14
The Rebirth of Wisdom The Passion of the Wes tern Mind by Rich ard Tarnas Review by: Sean M. Kelly The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Winter 1993), pp. 33-44 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of The C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jung.1.1993.11.4.33 . Accessed: 19/12/2012 10:40 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . University of California Press and The C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The San Francisco Jung Institute L ibrary Journal. http://www.jstor.org

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The Rebirth of WisdomThe Passion of the Western Mind by Richard TarnasReview by: Sean M. KellyThe San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Winter 1993), pp. 33-44Published by: University of California Press on behalf of The C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jung.1.1993.11.4.33 .

Accessed: 19/12/2012 10:40

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of 

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of California Press and The C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco are collaborating with JSTOR to

digitize, preserve and extend access to The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

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The Rebirth ofWisdom

Richard Tarnas. The Passion of the Western Mind. New York,

Harmony Books, 1991. New York, Ballantine Books, 1993

(paper).

Reviewed by Sean M. Kelly

I . INTRODUCTION

"The owl of Minerva," writes Hegel, "spreads its wings

only with the falling of the dusk." (G.W.F. Hegel, Preface,

Hegel)s Philosophy of Right. Oxford, Oxford University Press,

1976) I take this to nlean that only with the passing of an age,of a hitherto dominant configuration of the world spirit, does

it becoIne possible to discern figure fronl ground, to rise to an

overarching perspective and trace the convergence of paths lead

ing to the present. While it is nearly two centuries now since

Hegel, in the wake of the French Revolution, articulated his

speculative "Science ofWisdom" and announced the "end" of

history, from the owl's perspective it has been but a day. Al-

though Hegel also presaged the coming da\vn, he did not foreseehis own eclipse with the triumph of nineteenth century mate

rialisln and positivisIn. Nor did he foresee the extent to which,

in the light-and growing darkness-of our own catastrophic

century, his speculative vision, and all silnilar attempts to think

through, and fron1, the Whole, would be increasingly scorned

or simply ignored. There have been exceptions, of course-one

thinks ofArnold Toynbee andTeilhard de Chardin, and, or more

recently, of Ken Wilber. But given the persisting don1inance of

anti-speculative sentilnent in most contemporary acadenlic

circles, it was with surprise and delight that I greeted the recent

appearance of Richard Tarnas's The Passion of the Western Mind.

For not only has Tarnas succeeded in producing a "coherent

account of the evolution of the Western mind and its changing

conception of reality" (Tarnas, p. xi), but he has dared to do

The San FranciscoJung Instittlte Library Joumal, Vol. 11, No.4, 1993 33

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so in terms of an overall "archetypal dialectic . . . one long

Inetatrajectory . . . culnlinating before our eyes." (p. 440)

It is difficult to overpraise what Tarnas has accomplished.

To begin with, he manifests a Protean capacity to enter into themindset and world view of the figures and movements under

consideration while skillfully highlighting the most significant

implications for the ongoing argument of the book. Secondly,

and most iluportantly, Tarnas has produced a much needed

contemporary "guide for the perplexed," a cOIllprehensive yet

readily accessible map of the potentially bewildering territory of

Western intellectual history. While this map, or nletamap, recalls

the grand design first adumbrated by Hegel, it is by no nleansa mere copy, but a creative extension of the same speculative

vision to the moving threshold of the present.

II. WORLDVIEW DIALECTICS

Dialectic can be defined in general terms as the generation

of new forms through the play of opposites. "Without Contrar

ies," as Blake put it, "is no Progression" (The Marriage of

Heaven and Hell). In a similar vein, Jung spoke of the tension

of opposites as essential to all that lives: "Life, being an energetic

process, needs the opposites. For without opposition there is, as

we knO\V, no energy." (C.G. Jung, "A Psychological Approach

to the Dogma of the Trinity," in Psychology and Religiotl) Col-

lected Works) Vol. 11. Princeton, Princeton University Press, par.

291) The dialectic at work in the Passion is complex and operates

at several different levels or degrees of inclusiveness. It is only

as the arguinent reaches its clilnax that the deepest and most

inclusive levels are fully revealed, and witll them the archetypalground upon which the entire process rests. Before turning to

this archetypal ground, I will try to give a sense of the overall

structure ofWestern intellectual history as Tarnas sees it, focus

sing on the play of opposites within and between the succession

of worldviews leading to the present.

