What does Barret consider the most significant single fact of modern history of

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...Philosopher and critic, born in New York City, New York, USA in 1913, and died in 1992. Educated at the City College of New York and Columbia University, he was associated with the Partisan Review group of intellectuals in the 1930s but moved gradually to the right in his political thought. He taught philosophy at New York University from 1950-79. His memoir, The Truants: Adventures among the Intellectuals, appeared in 1982.

His widely praised Irrational Man (1958) explained European existentialism to the general reader, and is largely responsible for introducing existentialism to America. Barrett provides summaries of the works of all of the major figures in existentialism (with the exception of Merleau-Ponty) and integrates their work within Western literary, religious, artistic, and philosophical traditions. Barrett provides great insight on the origins of existentialism in the history of Western civilization, and in doing so also constructs an interesting and informative narrative about that history itself.

Although broadly recognized for Irrational Man, his greatest work was The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a Technological Civilization (1979). This work examined broad issues on the effects that technology was having on humanity and our way of being, taking up where Martin Heidegger left off in his The Question Concerning Technology.

In Death of the Soul (1986), Barrett argues that after Newton, spirituality was divorced from science - resulting in scientism. Barrett claims that two conflicting tendencies beset subsequent philosophers: one, to affirm the spiritual component; and, in alliance with scientism, a tendency to eliminate it. Barrett sees the relegation of God to an abstraction (Kant) and the subordination of mathematics to logic (Russell) as paradigmatic of the movement toward death of the soul. He concludes that the dominant standpoint today - including both the positivist and phenomenological traditions - is to undermine the spiritual status of the human person. This is exemplified by the computer model of the mind. Ever since Descartes saw nature as a vast, interlocking machine and science banished the soul, philosophers have been uncomfortable with this materialistic outlook. Barrett (Irrational Man here looks at the way in which various thinkers have attempted to put the human soul or self in the forefront of their visions of reality. He discusses Leibniz's energized universe of monads, or individual souls, Hegel's blueprint for self-realization as part of the unfolding of the "world spirit'' and the existentialists' belief that anxiety and death are personal problems each of us must wrestle with. Unconvinced by modern descriptions of the mind as a computer, Barrett debunks Alan Turing's claim that a future computer could write first-rate poetry; he also refutes behaviorism and Wittgenstein. This short book engages the reader in an open-ended dialogue with major Western thinkers on the central questions of the soul, death and consciousness.

I would like to note that when people say that the result of divorcing spirituality from science results in scientism, they are merely expressing a personal dislike for science, nothing more.

We should not forget that when a group of people is fighting against an established government, you will call them "freedom fighters" if you like them. You will call them "terrorists" if you don't like them. And, if you are uncertain, you will call them "guerrillas."

Harleigh Kyson Jr.