Description:
A plea for the recovery of wonder, awe, and the sense of the sacred that lies at the heart of all authentic philosophy and religion. Chosen by both Newsweek and Time magazines as one of the Ten Best books in its field in 1969, it remains the linchpin of Sam Keen's thinking and writing.
Excerpts from Sam Keen’s Apology for Wonder:
“When something explodes into awareness and shatters our ordinary categories of understanding, it quite naturally creates mental and emotional dis-ease and puzzlement. What is this novel star that has suddenly appeared on my horizon? Who is this stranger who speaks so unexpectedly out of the
A plea for the recovery of wonder, awe, and the sense of the sacred that lies at the heart of all authentic philosophy and religion. Chosen by both Newsweek and Time magazines as one of the Ten Best books in its field in 1969, it remains the linchpin of Sam Keen's thinking and writing.
Excerpts from Sam Keen’s Apology for Wonder:
“When something explodes into awareness and shatters our ordinary categories of understanding, it quite naturally creates mental and emotional dis-ease and puzzlement. What is this novel star that has suddenly appeared on my horizon? Who is this stranger who speaks so unexpectedly out of the mouth of my wife? Why is it that the rose I observed yesterday and the day before today confronts me with a miracle of redness? When we are wonderstruck our certainties dissolve, and we are precipitated suddenly into contingency. We are like a man waking in the middle of the night in a strange hotel room and not being able, for the moment, to remember where he is.
Wonder…insofar as it disrupts our proven ways of coping with the world…is menacing; insofar as it offers the promise of renewing novelty, it is desirable and fascinating. If we attend to the strict meanings of the words, we may describe the heart of the experience of wonder as an awful-promising surprise.
The image of apocalypse and resurrection is integral to the experience of wonder. Every wonder-event involves a cognitive crucifixion; it disrupts the system of meanings that secures the identity of the ego. To wonder is to die to the self, to cease imposing categories, and to surrender the self…Refreshment or resurrection leaves us reborn but unable to articulate an adequate testimony. There is nothing new to say about the world…only a new ability to celebrate it.”
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Manufacturer: Harpercollins
Release date: 1 July 1980
ISBN-10 : 0060642610 |
ISBN-13: 9780060642617
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