Tarnas adopts the traditional division ofWestern intellectual

history into three broad periods-classical, nledieval, and mod

ern. The classical is dominated by the Greek world view, and herethe fundamental dialectic is generated from the tension between

the ideal and the real, sometimes understood as eternity and

time, sometiInes as reason and experience. According to Tarnas,

this tension found "paradigmatic expression in the richly anl

biguous figure of Socrates . . . vivid contrapuntal expression in

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the Platonic dialogues . . . and seminal compronlise in the

philosophy of Aristotle." (p.7l) Conlmon to all three of these

dialecticians, and to the Greek world view as a whole, was "the

uniquely Greek affirmation,' often only inlplicit, that the finalmeasure of truth was found not in hallowed tradition, nor in

contemporary convention, but rather in the autonomous indi

vidual human mind." (ibid.)

The transition from the classical Greek to the medieval

Christian worldview took place in the crucible of Hellenistic

culture. With the establishment of first Alexander's, and then the

Roman, empire, the Greek world view was not only promulgated

but exposed to a multiplicity of different perspectives. While the

creative impetus of Greek philosophical and scientific endeavor

was continuing, well into Roman tilnes, Hellenistic culture was

increasingly open to influxes of Middle Eastern religious ideas.

Chief among these was Christianity, whose mythic core served

as dialectical counterpoint to the logos of Greek thought.

The dynamic tensions of the Greek world view were quickly

assimilated to, and alnplified by, the already highly charged

contraries within the early Christian community's central myth.

These opposites, though sYlnbolically and singularly fused in the

ilnage of Jesus Christ as the God-Man, generated two compli

mentary perspectives, which Tarnas calls "Exultant" and "Du

alistic" Christianity. Exultant Christianity saw itself as "an al-

ready existent spiritual revolution that was . . . progressively

transforming and liberating both the individual soul and the

world in the dawning light of God's revealed love." (p.l20)

Dualistic Christianity, by contrast, "stressed the futurity and

otherworldliness of redemption . . . the need for strict inhibitionofworldly activities, [and] a doctrinal orthodoxy defined by the

institutional church. . . . " (ibid.) I f the former was "rapturously

optimistic and all-embracing" (ibid.), the latter manifested "a

pervasive negative judgenlent regarding the present status of the

human soul and the created world, especially relative to the

omnipotence and transcendent perfection ofGod." (p. 121) The

dualistic perspective tended to dominate in the first phase of

Christian ascendancy-the paradigmatic figure here beingAugustine-but the full flowering of medieval Christian culture

embodied a happier synthesis of both perspectives. This

world-and-soul-enabling synthesis found expression theologi

cally in Aquinas's Summa) poeticaJly in Dante's Divine Comedy)

and artistically in the great Gothic cathedrals.

Richard Tamas, The Passio'fI Ofthe Western Mind 35

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It is immediately follo\\ring these seemingly transcendent

high-points of medieval Christian culture that the lineanlents of

the modern world view begin to constellate. The transformation,

once begun, is remarkably sudden. "Within the span of a singlegeneration," as Tamas notes, "Leonardo, Michelangelo, and

Raphael produced their masterworks, Columbus discovered the

New World, Luther rebelled against the Catholic Church and

began the Reformation, and Copernicus hypothesized a helio

centric universe an d commenced the Scientific Revolution." (p.

224) The Renaissance, the Reformation, an d th e Scientific

Revolution bear succeeding witness to a profound redirection of

the Western mind's fundamental orientation, a shift in eIDphasisfrom the vertical (epitomized in the Gothic spire) to the hori

zontal (voyages o f discovery), from God to man, Church to state,

from mythos to Logos, and from Heaven to earth. In Aion (Colleaed

Works, Vol. 9, pt. ii), Jung invokes the principle of unconscious

compensation to account for this redirection, seeing it as an

overall reaction to the onesidedness of early Christian spirituality.

Such compensation would not be a mechanical redistribution or

loading, but an organic expression of the Western mind's inten

tion to nlove toward wholeness, an individuation of its spirit.

