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Introducing Ken Wilber: Concepts for an Evolving World
Ken Wilber's revolutionary thinking is beginning to shift the orientation of Western culture. Wilber combines his knowledge as mystic, scientist, psychologist and philosopher to create comprehensive concepts for understanding our world and our place in it. This "integral approach" is much needed in a world torn by conflicts of religion, culture, and ideology.Lew Howard says, "I wrote this book to make the work of Ken Wilber accessible to the average person. Wilber's integral understanding (which is an interlocking whole) is broken down into concepts that can be individually understood. These understandings result in an integral conception of the Kosmos. Wilber's insights revolutionized my spiritual practice-and can do the same for you."
496 pages, Paperback
First published May 3, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 23, 2020
I have long had a strange relationship with Ken Wilber's work. I always felt that there was something to it, that his syncretic approach to synthesizing wide-ranging and seemingly disparate takes on life, consciousness, and everything else had something valuable to offer. But each time I made the effort to actually read his original work, I had the unsettling feeling that I simply couldn't trust him.
I can point to specific things that made me feel that way, particularly where Wilber grossly misrepresents the orthodoxy in evolutionary theory as a straw man to knock down with a repackaged "irreducible complexity" argument that no evolutionary theorist would take seriously. For Wilber to not have properly done his homework on a topic that he spends a lot of time talking about made me reluctant to give him the benefit of the doubt on more arcane topics I know less about. But beyond that, I also had the sneaky feeling that Wilber's frequent name dropping of the various thinkers he cites was less a measure of thorough scholarship and more an effort to overwhelm the reader's critical faculties and capacity to fact-check so he or she would take Wilber at his word that he was accurately representing their work.
That brings me to the present book. Lew Howard has done the "Wilber curious" a considerable favor by reading his complete oeuvre so that we don't have to. While perhaps a bit dry in spots, the book is a thorough and well-organized treatment of Wilber's output (focusing primarily on the fourth period in Wilber's philosophy, "Wilber-4"), designed almost like a book-length study guide. It contains extensive, well-selected passages from Wilber's original work along with diagrams, take-home messages, end-of-chapter summaries, various interesting appendices, and a glossary of Wilber's nonstandard jargon.
Presented this way, largely stripped of the pseudo-academic posturing, some genuinely good ideas are able to shine through. Many of the best ideas presented here do not necessarily originate with Wilber, but having them together in a single system likely does. I personally found the earlier parts of the book somewhat more enjoyable than the latter, but that is simply a consequence of my feeling the same way about Wilber's work. (Howard's treatment is not exactly but approximately chronological in its presentation.)
To be sure, there is still plenty here that is questionable, and I am docking Howard a star for his almost completely uncritical summary of Wilber's work. Howard is obviously a devoted Wilber fan, but to his credit the book only enters hagiography territory a forgivably small number of times. I also appreciate Howard's choice to not inject himself too much into the subject, so his not challenging Wilber could arguably be considered a feature and not a bug.
The bottom line is that if you are at all curious about Ken Wilber but don't know where to start, perhaps the best place is not with Wilber at all but rather with this book. It's a genuinely impressive piece of private scholarship, a labor of love that I found useful and enjoyable even while remaining skeptical about its subject.
I can point to specific things that made me feel that way, particularly where Wilber grossly misrepresents the orthodoxy in evolutionary theory as a straw man to knock down with a repackaged "irreducible complexity" argument that no evolutionary theorist would take seriously. For Wilber to not have properly done his homework on a topic that he spends a lot of time talking about made me reluctant to give him the benefit of the doubt on more arcane topics I know less about. But beyond that, I also had the sneaky feeling that Wilber's frequent name dropping of the various thinkers he cites was less a measure of thorough scholarship and more an effort to overwhelm the reader's critical faculties and capacity to fact-check so he or she would take Wilber at his word that he was accurately representing their work.
That brings me to the present book. Lew Howard has done the "Wilber curious" a considerable favor by reading his complete oeuvre so that we don't have to. While perhaps a bit dry in spots, the book is a thorough and well-organized treatment of Wilber's output (focusing primarily on the fourth period in Wilber's philosophy, "Wilber-4"), designed almost like a book-length study guide. It contains extensive, well-selected passages from Wilber's original work along with diagrams, take-home messages, end-of-chapter summaries, various interesting appendices, and a glossary of Wilber's nonstandard jargon.
Presented this way, largely stripped of the pseudo-academic posturing, some genuinely good ideas are able to shine through. Many of the best ideas presented here do not necessarily originate with Wilber, but having them together in a single system likely does. I personally found the earlier parts of the book somewhat more enjoyable than the latter, but that is simply a consequence of my feeling the same way about Wilber's work. (Howard's treatment is not exactly but approximately chronological in its presentation.)
To be sure, there is still plenty here that is questionable, and I am docking Howard a star for his almost completely uncritical summary of Wilber's work. Howard is obviously a devoted Wilber fan, but to his credit the book only enters hagiography territory a forgivably small number of times. I also appreciate Howard's choice to not inject himself too much into the subject, so his not challenging Wilber could arguably be considered a feature and not a bug.
The bottom line is that if you are at all curious about Ken Wilber but don't know where to start, perhaps the best place is not with Wilber at all but rather with this book. It's a genuinely impressive piece of private scholarship, a labor of love that I found useful and enjoyable even while remaining skeptical about its subject.
December 20, 2023
This was a clear text about Ken Wilber’s philosophy. I recommend it as a shortened form to understand the writings of Mr. Wilber.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews