankind's interiority, consciousness of self, in all its terror and beauty. Her rebuttals to what she sees as this current received orthdoxy are intricate and subtle. Her analyis of 'the altruism problem' is masterly.
 Absence of Mind August 14, 2010
Mrs. E. R. Ellington (UK)
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
In reading this slim volume of four lectures, I wanted, as an atheist, to see what powerful arguments this award-winning author would bring to bear against the modern movement to use a scientific approach to refute religion. I was somewhat disappointed by the limited scope of her attack on say, Dawkins or Pinker. Behind the grammatically perfect but convoluted sentences, peppered with "hermeneuticization" and "autochthonous", her thesis seems to be that the "objectivity" of science is sterile and rigid in its denial of the aspects of the human mind that one might wish to label "the soul". Also, the very objectivity or "correctness" of science is itself open to question, since e.g. the world of physics is continually challenged and changed.
I agree with her reservations over the wave of "parascientific literature", which I take to be "pop psychology" which increasingly tells us what to think and replaces religion for some people, even affects the world of work, through "management training" and "performance management".
One of the most interesting sections for me is the presentation of Freud as a man whose theories may well have been in a part a reaction to the persecuted status of the Jews in Europe. I do not know what support this theory might find with experts.
Her choice of thinkers on whom to focus - Freud, Darwin, Comte, William James, Dawkins, Dennett, etc. assumes a good level of prior knowledge. In a lecture this may be fair enough. Yet I feel that the book falls between two stools. To make a mark with lay readers, there is a need for more explanation of philosophical ideas. For those already familiar with the ideas cited, her message seems rather slight.
I was left wanting to find out more about philosophy but my response to the author's argument was to say, "Yes, but just because some scientists may be wrong doesn't make right the kind of woolly spirituality one finds in the characters in her novels." She does not address the point that one may choose to be an atheist, because one's observations and experience make it impossible to be otherwise, without losing sight of the "beauty and strangeness of life".
 Thought provoking August 12, 2010
brunty (Yorkshire U.K)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
moving and rational, if the two can go together. Brilliant re-assertion of traditional values in public and private intercourse. Wonderful.
the mind August 9, 2010
Janet King (UK)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (Terry Lectures) is a rational critique of the reductionist view of the mind proposed by some philosophers. Rather like a choir the mind is greater than the sum of its part.A thought provoking well argued series of essays.
Great stuff.
| In Stock
|
|
|
DISCLAIMER: This is an Amazon storefront - the products referenced on this site are manufactured and sold by parties other than NaturalBreastEnlargement.org.uk
and its affiliates. Any questions, complaints, or claims regarding the products must be directed to the appropriate manufacturer, vendor or to Amazon.co.uk. |
CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON EU S.à.r.l. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’ AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME.
Powered by Natural Breast Enlargement
In Association with Amazon.co.uk | |