Tarnas, as we shall see in the following section, makes a similar

appeal to the principle of wholeness when addressing the

"metatrajectory" of the Western nlind. For the mOIDent, it is

sufficient to note that, while Tarnas assumes a traditional view

of IDodernity as "rooted in the rebellion against the Catholic

Church and the ancient authorities," he stresses that th e olodern

can equally be seen as "dependent upon anddeveloping frOOl both

these matrices" of our civilization. (p. 282)As he demonstrates, the driving spirit throughou t the first,

inflatedly optimistic phase of modern Western thought-frool

Copernicus and Descartes to Newton, Laplace, and Kant-found

self-conscious formulation in the Enlightenment ideal of rational

autonooly. Th e characteristic expression of this was the mecha

nistic "natural philosophy" with which the search for self-libera

tion became associated. By the turn of the nineteenth century,

the Enlightennlent had levelled the medieval Christian worldview, which enlphasized dependency on God, and the conse

q u e n t disenchantnlent o f the world had sparked the

countercultural protest of Romanticisnl. No w in place of the

abstract ideal of rational autonomy, the Romantics celebrated

feeling and inspiration, informed by a divine or semidivine (he-

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roie) background of unconscious striving. Where the Enlight

enment scientists and philosophes saw an inanimate, clock-work

universe, the Romantic Naturphilosophen saw a divine, symbol

laden and soul-pervaded organism.Crucified, as it were, between these rational and irrational

poles of the modern sensibility, is the pivotal figure of Hegel,

whose overriding impulse, writes Tarnas,

was to comprehend all dimensions of existence as dialec-tically integrated in one unitary whole. In Hegel's view, allhuman thought and all reality is pervaded by contradiction,which alone makes possible the development of higher

states of consciousness and higher states of being . . .Through a continuing dialectical process of opposition andsynthesis, the world is always in the process of completingitself. (p. 379)

Given the key role of the dialectic in Tarnas's argunlent,

it is clear that he regards Hegel as pivotal to the overall devel

opment of the Western mind, especially in its phase ofmounting

self-reflection that has culminated in our own psychological era.

This, of course, was Hegel's own view of the matter, which is

reflected in his conviction of having attained "absolute kno,v

ing" and being the first to announce the end of history. While

it is obvious that the evolution of the Western mind did not stop

with Hegel, it does appear to have reached, in his speculative

Science of Wisdom, a degree of coherent self-comprehension

that has yet to be surpassed. In the short run, however, it was

surpassed, and in a manner consistent with the dialectic itself.

For Hegel's synthesis, as Tarnas points out, "was eventually

submerged by the very reactions it helped provoke-irrat

ionalisIll and existentialisIll (Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard),

pluralistic pragmatism (James and Dewey), logical positivism

(Russell and Carnap), and linguistic analysis (Moore and

Wittgenstein), all movements increasingly reflective of the gen

eral tenor of nlodern experience." (p. 383)

The second phase of modern Western thought-from the

eclipse ofHegel to the present-has been donlinated by two new

pairs of contradictory trends. On the one hand, beginning withthe first pair, the spectacular success of the Cartesian-Newtonian

paradigm throughout the 19th century seemed to vindicate the

earlier optiInism of the Enlightenment (the conviction that rea

son could set "Man" free) and encouraged a widespread embrace

of materialism, positivisIll, and scientisn1. If the foundations of

Richard Tamas, The Passion of the Westertl Mind 37

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this paradigm were shaken by the new physics in the early 20th

century, there was no doubting the ever-increasing power of

science and technology to explain and master the natural world.

On the other hand, with the mounting recognition of the humanas also subject to the laws of nature, the very success of the

modern scientific project seemed, with every advance, to render

more problematic the Enlightenment ideal of rational autonomy

that had originally motivated it. For, as Tarnas phrases it,

The more man strove to control nature by understanding

its principles, . . . to separate himself from nature's necessity

and rise above it, the more completely his science metaphysi

cally submerged man into nature, and thus into its mechanistic and impersonal character as well.... Thus it was the

irony of modern intellectual progress that man's genius

discovered successive principles of determinism-Canesian,

Newtonian, Darwinian, Marxist, Freudian, behaviorist, ge

netic, neurophysiological, sociological- that steadily attenu

ated belief in his own rational and volitional freedom, while

eliminating his sense of being anything more than a periph

e r a and transient accident of material evolution. (p. 332)

The second pair of contradictory trends can be seen asradical responses to the fading of the Enlightennlent's dream in

the face of the recognition that human beings are not only a

limited but a potentially self-cancelling species. Both are mani

festations of the "post-nlodern" mind which, in contrast with

the dogmatic imperialism of the Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm,

stresses the virtues of "pluralism, complexity, and ambiguity" (p.

