A Complex Integral Realist Perspective

This book sketches the contours of a vision that moves beyond the dominant paradigm or worldview that underlies and governs modernity (and postmodernity).

Paul Marshall is one of only a handful of scholars who have mastered all threeof today'smajor metatheories,and he combines this rare breadth of knowledge with formidable synthesizing power to offer an intellectual integrationof admirable scope and sophistication Roger Walsh MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of California, USA Towards a New Axial Vision is a bold synthetic work that makes a groundbreaking contribution to our understanding of the various relationships between three of the most important contemporary integrative metatheories. Paul Marshall has done a superb job of weaving the strengths and insights of Integral Theory, Complex Thought, and Critical Realism into a new vision of humanity. In the process he shows us the unique role metatheory can play in helping us to create a thriving planetary civilization. Dr. Marshall is uniquely qualified to introduce readers to these three integrative metatheories and open us up to the new meta-vistas that they enable. Scholar-practitioners with interdisciplinary and trans disciplinary orientations will find this volume especially valuable as will researchers associated with the social sciences and metathinking. Sean Esbjörn-Hargens Ph.D, Co-editor Metatheory for the Twenty-first Century (Routledge 2015) and CEO of MetaIntegral Associates This book takes dialogue between critical realism, integral theory and complex thought to a new level by putting a creative synthesis of these metatheories to work to further our understanding of the Axial Age and the place of Western modernity within it and to articulate a theory and practice for a New Axial Age. Mervyn Harwig, Editor, Journal of Critical Realism

Autorentext

Paul Marshall is Wilson Professor of Religious Freedom at Baylor University, and senior fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute and Hudson Institute. He has authored over twenty books, including Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Choke Freedom Worldwide (Oxford University Press, 2011), Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion (Oxford University Press, 2009), Religious Freedom in the World (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008). His work has been translated into twenty languages.

Inhalt

Introduction

Part I: Axiality in pre-modernity

1. The Axial Age: First Flowering of a New Vision

2. Axial Greece: Sowing the Seeds of Four Biases

3. Interregnum: Axiality between the Axial Age and Modernity

Part II: Modernity and the Four Biases

4. Modernity: New Shift in Consciousness and Consolidation of the Biases

5. Challenging the Biases: Undermining the Old Vision

6. Remedying the Biases: Paving the Way for a New Vision

Part III: Contours of a New Axial Vision

7. Contours I: A New Axial Cosmovision (or 'Creation Story')

8. Contours II: A New Axial Cognition and Ethics

9. Contours III: A New Axial Spirituality and Praxis

10. Conclusion