A Barfieldian extravaganza

Morris Berman's book "The Re-enchantment of the World" is broadly Green and even more broadly spiritual. While the author doesn't seem to be explicitly religious, he does have a soft spot for Carl Gustav Jung, Robert Fludd, Carlos Castaneda and (surprise) Owen Barfield. A less spiritual favourite is Wilhelm Reich. Berman also references R.D. Laing and devotes three entire chapters to Gregory Bateson.

Berman argues that the modern worldview with its scientific knowledge and subject-object dualism isn't really "objective", but rather an alienated and almost psychotic perspective. Drawing on Barfield, the author believes that humanity originally had an animistic consciousness of deep immersion in the surrounding nature. This state of "original participation" was characterized by the lack of a real ego, and the absence of a body-mind duality. For some reason, the ancient Jews and Greeks eventually broke with this form of consciousness and started to evolve towards a real ego-consciousness. However, this process wasn't completed until circa AD 1600, and coincided with the arrival of capitalism and modern commercial civilization. And, of course, modern science. Berman's main whipping boys are Francis Bacon and René Descartes. He is also intensely hostile to Isaac Newton, who in the author's opinion was downright clinical (I admit that his dissing of Newton is great fun!). Instead, he extols William Blake.

Today, our alienation from Nature and Body is threatening our civilization with collapse, and Berman hopes for a Green, decentralized, de-industrialized, non-hierarchic society. His vision includes the mastering of parapsychological powers and a high aesthetics. (Berman admits that the art and literature of the Early Modern period was more advanced than that of earlier epochs, but somewhat curiously also likes Surrealism.)

Unfortunately, Berman doesn't really know how to bring this happy state of affairs to fruition, but then, who can blame him? The last chapters of "The Re-enchantment of the World" are therefore less coherent than the earlier ones. The diagnosis is easier than the prescription, it seems. Interestingly, Berman does not call for a simple return to archaic consciousness, which he at several points dubs "naïve animism". After all, original participation was non-reflective. Berman, on the other hand, reflects on both archaic and modern consciousness, which means that he is "modern" at least in this respect. (I'm reminded of Ken Wilber's distinction between prepersonal and transpersonal here, although I suspect Wilber would nevertheless consider Berman too "Green", in the Wilberian sense of that term.) Instead, Berman wants a holistic science that can somehow combine scientific and discursive thinking with a kind of immediate participation that does away with the subject-object dichotomy. He believes that Bateman was on to something in this respect.

In many ways, Berman's book is an easier-to-read version of Barfield's weird classic "Saving the appearances". It may therefore be of considerable interest to admirers of this particular thinker. In a sense, it's a virtual Barfieldian extravaganza! Deep ecologists are another obvious audience for this work, and so are New Age believers. I found it to be quite interesting myself, but I had to read it twice! And yes, I noticed certain similarities with Neil Evernden's books, although Evernden sounds more Existentialist and hence "alienated" from Berman's perspective. (Frankly, who doesn't?)

People who will heartily hate "The Re-enchantment of the World" include positivists, behaviourists, sociobiologists, the Wise Use movement, the Royal Society and (arguably) the Revolutionary Communist Party.