| Flight
From Death:
Causality, Consciousness, Conceptualization, & Culture |
| Book | Description |
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The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker - Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the "why" of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie -- man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates more than twenty years after its writing. |
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The Birth and Death of Meaning by Ernest Becker - In each of his books, Ernest Becker presents his most current view of what human life (and our experience of it) 'really means'. His intellectual life was a constant quest for some theoretical framework that would explain human experience/behavior in a satisfactory way. Reading his books in order is a grand journey of mind and spirit. I never felt that he fully succeeded in his quest, but each book - and this in particular for me because it was the first of his I read - forces the reader to come to terms with aspects of life that we usually avoid thinking about - either because they are too difficult or because we have supressed any awareness of them. |
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Escape
From Evil by Ernest Becker
- "Since men must now hold for dear life onto the self-transcending
meanings of the society in which they live, onto the immortality symbols
which guarentee them indefinite duration of some kind, a new kind of instability
and anxiety are created. And this anxiety is precisely what spills over
into the affairs of men. In seeking to avoid evil, man is responsible
for bringing more evil into the world than organisms could ever do merely
by excercising their digestive tracts. It is man's ingenuity, rather than
his animal nature, that has given his fellow creatures such a bitter earthly
fate. " p. 5. |
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Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History by Norman O. Brown - If the question "What is the human animal?" is on your mind, read this book! In my opinion, Life Against Death ranks among the most important modern contributions toward an understanding of the human condition. It is on the same short list as Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents and Camus' Myth of Sisyphus. Like these works and indeed the subject, it is not an easy read, but ultimately an important read.. |
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Love's
Body by Norman O. Brown - Originally published in
1966 and now recognized as a classic, Norman O. Brown's meditation on
the condition of humanity and its long fall from the grace of a natural,
instinctual innocence is available once more for a new generation of readers.
Love's Body is a continuation of the explorations begun in Brown's famous
Life Against Death. Rounding out the trilogy is Brown's brilliant
Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis. |
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Apocalypse And/or Metamorphosis by Norman O. Brown - Here is the final volume of Norman O. Brown's trilogy on civilization and its discontents, on humanity's long struggle to master its instincts and the perils that attend that denial of human nature. Following on his famous books Life Against Death and Love's Body, this collection of eleven essays brings Brown's thinking up to 1990 and the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. Brown writes that "the prophetic tradition is an attempt to give direction to the social structure precipitated by the urban revolution; to resolve its inherent contradictions; to put an end to its injustice, inequality, anomie, the state of war . . . that has been its history from start to finish." |
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Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development by Otto Rank - Beginning with a monograph in 1907 that first brought him to Freud's attention, Otto Rank became his mentor's closest colleague until 1926. The present work, published in 1932, follows three earlier elaborations of the first monograph, and covers artistic endeavor, language, play, architecture, etc. through the ages as an expression of a striving for individual/communal immortality and a reconciliation with mortality. The creative type lives life, affirming the inevitable, while the neurotic is frozen with life-fear. A fine translation reads well but Ludwig Lewisohn's terrific preface has been replaced here with one by the lighter-weight but better-known Anais Nin. |
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Shantung Compound: The Story of Men and Women Under Pressure by Langdon Brown Gilkey - In February, 1943, Gilkey was sent to a prison camo compound in Shantung Province. He was there until November, 1945. Always the philosopher, Gilkey kept an extensive diary, analyzing the events in the camp in terms of what they revealed about human nature. What was revealed about human nature was that it was bad. In the last ten pages, suddenly, ignoring his own evidence from the camp, Gilkey concludes that humans need faith in the Providence of God to give them the willpower to resist temptation, and to give their lives purpose. This last section consists of jarringly ill-conceived gibberish; but the rest of the book is fascinating, well-written, and thought-provoking. |
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Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is among the most influential works of psychiatric literature since Freud. The book begins with a lengthy, austere, and deeply moving personal essay about Frankl's imprisonment in Auschwitz and other concentration camps for five years, and his struggle during this time to find reasons to live. The second part of the book, called "Logotherapy in a Nutshell," describes the psychotherapeutic method that Frankl pioneered as a result of his experiences in the concentration camps. Freud believed that sexual instincts and urges were the driving force of humanity's life; Frankl, by contrast, believes that man's deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose. |
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The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes - From a tightly constrained definition of human consciousness, Jaynes offers a wealth of archeological and historical evidence to build his thesis. A novel idea even now, Jaynes proposed that until about 3 000 years ago, the human mind was sharply divided - a "bicameral mind." One part dealt with the normal daily occupations of survival and reproduction. The other part was a conduit for communications with the gods. Jaynes portrays the brain's structure and how it might generate "hallucinatory" voices and images that were construed as supernatural. Not until the civilization of Greece was well advanced did the consciousness we're familiar with arise and partially replace these hallucinatory visions. |
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Evolution Of Consciousness By Robert Ornstein - Based on his life's research, the author of the bestseller The Psychology of Consciousness provides a provocative look at the evolution of the mind. He explains that we are not rational but adaptive, and that it is Darwin, not Freud, who is the central scientist of the brain. |
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Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness is notoriously difficult to explain. On one hand, there are facts about conscious experience--the way clarinets sound, the way lemonade tastes--that we know subjectively, from the inside. On the other hand, such facts are not readily accommodated in the objective world described by science. How, after all, could the reediness of clarinets or the tartness of lemonade be predicted in advance? Central to Daniel C. Dennett's attempt to resolve this dilemma is the "heterophenomenological" method, which treats reports of introspection nontraditionally--not as evidence to be used in explaining consciousness, but as data to be explained. |
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The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness: A Physical Basis for Immaterialism by Samuel Avery - This book leads beyond the basic immateriality of the universe as posited by particle physics and quantum mechanics. His thesis is that consciousness is the basis of everything and he has an interesting theory of dimensionality in its various ramifications. Most of the books on modern physics do not explore any theory of consciousness at all, so this one is a refreshing and interesting change. I recommend it highly to all those interested in philosophy and physics. |
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Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud - An excellent book which depicts civilization for what it is. In this book Freud discussed a varity of topics such as religion, sex, happiness and human suffering (listed in no particular order). I think that the entire purpose of the book was to show humans that civilization is not any better than times before it occured. We tend to think of ourselves better than pre-civilized times however, nothing has changed because reality is constant. Human nature is focused on beauty, instinct and will. |
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The Meaning of Life by E. D. Klemke - Klemke admirably combines classic works with more contemporary approaches to the perennial philosophical problem of the meaning and significance of existence. The introductory essay and the division of the book into sections on the "Theistic Answer", "The Non-Theistic Answer", and "Questioning the Question" provide much-needed guidance for the reader grappling with the difficult issues raised by the authors. This second edition includes valuable new selections from Schopenhauer, Nielsen, Flanagan, and more. A great resource for both the professional philosopher and the amateur self-knowledge seeker. |
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Modern Man in Search of a Soul by C.G. Jung - This book is page after page of intelligent insight into the psyche of man. He oscillates back an forth between practical understanding of self and others, and therapy scenarios between doctor and patient. This book exemplifies the kind of thought that will elevate and evolve the common man beyond what we are and have been. He illuminates the logical next steps forward in personal evolution by sharing what amounts to his intimate knowledge of the human condition. Jung gives credit to his audience in that he trusts us to follow his thought with understanding and one feels growing responsiblity with every newly illuminated concept. Please enjoy this book. Let this man's work reach you. |
Last Updated: Wednesday May 7, 2003 9:42