402), along with the "conviction that no single a priori thought

system should govern belief or investigation." (p. 395) Despitethese shared assuIllptions, however, both trends remain pro

foundlyantithetical. On the one hand, we have (to adopt David

Griffin's helpful distinction [David Griffin. The Reenchantment

ojScie1lCe. Albany, State University of New York Press, 1988, p.

x]), the "deconstructive" variety of postrnodernism which cur

rently enjoys much favour in academic circles. Adopting various

forms of the "henlleneutics of suspicion" (in the tradition of

Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud), deconstructive postmodernism

seeks to unluask, deflate, and explode any pretentions to "truth,"

and has a particularly virulent antipathy toward anything smack

ing of traditional metaphysical categories, such as God, the Self,

or the Whole. Despite its espousal of radical openness, however,

deconstructive postmodernislll, as Tarnas makes clear, fails to

deconstruct itself, and is sometimes "prone to a dogmatic rela-

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tivism and" a compulsively fragmenting skepticism. . . ." (p. 402)

"Constructive" postmodernism, on the other hand, while

honouring the virtues of openness and complexity, is motivated

by the aspiration to\vard "radical integration and reconciliation."(p. 407) The task of the constructive postmodernist, as Tarnas

sees it, is to meet the "dialectical challenge" of evolving "a

cultural vision possessed of a certain intrinsic profundity or

universality that, while not imposing any a priori limits on the

possible range of legitimate interpretations, would yet someho\v

bring an authentic and fruitful coherence out of the present

fragmentation, and also provide a sustainable fertile ground for

the generation ofunanticipated new perspectives and possibilitiesin the future." (p. 409) This new vision is still in the nlaking,

yet it was first glinlpsed by the ROlnantics and received its first

draft, as it were, at the hands of Hegel. In our own century, the

vision has been rekindled by evolutionary thinkers like Rudolph

Steiner and the later Jung. Among contemporaries, Tarnas re

serves a particular esteem for the work of Stanislav Grof, for

reasons we shall presently explore.

III. THE ARCHETYPAL GROUND

I t is only in the climactic Ept'logue that Tarnas makes explicit

the archetypal ground of the successive dialectical transforma

tions he has so skillfully guided the reader through in the body

of the text. As the most superficial level of this grollild, Tarnas

invokes the figures of Saturn and Pronletheus-the mythic

embodiments of the opposites of order and change, authority

and rebellion, control and freedom, tradition and innovation,

structure and revolution. The "dynanlic tension" between these

opposites can be seen as the principal "dialectic that propels

'history.'" (p. 492) Tarnas compares this Saturn/Prometheus

dialectic to Kuhn's understanding of the relation between "nor

mal" science and conlpeting paradigms. Every paradigm-shift, in

Tarnas's view, would signal the victory of Prometheus over

Saturn. While this seems to fit quite nicely with the emergence

of the classical Greek world view and the shift, following the

Renaissance, to the Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm, the shifts to

the nledieval Christian and the "constructive" postmodern do

not, to Iny mind at least, suggest the handiwork of Prol11etheus.

Whether it Inight be more appropriate here to invoke, as Hegel

does, the figure of Christ Of, following Nietzsche, that of

Dionysus, I leave to the archetypal psychologists to decide.

Richard Tamas, The Pass;01I of the ",estem Mi11d 39

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Tarnas himself sees the Saturn/Prometheus dialectic as one

pole only of a still "larger overarching dialectic involving the

feminine or life." (ibid.) "For the deepest passion of the Western

mind)" he writes, "has been to reu'nite with the grou1'ld of itsbeing."

