Description

For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people but with other animals, plants, and natural objects (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patterns) that we have only lately come to think of as "inanimate." How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth?

In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception an excavates the sensual foundations of language, which -- even at its most abstract -- echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with a passion, a precision and an intellectual daring that recall such writers as Loren Eisley, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez.

"I know of no work more valuable for shifting our thinking and feeling about the place of humans in the world." -- James Hillman, author of The Soul's Code

About the Author

David Abram, Ph.D., is an ecologist and philosopher whose writings have had a deepening influence upon the environmental movement in North America and abroad. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Sate University of New York at Stony Brook and has been the recipient of fellowships from the Watson and Rockefeller Foundations and a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.