The passion of the Western mind : understanding the ideas that have shaped our world view

"The most lucid and concise presentation I have read, of the grand lines of what every student should know about the history of Western thought. The writing is elegant and carries the reader with the momentum of a novel... It is really a noble performance." --Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces Here are the great minds of Western civilization and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud. Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESTERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume.

"[This] magnificent critical survey, with its inherent respect for both the 'Westt's mainstream high culture' and the 'radically changing world' of the 1990s, offers a new breakthrough for lay and scholarly readers alike....Allows readers to grasp the big picture of Western culture for the first time."
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Here are the great minds of Western civilization and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud. Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume.

From 2,000 B.C. to the threshold of the 21st century, this book illuminates history's most profound concepts in an engaging, accessible manner. The minds behind the theories--from Plato, Augustine, and Copernicus to Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud--come to vivid life in a blend of narrative and scholarship that is captivating in style and epic in breadth. Ten years in the making. Soon to be a major PBS-TV series.

"[This] magnificent critical survey, with its inherent respect for both the 'West's mainstream high culture' and the 'radically changi ng world' of the 1990s, offers a new breakthrough for lay and scholarly readers alike...Allows readers to grasp the big picture of Western culture for the first time".-- SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Here are the great minds of Western civilization and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud. Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESTERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume. Ten years in the making and already receiving wide critica acclaim, The Passion of the Western Mind is a major new inquiry into the evolution of our culture's consciousness, from the dawn of Western civilization to the dawn of the twenty-first century. This is the epic sstory of our intellectual and spiritual heritage, a story never before told with such breadth of focus and clarity of insight To approach what was distinctive in a vision as complex and protean as that of the Greeks, let us begin by examining one of its most striking characteristics-a sustained, highly diversified tendency to interpret the world in terms of archetypal principles. An historical account of the evolution of Western culture, from the ancient Greeks to the postmodern era