The driving impulse of the "Vest's [predominantly

Promethean] masculine consciousness has been its dialec

tical quest not only to realize itself, but also, finally, to

recover its connection with the whole, to come to terms

with the great feminine principle in life: to differentiate itself

from but then rediscover and reunite with the feminine,

with the mysteryoflife, of nature, ofsoul." (Tarnas, p. 443)

In such a passage Tamas clearly manifests his affinity with

the Romantic tradition, and in particular with (the early) Hegel

and (the later) Jung. According to this perspective, the alienation

of the tnodern mind-and even perhaps of"mind" per se-nlust

be seen as an inevitable (though hopefully not permanent)

consequence of the differentiati011 of consciousness from its

otherwise unconscious ground or matrix. In this way, Tarnas, like

Jung before hinl, nlakes sense of the patriarchal dominance of

Western intellectual history. Given the synlbolic association of

the collective unconscious, as the "matrix mind," with the ar

chetypal preserve of the Great Mother, repression of (and alien

ation from) the "feminine principle in life" can be seen as a

defensive tnaneuver on the part of a fledgling consciousness,

which despite its heroic posturing is highly vulnerable. And, as

Jung and his post-Jungian followers insist, the further actualiza

tion or individuation of consciousness must entail reunification

with "the feminine, with the mystery of life, nature, soul." One

finds essentially the sanIe argument in the works of Erich

Neumann (The Origins a'nd History of ConsCiOttS1'ICSS. Princeton,

Princeton University Press, 1973), Edward Whitmont (The

Retunl of the Goddess), Ken Wilber (Up from Ede1'J. Boulder,

ShanIbhala, 1983), and Michael Washburn (The Ego and the

Dynamic Ground. Albany, State University of New York Press,

1988). But no one has managed to demonstrate the implications

for history better than Tarnas.Of contemporary post-Jungians, it is, as I stated earlier, to

the work of Stanislav Grof that Tarnas appeals for a deeper

understanding of the archetypal ground of the Western nlind's

dialectical quest. The fruit of over three decades of research into

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the nature and therapeutic potential of non-ordinary states of

consciousness, Grors full-spectrum "cartography of the human

psyche" (see, in particular, Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death and

Transcendence i'fI Psychotherapy. Albany, State University of Ne\\!York Press, 1985) includes three main realms or levels: the

personal (o r "recollective-biographical"), the transpersonal

(which includes the archetypal as one of several experiential

dimensions), and (his own discovery) the perinatal. In keeping

with Grofs own estimation of the matter, Tarnas thinks that it

is the perinatal level which holds the key to the "deepest passion"

of the Western mind. As he explains, it is in the process of being

bornthat

each of us is initiated into the world of the separateself sense, an initiation which, though occasioned by ou r birth,

is experienced as a death to the "original consciousness of

undifferentiated organismic unity with the mother. . . . " (p. 430)

I t is to the traulllatic residues left in the wake of this earliest

initiatory death that one must look for the ultimate experiential

source of "the fundamental subject-object dichotOllly that has

governed an d defined modern consciousness. . . . " (ibid.) At the

same tillle, however, it is also here that one experiences the first

liberation, however ambivalent, from ego, and from the pain and

constriction of a self waiting to be born. As a complete Gestalt)

therefore, the perinatal process constitutes the experiential

matrix of the psyche's future dialectical quest. Generalizing from

Grof's clinical data surrounding experiential reliving of the birth

process, Tarnas notes that

th e archetypal sequence that governed the perinatal phe

nomena from womb through birth canal to birth was

experienced above all as a powerful dialectic-movingthrough an initial state of undifferentiated unity to a prob

lematic state o f constriction, conflict, and contradiction,

with an accompanying sense o f separation, duality, and

alienation; and finally moving through a stage o f complete

annihilation to an unexpected redemptive liberation that

both overcame and fulfilled th e intervening alienated

state-restoring the initial unity but on a new level that

preserved the achievement o f the whole trajectory. (p. 429)

Despite the archetypal character o f this dialectical

sequence-a sequence which, as I have argued elsewhere, is

fundalllental to the structure and dynamics of the Selfas complex

whole (see Sean Kelly, Individuatt'on and the Absolute: lung)

Hegel) and The Path Toward Wholeness. Mahwah, NJ, Paulist

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Press, in press)-Tarnas considers "the Promethean movement

toward human freedom, toward autonomy from the encompass

ing 111atrix of nature" to be "an overwhelmingly masculine

phenomenon." (pp. 432, 441) Nowhere, however, does he giveany indication as to why this should be the case. This is one of

the few failures to include a feminist sensibility into this otherwise

sensitive text. According to such felninists as Dorothy

Dinnerstein and Nancy Chodorow (see Catherine Keller, From

a Broken Web: Separatiorl, Sexism, and Self. Boston, Beacon Press,

1986), the roots of the masculine "separative self" lie in the

different ways males and females emerge out of the primal re

lationship to the mother, via the Oedipal conflict, to a genderlinked ego-identity. To the extent that girls, as girls, retain an

ego-syntonic identification with the mother, their sense of self

is forged on the basis of an enduring sense of continuity with

the prilual luatrix. Boys, on the other hand, whose gender

identity is ego-distonic relative to the mother, experience them

selves as "other" than, and thus more fully separate fronl, the

primal matrix with which they were once more or less identified.

Obviously the birth experience is equally traumatic (or

exhilirating) for 111embers of both sexes, bu t the subsequent

course ofego development will, in each case, diverge significantly

with respect to what degree the psychic organization will favour

or impede the processing and integration of the residual trauma.

With these' differences in mind, one can proceed to a more

nuanced reading of the "sacrifice" and "ego-death" which

Tarnas feels "the masculine" must undergo before the Western

mind can finally experience its "triunlphant and healing re

union," 'with the fenlinine. (p. 444) If Grof is right, then thedeath in question-the one the Western mind has so long re

sisted, and yet in a sense also passionately desires-has already

in fact taken place, at the moment of birth, bu t has generally not

(for men especially) been properly integrated. In this sense, the

"Man" that "must be overcome" (p. 445) is " h e" that has yet

to be born. (Such, perhaps, is the deeper inlport of the contelu

porary men's nlovenlent.) I t is only following such a birth, or

rebirth, that one can envision a true "marriage of the luasculincand fenlinine." (p. 444)

IV. CONCLUDING REMARKS

"The onset of the new Spirit," writes Hegel, "is the product

of a widespread upheaval in various forms of culture, the prize

42 Sean M. Kelly reviews

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at the en d of a complicated, tortuous path and of just as var

iegated and strenuous effort." (Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit.

Oxford, University Press, 1981, par. 18) While this Spirit has

yet fully to emerge from "the labour of its own transformation"

(ibid.), something o f its lineaments are already in evidence.

Tarnas draws particular attention to "feminist, ecological, ar

chaic, an d other countercultural perspectives" (p. 444), includ

ing transpersonal psychology (especially lung and Gro£) and the

so-called "new science" (Bateson, Bohm, Lovelock, Sheldrake,

among others), all of which have something to contribute to the

birth o f what many now refer to as th e "New Paradigm." In

contrast with the fragmented, reductionistic, and alienatingtrend o f the hitherto dominant spirit of modern Western

thought (which includes not only the modern Cartesian

Newtonian paradigm, bu t the "deconstructive" variety of the

postmodern), the spirit of the New Paradignl is typically oriented

toward the r e ~ a t e d notions of healing, wholeness, and the holy.

It is in this sense that Tarnas, echoing lung in Answer to Job

(Collected Works) Vol. II), points to the archetypal images of the

hierosgamos and the divine child as the guiding symbols of thedawning era.

Rather than seeing the various manifestations of the New

Paradigm as expressions of the archetypal "Iuarriage of the

masculine and feminine," however, it would perhaps be more

appropriate to see this marriage as one aspect-albeit a critical

o n e - o f the overall movement toward wholeness which the New

Paradigm, in its many forms, seeks to enlbrace. For, as we have

seen, it is only from the perspective of a yet unregenerate

masculinity that such casualties of modern alienated conscious

ness as the body or nature, the archaic, or the divine, can be

subsumed-through the logic of projection-under the sym

bolic rubric o f "the feminine" as lost "other." Thus, if (as Tarnas

states in a rueful reflection on the language o f Western philoso

phy) " Ma n" is something that nlust be overconle, so too must

"the feminine," at least to the extent that each term, in uncon

scious symbolic opposition, continues to subserve the dichoto

mizing trend of the old paradigm. This is admittedly a fine

distinction, but one, nevertheless, that is more consistent with

the overall spirit of Tarnas's .project, a spirit wherein, as he

hilnself puts it, "Each perspective, masculine and felninine, is .

. . both affirmed an d transcendended, [and] recognized as part

of a larger whole." (p. 445)

Richard Tamas, The Passion of the Western M i 1 ~ d 43

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